This he did, and reported everything quiet--Nimbus and Berry not
heard from; Eliab supposed to have been killed; the colored people
greatly alarmed; and "Miss Mollie a-comfortin' an encouragin' on
'em night an' day."
Together with this anxiety came the trust confided to Hesden by
Jordan Jackson, and the new, and at first somewhat arduous, duties
imposed thereby. In the discharge of these he was brought into
communication with a great many of the best people of the county,
and did not hesitate to express his opinion freely as to the outrage
at Red Wing. He was several times warned to be prudent, but he
answered all warnings so firmly, and yet with so much feeling, that
he was undisturbed. He stood so high, and had led so pure a life,
that he could even be allowed to entertain obnoxious sentiments
without personal danger, so long as he did not attempt to reduce
them to practice or attempt to secure for colored people the rights
to which he thought them entitled. However, a great deal of remark
was occasioned by the fact of his having become trustee for the
fugitive Radical, and he was freely charged with having disgraced
and degraded himself and his family by taking the part of a "renegade,
Radical white nigger," like Jackson. This duty took him from home
during the day in a direction away from Red Wing, and a part of each
night he sat by the bedside of Eliab.
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