Page:John Brown (1899).pdf/116
count for fully a year. Brown was not greatly worried,—certainly not at all alarmed. He used some craft to stay Forbes's hand. He went to Boston, and Stearns induced him not to proceed for a time. It was thought best that Brown should go back to Kansas, apparently to resume his regular work there, but with the real object of confusing Forbes. Meantime Forbes somehow "disappeared," as Hinton, who was one of Brown's men, expresses it, "wholly from our vision." Yet he wrote a communication to the New York Herald in October, 1859, and was later somewhat vaguely reported as fighting with Garibaldi again in Italy. It is dear that he never really betrayed the conspiracy to the government. Brown was asked by Stearns to take back to Kansas the arms and munitions that he had collected, but he did not. He went there at the end of June, 1858, empty-handed and with much relutance, feeling that he was giving up large game for smaller.