around her ankle.

"God bless you!" exclaimed the woman. "It's a sin to say so, but I feel
as if I could fly since that dreadful weight is off. Oh, I want to fly,
for I dreamed of my baby, an' he smiled at me from heaven as if he said,
'I'm happy, mamma!'"

"You don't owe me nothin', Mary. I love a widder, as you air, an' she
begged me to come yer. When you git to Prencess Anne, whar I want you to
go, find Ellenory Dennis, an' tell her I've seen her boy, an' I'll bring
him back if I kin."

"Princess Anne? where is it?"

"It's maybe, forty mile from yer, Mary; half-way between sunrise and
sunset."

"Right south, sir?"

"That's it. Now I'll tell you how to git thar. Take this old woods road
along Broad Creek and walk to Laurel, five miles; it's a little town on
the creek. Keep in under the woods, but don't lose the road, fur every
foot of it's dangerous to niggers. You kin git thar, maybe, by dark. I
don't know nobody thar, Mary, an' I can't write, fur I never learned
how. But you go right to the house of some preacher of the Gospel, and
tell him a lie."

Mary opened her eyes.

"I wouldn't have you tell a lie to anybody but a good man," continued
Phoebus, "fur then it's so close to the Lord it won't git fur an'
pizen many, as lies always does. You must tell that preacher that you're
the runaway slave of Judge Custis of Prencess Anne, an' you're sorry you
run away, an' want to go home."

"Oh, sir, you are not like my wicked husband, trying to sell me too?"

"No, Mary, bad as you've been used, faith's your only sure friend. If
you was to tell the preacher you had been kidnapped, he'd, maybe, be
afraid to help you. They're a timid set down yer on any subject
concernin' niggers; these preachers will help save black folks' souls,
but never rescue their pore broken bodies. When you tell him you are the
slave of a rich man like Judge Custis, he'll jump at the chance to do
the Judge a favor, an' tell you that you do right to go back to your
master. That's whair he's a liar, Mary--so he'll scratch _your_ lie
off."

"They'll turn me back at Princess Anne, and wont know me, maybe."

"Not if you do this, Mary. Make them take you to Judge Custis's
daughter--the one that's just been married. Tell her you want to speak
to her privately. Then tell her the nigger-skinned man--I'm him--that
she sent away with her mother, found you whar you was chained in the
woods. Take this link of the chain to show her. Tell her you want