without being flogged. So
on the next Sabbath my conjuration was fully tested by my going off,
and staying away until Monday morning, without permission. When I
returned home, my master declared that he would punish me for going
off; but I did not believe that he could do it while I had this root
and dust; and as he approached me, I commenced talking saucy to him.
But he soon convinced me that there was no virtue in them. He became
so enraged at me for saucing him, that he grasped a handful of
switches and punished me severely, in spite of all my roots and
powders.

But there was another old slave in that neighborhood, who professed to
understand all about conjuration, and I thought I would try his skill.
He told me that the first one was only a quack, and if I would only
pay him a certain amount in cash, that he would tell me how to prevent
any person from striking me. After I had paid him his charge, he told
me to go to the cow-pen after night, and get some fresh cow manure,
and mix it with red pepper and white people's hair, all to be put into
a pot over the fire, and scorched until it could be ground into snuff.
I was then to sprinkle it about my master's bed-room, in his hat and
boots, and it would prevent him from ever abusing me in any way. After
I got it all ready prepared, the smallest pinch of it scattered over a
room, was enough to make a horse sneeze from the strength of it; but
it did no good. I tried it to my satisfaction. It was my business to
make fires in my master's chamber, night and morning. Whenever I could
get a chance, I sprinkled a little of this dust about the linen of the
bed, where they would breathe it on retiring. This was to act upon
them as what is called a kind of love powder, to change their
sentiments of anger, to those of love, towards me, but this all
proved to be vain imagination. The old man had my money, and I was
treated no better for it.

One night when I went in to make a fire, I availed myself of the
opportunity of sprinkling a very heavy charge of this powder about my
master's bed. Soon after their going to bed, they began to cough and
sneeze. Being close around the house, watching and listening, to know
what the effect would be, I heard them ask each other what in the
world it could be, that made them cough and sneeze so. All the while,
I was trembling with fear, expecting every moment I should be called
and asked if I knew any thing about it. After this, for fear they
mig