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and drove her over to Osterburg himself. He returned around noon, solemn faced and looking wary.
    “We’d best leave the man in the barn for now. He seems right sick. He should be passed along tonight, but we don’t have a choice. We’ll have to keep him until he’s well. Anything else would be murder, to him and maybe others.”
    I nodded. I was preoccupied with Jesse, but once I’d done all I could to make him comfortable, I went to the barn with an armload of quilts and a kettle of hot water. I wanted to move the man onto a thicker pile of hay for more warmth and comfort, but he was too sick to move himself and too big for me to move, so I covered him with the quilts and forced some feverfew tea into him.
    Jesse lay deathly ill for days. I feared so for him. Why did he do these things? Get himself into such dire straits? He could just as well mind his own business. Come and go on the farm and to Meeting. Why did he have to go looking for trouble? When his fever finally broke, he was still too weak to get up.
    The slave’s fever raged on. I did my best to make him comfortable in the barn where it was easier to hide him. One never knew when visitors might come to the house, or when Pru Hartley would wander by, watching. Jesse had shivered and shaken quietly, but this one was given to moaning and thrashing. He was too sick to speak, but I felt the fear and helplessness in his eyes as he drifted in and out of consciousness.
    After more than a week, when he was well enough to talk, Jesse asked, “How’s the Negro?”
    “Still awful sick. His fever hasn’t broken. All I can say is, he isn’t dead yet.”
    “Can you get him into the house?” It took about all of his strength to say that little.
    “I don’t know how, if he can’t walk. He’s terrible sick, Jesse. Sicker than you, even.”
    “Get Nathaniel to help you. The nights are too cold in the barn. He needs to be in here.” He laid his head back on the pillow and rested.
    “Where can we put him? I’ll have my hands full keeping him quiet.”
    Jesse nodded weakly toward the storage space he’d built in his bedroom. “Put him in there.”
    I looked at the solid wall on the south side. “Where?”
    Jesse pointed, and I ran my fingers along the wall, until I felt a catch under the molding. I slipped it aside and two of the wide boards swung out, revealing a space large enough for a man to crawl through. The hinges were neatly concealed, and no knob betrayed its presence. So that was the reason for Jesse’s ‘fixing up!’
    After dinner that evening, under cover of darkness, Nathaniel and I went to the barn and told the man we were moving him to the house.
    “I’se grateful,” he mumbled. “It so cold here. You sure it safe?” It was the first time anything sensible had come out of him.
    Nate nodded as we lifted him into a sitting position, then to his knees. He was a strapping young man in his late twenties or early thirties. He leaned heavily on Nathaniel and twice nearly collapsed before I could get my shoulder under his other arm. Together we half carried, half dragged him across the yard and into the house. Truly he was sicker than Jesse.
    Getting him up the narrow, curved staircase and through Nathaniel’s room to Jesse’s was almost more than Nathaniel and I could manage. I’d made a pallet on the floor under the eaves, and when we laid the man down, his heavy breathing filled the room. As long as there was no one around, we kept the passage open for light and heat. I did what I could to make him comfortable, but his condition stayed as it was, wavering between life and death. I feared the move might bring an end to him.
    Jesse stayed in bed for several more days, and I waved off visitors with warnings of the fever. We didn’t know what to name the illness, but we knew it was bad. I felt a little hot and light headed myself, but that was probably because I was so tired.
    One frosty morning, as I went to the springhouse, I was caught up