Freedom Crossing

As soon as they get in the house, Bert and Laura start calling out for Martin. They don’t hear a response at first, and Laura is worried that Martin may have been taken. However, as they approach her room, they hear his voice answering them from under the floor. He tells them he thought it was them, but he wanted to hide just in case.

Martin asks where their carriage is since he didn’t hear it arrive. Bert explains how it was taken and says they’ll have to find another way to get Martin to the river tonight. Laura insists he should wait until their father is home, but Bert reminds her that people are waiting to help Martin escape tonight, and they simply can’t wait any longer. Laura agrees and leaves Bert to tell Martin about Tryon’s Folly while she makes dinner for them.

After dinner, the three of them “[gather] in Laura’s room to be near Martin’s hiding place” (117). Martin sits on the floor and starts to read a paper that Bert had given him called Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Bert tells Laura that it’s an abolitionist paper written and published by a Black man named Frederick Douglass. Laura is shocked; back in Virginia, “even the suggestion that a black man could write and run a newspaper would be unthinkable” (118). In the paper, Frederick Douglass writes about the rights to which all people are entitled, and it’s as if Laura is thinking clearly for the first time. As she listens to Frederick Douglass’s words, it becomes all too clear that she was too quick to accept her aunt and uncle’s views on slavery without ever thinking critically for herself.

Laura suggests that Bert and Martin rest for a few hours before they set out on their journey, but the boys are not tired. Bert says that he and Martin can take turns reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin aloud instead. Though Laura’s mindset is certainly shifting, “she still wasn’t ready to accept Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Uncle Jim had said it was a pack of lies” (120). She tells Bert that she doesn’t want to see that book, and Bert’s reply is simply not to look. Laura starts to leave, but quickly feels left out and returns to be with the boys. She decides to listen to the book with them, after all. One of the stories reminds Martin of his own family. Mr. Spencer tried to sell Martin’s dad, but he refused to let his family be split up, so they chose to run away.

Martin stumbles over some of the words as he reads, causing Laura to lose patience and eventually offer to take over reading from him. The three of them stay like this for a while and finally realize it’s nine o’clock at night. They are about to keep reading when Martin sits up suddenly: He hears someone at the door.

The slave catchers have returned, but this time they aren’t after Martin. They have a warrant to arrest Bert. The sheriff and Walt can both be heard outside, and they tell Bert he’s wanted for questioning. With the missing cart, they are trying to look at any angle, including the one that assumed Bert could be helping on the Underground Railroad.

When they’ve gone, Laura goes upstairs to tell Martin what has happened. Martin’s reaction surprises Laura: “Never before had she seen such a look of despair” (126). When Laura says nothing about helping him further, Martin starts to leave. Laura tells him he won’t know how to get there, and he should wait until tomorrow when her father is back. Martin shakes his head: His family is waiting tonight, so he has to go now. Laura also understands that Uncle Daniel will likely take them straight to the sheriff if he comes home to find them hiding a runaway. Martin tells Laura he’d rather die than go back to his master. Laura realizes that it’s up to her to help Martin escape.

When she tells Martin that she’s going with him, “his face show[s] so much surprise that Laura almost laugh[s]” (127). She tells him that she’ll take him through the woods since the slave catchers will be watching the road and the house more closely now that Bert is under arrest. Martin is shocked that Laura is offering to help, and Laura tells him not to worry. She says, “I’m not like some girls who’ve never done anything but sew and play on the piano. My mother used to say I was a tomboy. I used to know every nut tree and briar patch for miles around” (127). As she says this, Laura looks at her skirts and knows they will present a problem when they are making their escape.

Laura looks in Bert’s clothing to find an outfit more suited to running through the woods. When she reappears in pants, a men’s shirt, and her hair tucked up under a hat, Martin tells her he thought she was a boy for a moment. They look outside the window and watch, waiting for the slave catcher to leave. As soon as he is out of sight, Laura and Martin run to the woods.

Laura notices how much faster she is able to run in Bert’s pants than in a skirt. She and Martin weave among the trees, pausing when they hear “the clip-clop of a horse’s hoofs on the road” (131). A horse and rider, along with “the sentry Laura had seen patrolling the road” (131) come into view. Laura and Martin duck deeper into the shadows, hoping their dark clothing will hide them well enough. After what feels like forever, the sentry moves on, and Laura and Martin continue toward Tryon’s Folly.

The two of them stumble in darkness, not daring to light the lantern they brought with them. Laura does her best to remember the path from her childhood, but she begins to doubt if she’s leading Martin in the right direction. To their relief, they soon hear the sound of carriage wheels, signifying that they’re closer to the road and closer to their destination.

As they get closer to the sound, Laura recognizes her stolen carriage. A horse and rider stop the person driving the carriage and ask where they are going with it. The driver says that he found the carriage abandoned and is returning it to the Eastman home. The rider tells him that Laura is the only one at home, and she’s asleep, so the driver decides to put it in the barn and feed the horse before leaving himself.

Laura and Martin wait for the people to leave, then keep moving toward the river. They pass a farmhouse, where a dog starts running “directly toward the woods where Laura and Martin [are] standing, afraid to stir lest the crackle of dry leaves and branches betray them still further” (134-35). The farmer calls out to his dog to come back, assuming it is chasing after some animal hiding in the woods. Eventually they hear the farmer say that he’ll go in and get his gun. Once he’s inside the house, Laura and Martin run as fast as they can from the farm.

The rest of the journey to Tryon’s Folly is full of near misses and encounters with woodland nightlife, but they press on. When they cross the road, they get to the other side just before a horse and rider comes by. With horror, Laura recognizes the rider as Walt. At first they think that he missed them because he takes his horse past where they are lying on the ground, motionless. Then, they hear him getting off the horse and rushing into the woods after them. Laura and Martin scramble to their feet and run through the woods again.

Laura tells Martin to hurry, and “in two or three minutes they burst out of the woods into the narrow clearing around Tryon’s Folly” (137). They go into the house and head down into the cellars. Soon, they’ll be at the river. Laura freezes when she hears footsteps in the rooms above them. It sounds as if there’s more than one person in there. She urges Martin on, and climbs down after him, when a voice overhead calls out for Martin. Laura looks up and, to her surprise, comes eye to eye with Joel Todd.

Laura continues to climb down the cellar and calls out to Martin to wait, but Martin has already fled into the bushes near the river. Joel grabs Laura by the arm and asks what she’s doing there. Laura tells him that Bert was arrested so she brought Martin here instead. Joel is ecstatic to see that his old friend has softened and become herself again. He says, “The rabbit in the trap! […] You couldn’t bear to see Martin get caught, could you?” (141-42). Laura reminds him that Martin isn’t across the river yet and then runs out to find Martin.

She calls to him and asks him to come out, telling him the person they heard was Joel. Another voice soon joins the mix: George, the fugitive who was rescued at the church earlier that day. Joel tells them it’s time for them to get in the boat and ride across to Canada. Laura is worried that Walt may have followed them, but Joel assures her that they have taken every precaution to evade capture.

As Joel and Laura help Martin and George down to the river’s edge, Joel asks why they arrested Bert. When he finds out it was on suspicion because their carriage was involved in George’s rescue, Joel explains what really happened. Mr. Tryon enlisted one of the agents in the Underground Railroad to take the Eastman carriage because their horse was the fastest one around. Joel tells Laura that they won’t be able to keep Bert since they can’t prove he was involved in any way.

Laura is relieved to hear that Mr. Tryon is involved in the Underground Railroad after all, just as Bert thought he was. Joel says that Mr. Tryon “and his wife spend their lives helping other people in all kinds of ways” (144). He’s the one who decided to use his brother’s abandoned home as the final stop on the Underground Railroad.

The group looks out to see a rowboat coming toward them. George and Joel grab it and pull it against the shore. As Martin climbs into it, he turns around to thank Laura one more time for her help. Laura makes him promise to send word when he gets to Canada safely and tells him that she will be helping more enslaved people across the river soon. With a final goodbye, she and Joel watch Martin and George disappear into the night, gliding toward freedom.

Before they head home, Joel wants to show Laura something else. He takes her to a terrace behind the house, where wild grapevine covers a boulder. He pushes on the stone and reveals “an opening in the ground. […] Laura, dropping to her knees, stare[s] into a rock-walled room the size of the pantry at home, with a vaulted ceiling” (167). Joel tells Laura that it was originally meant to hold rainwater, but now it’s where they hide the enslaved people while they wait to go to Canada. The only people that know about it are the Tryons, Joel’s and Laura’s fathers, and the two of them. This is where they brought George until night fell and they could move to the river in darkness.

Joel leads Laura back down the path toward his house. He tells her that if anyone sees them along the way, they’ll likely think it’s two boys out on a walk. He offers for her to stay at his house in their spare room, but Laura declines, not wanting to worry her family. She takes a skirt to pull over her trousers from Mrs. Todd, who applauds Laura for her bravery. Laura thinks about what Mrs. Todd said. She isn’t sure if she was brave, but she knows “where she belong[s] and which side she [is] on. She had come home to stay” (148). Exhausted, she is more than happy to let Joel drive her home.

They are almost back to town when they run into Walt and his horse. He teases her for slipping away from the house to go on a buggy ride. He says, “I didn’t know you had a sweetheart” (148). Before Laura can object, Joel puts his arms around her and tells Walt that she does indeed.