d started that night for the
north. Their excuse for betraying me, was, that catching runaways was
their business, and if they had not done it somebody else would, but
since they had got the reward they were glad that I had made my
escape.

Having travelled the road several times from Cincinnati to Lake Erie,
I travelled through without much fear or difficulty. My friends in
Perrysburgh, who knew that I had gone back into the very jaws of
slavery after my family, were much surprised at my return, for they
had heard that I was re-captured.

After I had waited three months for the arrival of Malinda, and she
came not, it caused me to be one of the most unhappy fugitives that
ever left the South. I had waited eight or nine months without hearing
from my family. I felt it to be my duty, as a husband and father, to
make one more effort. I felt as if I could not give them up to be
sacrificed on the "bloody altar of slavery." I felt as if love, duty,
humanity and justice, required that I should go back, putting my trust
in the God of Liberty for success.

CHAPTER VII.

_My safe return to Kentucky.--The perils I encountered there.--Again
betrayed, and taken by a mob; ironed and imprisoned.--Narrow escape
from death.--Life in a slave prison._

I prepared myself for the journey before named, and started back in
the month of July, 1839.

My intention was, to let no person know my business until I returned
back to the North. I went to Cincinnati, and got a passage down on
board of a boat just as I did the first time, without any misfortune
or delay. I called on my mother, and the raising of a dead body from
the grave could not have been more surprising to any one than my
arrival was to her, on that sad summer's night. She was not able to
suppress her feelings. When I entered the room, there was but one
other person in the house with my mother, and this was a little slave
girl who was asleep when I entered. The impulsive feeling which is
ever ready to act itself out at the return of a long absent friend,
was more than my bereaved mother could suppress. And unfortunately for
me, the loud shouts of joy at that late hour of the night, awakened
the little slave girl, who afterwards betrayed me. She kept perfectly
still, and never let either of us know that she was awake, in order
that she might hear our conversation and report it. Mother informed me
where my family was living, and that she would see them the next day,
a