This page needs to be proofread.
20
SKETCHES OF THE

but she told me to get under the bed and lie still, and when I had done so she took up her baby, and got it to screaming with all its might. Soon master opened the door and looked in, and asked if a negro boy had come in there. The baby cried and she pretended to try to stop it, and asked him what he wanted. He repeated the question. She tried to hush the baby, and finally said, ‘Husband is at the barn; he can tell you if he has been here.’ They went to the barn, and soon I heard them running their horses up the road. Then she said to me, ‘Go up the ladder and lie down on the floor,’ which I did, and when the man came in with his milk pail, he asked his wife who that man was, inquiring about a boy? She said, ‘I don’t know, but I know where the boy is.’ ‘Where is he?’ ‘He went up the ladder, and you must carry him something to eat, poor fellow, he’s starved.’ As soon as he could, he came to me with enough to eat, and then fixed a place for me to lie down, and said, ‘You are tired and sleepy. Now go to sleep, and if you wake, don’t stir nor make a noise until I come.’ Having slept little since I started, I slept all day; it was dark when he roused me up and told me to go down. I found a good supper ready, and while I was eating the man and his wife said not a word. When I had done he said, ‘Come out here.’ Following him, I saw at the door three horses; there was a man on one of them; I was told to mount one, and he mounted the other. I was between them. Not a word was spoken, and passing round the edge of the town near the hill, we came to the road leading north near the bluff above the river. I didn’t know what it all meant, but supposed they were going to give me up, and claim the $500. We rode three miles maybe, hitched the horses in some bushes, and went down the steep bluff to the Ohio Fiver. He pulled a stake and