or something in the dish that would need to be
soaked--they would wait till it was thoroughly soaked and then make her
drink the old dirty dish water. They'd whip her if she didn't drink it.

"Her other master was named Harrison. He was tolerable but nothing to
bragg on.

"After she was Jayhawked and brought down South, they sold her to John
Kelly, a man in Arkansas somewhere. She belonged to John Kelly and his
wife when freedom came. John Kelly and his wife kept her working for
them without pay for two years after she was free. They didn't pay her
anything at all. They hardly gave her anything to eat and wear. They
didn't tell her she was free. She saw colored people going and coming
in a way they wasn't used to, and then she heard her Mistress' youngest
daughter tell her mother, 'You ought to pay Hannah something now because
you know she is free as we are. And you ought to give her something to
eat and wear.' The mother said, 'You know I can't do that hard work;
I'm not used to it.' After hearing this my mother talked to the colored
people that would pass by and she learned for _shor_ enough she was
free.

"There was a colored man there that they were keeping too. One Sunday,
they were taking him to church and leaving my mother behind. She said to
them, 'Well, I will be gone when you come back, so you better leave Bill
here this morning.' Her old mistress said to her, 'Yes; and we'll come
after you and whip you every step of the way back.' But she went while
they were at church and they did not catch her either.

"The Saturday before that she made me a dress out of the tail of an old
bonnet and a big red handkerchief. Made waist, sleeves and all out of
that old bonnet and handkerchief. She left right after they left for
church, and she dressed me up in my new dress. She put the dress on me
and went down the road. She didn't know which way to go. She didn't know
the way nor which direction to take. She walked and she walked and she
walked. Then she would step aside and listen and ask the way.

"It was near night when she found a place to stay. The people out in the
yard saw her pass and called to her. It was the youngest daughter of
Mrs. Kelly, the one she had overheard telling her mother she ought to
set her free and pay her. She stayed with John Kelly's daughter two or
three days. I don't know what her name was, only she was a Kelly. Then
she got out among the colored people and got to working and got some
clot