Freedom Stone by Jeffrey Kluger

glared at her from inside. Some had never seen Henry, some had; none of them knew where he could be found.
    â€œHe does keep to himself,” the nervous girl said. “Never talks to nobody and don’t come out much. When he does, he hobbles about like a man in pain.” She said nothing else and quickly returned to her work, as the old man inside picked up a whipping stick with his right hand and began slapping it menacingly into the palm of his left.
    Lillie turned away, feeling frustrated as well as hot, hungry and increasingly thirsty. The morning sun had now given way to high sun, and keeping the clock tower in sight, Lillie could see that it was now close to two in the afternoon. She’d had nothing to eat and not a sip to drink since breakfast early this morning, and while there were public water barrels and dippers in front of many of the stores in Bluffton, a black child dared not touch them with her hands or—worse—her lips. It was a footrace to see whether her hope or her strength would give out first, but whichever one failed her, it seemed less and less likely that she’d find the man she’d come to see in the two and a quarter hours she had remaining. When she left Bluffton today, it could be years before she’d ever have permission to come back.
    As Lillie’s mind was filling with these dark thoughts, she once again scanned up and down the streets and this time saw something she hadn’t expected at all: a familiar face. Leaning wearily against a hitching post next to an old, gray-muzzled horse was an equally old slave named Abner, who’d once worked the barns at the Bingham Woods plantation. Abner was one of those people who looked like they were meant to be old—as if they’d never been young. “Hatched from an old egg,” was how Mama put it, and to Lillie that seemed about right.
    When Lillie was little, Abner would sometimes visit Greenfog on business with his master, and when he came down to the slave cabins for food and water, he seemed to take special pleasure in playing with the children. He never could keep any of their names straight, and so he called all the boys either Edward or John, after his own sons who’d been sold off when they were small. He called all the girls either Eliza or Lillie—and though Lillie herself knew he was likely thinking of two girls from long ago who happened to have those names, she liked to think that maybe he’d taken a special shine to her.
    If Abner never looked especially well to Lillie, he looked even worse now—thin, with little left of the crop of white hair he’d once had. He also appeared, even from a distance, to be down to his last few teeth. Still, the man was Abner if he was anyone, and Lillie hurried over to him.
    â€œAbner?” she asked. He looked up and squinted at her. His eyes were red and rheumy, and his face was covered with white stubble—not the kind that came from a face not having been shaved in a week or two, but the kind that came from skin that was so old it just didn’t have the strength to push out true whiskers anymore. “Abner Bingham?” she asked, guessing she’d better use the last name all the slaves on his plantation were given. The man shook his head no.
    â€œBeg pardon,” Lillie said, flustered. “I thought you was someone I knew.”
    â€œI was someone you knew,” the man answered. “Used to be Abner Bingham. Now I’m Abner Blue.” He read Lillie’s look of confusion. “I was manumitted, sugar.”
    The word, as always, carried a thrilling jolt. Manumitted meant freed, and while Lillie had met a few such remarkable slaves in her life, she hadn’t met many—mostly because there just weren’t many around. Most freed slaves had earned their manumission papers by performing some heroic act like saving their master’s life. A few had been industrious enough and frugal enough to