Linda has lived in Boston for two years, and her brother, William, offers to send Ellen to boarding school. Although she is reluctant to part with her daughter, Linda eventually agrees that this would be in her daughter's best interest. The night before Ellen is scheduled to leave, Linda tells her the truth about her father, Mr. Sands. To her surprise, she discovers that Ellen has known the truth all along.
Linda is lonely without her daughter, and gratefully accepts an assignment as a seamstress for a neighboring family. Upon returning home, she finds a letter from William, asking her to help him establish an anti-slavery reading room in Rochester. She agrees to work with him, but the project doesn't receive broad community support and fails. Linda spends the next year with the family of Isaac and Amy Post, well-known anti-slavery advocates whose Rochester, New York, home, was a well-known station on the Underground Railroad.
