and yet they were compelled to pay three hundred dollars to the
Cincinnati slave catchers for re-capturing me there.

Daniel Lane's account of my escape from him, looked so unreasonable to
slaveholders, that many of them charged him with selling me and
keeping the money; while others believed that I had got away from him,
and was then in the neighborhood, trying to take off my wife and
child, which was true. Lane declared that in less than five minutes
after I run out of the stable in Louisville, he had over twenty men
running and looking in every direction after me; but all without
success. They could hear nothing of me. They had turned over several
tons of hay in a large loft, in search, and I was not to be found
there. Dan imputed my escape to my godliness! He said that I must have
gone up in a chariot of fire, for I went off by flying; and that he
should never again have any thing to do with a praying negro.

Great excitement prevailed in Bedford, and many were out watching for
me at the time Malinda was relating to me these facts. The excitement
was then so great among the slaveholders--who were anxious to have me
re-captured as a means of discouraging other slaves from running
away--that time and money were no object while there was the least
prospect of their success. I therefore declined making an effort just
at that time to escape with my little family. Malinda managed to get
me into the house of a friend that night, in the village, where I kept
concealed several days seeking an opportunity to escape with Malinda
and Frances to Canada.

But for some time Malinda was watched so very closely by white and by
colored persons, both day and night, that it was not possible for us
to escape together. They well knew that my little family was the only
object of attraction that ever had or ever would induce me to come
back and risk my liberty over the threshold of slavery--therefore this
point was well guarded by the watch dogs of slavery, and I was
compelled again to forsake my wife for a season, or surrender, which
was suicidal to the cause of freedom, in my judgment.

The next day after my arrival in Bedford, Daniel Lane came to the very
house wherein I was concealed and talked in my hearing to the family
about my escape from him out of the stable in Louisville. He was near
enough for me to have laid my hands on his head while in that
house--and the intimidation which this produced on me was more than I
could bear