The Topeka journey was in vain. The legislature quietly dispersed at the command of Colonel Sumner, and John Brown saw that his only hope of stirring up effective resistance lay in Lane's "army" of immigrants, then approaching the northern boundaries of Kansas, with whom was his son-in-law's brother. Taking, therefore, his wounded son-in-law and leaving his band, he pressed forward alone on a dangerous and wearisome way of one hundred and fifty miles through the enemy's country. Hinton saw him as he rode into one of the camps and says:
"Have you a man in your camp named William Thompson? You are from Massachusetts, young man, I believe, and Mr. Thompson joined you at Buffalo.' These words were addressed to me by an elderly man, riding a worn-looking, gaunt gray horse. It was on a late July day, and in its hottest hours. I had been idly watching a wagon and one horse, toiling slowly northward across the prairie, along the emigrant trail that had been marked out by free state men under command of 'Sam' Walker and Aaron D. Stevens, who was then known as 'Colonel Whipple.' John Brown, whose name the young and ardent had begun to conjure with and swear by, had been described to me. So, as I heard the question, I looked up and met the full strong gaze of a pair of luminous, questioning eyes. Somehow I instinctively knew this was John Brown and with that name I replied, saying that Thompson was in our company. It was a long, rugged-
