hound, rendered more fierce by the freshness of the track, came rushing headlong with nose to the gronnd, scenting her prey, and seemed not to see old Watch, until, leaping to pass over him, she found her wind-pipe suddenly collapsed in the massive jaws of the old mastiff. The struggle was not very noisy, for Watch would not even growl, and the hound could not, but it was terribly energetic. The hound made rapid and persuasive gestures with her paws and tail, but it was of no use, the jaws of old Watch relaxed not until all signs of life in his enemy had ceased. Margaret came back from the river, and would have embraced her faithful friend, but fearing that a stronger pack was following, she hastily threw the dead hound into the river and pursued her journey.
It would make this sketch too long to relate all Margaret’s adventures before she reached New York City, where she lived many years. Within a few hours after her providential escape by the aid of her faithful friend, old Watch, from the fangs of the slave hunter’s hound, she fell into the hands of friends, who kept her secreted until she could be sent into a free State; while there, she learned about the pursuit by the hunter, and that he never knew what became of his best hound. After the chase was abandoned, she, through a regular line, similar to our U. G. R. R., was sent to Philadelphia and then to New York, where she became a celebrated nurse, and always befriended the poor of all colors and all nationalities. She rented a good house which was a home for herself and boy, and also for old Watch while he lived. When her boy, whom she called Samuel, was old enough to go to school, she found a place for him in Westchester Co., where he obtained the rudiments of an education, and afterwards in the family of a gentleman in Central New York,[1] he enjoyed the advantages of a
- ↑ Gerritt Smith.
