into the water, put her upon it, and by swimming with my hands on the plank, managed to land two or three miles down the river. Her father had left the cabin in search of means to save her, when the fire compelled her to accept my assistance, and she supposed he had perished; but he, having sought in vain for her, had been finally driven by the flames to the water, and by the aid of one of our horses, had got ashore. Each supposed the other had perished, but before noon he had found his daughter, and when he heard how she escaped, he offered Mr. Stowe any amount of money he should ask for my freedom ; but the old man said that no money could induce him to part with me as long as he kept horses to be cared for. The lady gave me a diamond ring, for which a gentleman offered me $100, but it was on Lucy’s finger when she died, and I buried it with her. I suppose it is there now.”
In speaking of his own acts, Tom was very modest. His language was more like that of a Southern gentleman traveling in the North than I had ever heard from a slave before ; but certain phrases were unmistakable. He was a genuine native of Mississippi.
This sketch is somewhat long, though I have omitted many interesting incidents related by Tom. I will add one laughable occurrence. A little before daylight one morning of Tom’s flight, he looked into a cabin window, saw a table all set for breakfast, and the mistress sound asleep in a chair before the fire. No men were in sight, so Tom opened the door, seized a loaf of bread and a ball of butter and left. As he passed the old shanty barn, he heard the man, but he went on unmolested. Tom’s description of the woman was ludicrous, and I always laugh when I try to imagine the consternation of those people when they sat down to that early breakfast.
