e SLAVE-JAIL.

CHAPTER XIII. A LONG JOURNEY.

IF I pronounce this disastrous event in Tidy's life another link in
the chain of loving-kindness by which God was leading her to himself,
perhaps you will wonder. But, my dear children, adversities are designed
for this very purpose, and are all directed in infinite love and wisdom
for our good. Tidy had prayed that she might be free, and the Lord
heard, and meant to answer her prayer. He meant not only to give her the
liberty she sought, but, more than that, to make her soul free in Christ
Jesus; but there were some things she needed to learn first. She was
not prepared yet to use her personal liberty rightly, nor did she at all
appreciate or desire that other and better freedom. Therefore the Lord
disappointed her at this time, and turned the course of her life, as it
were, upside down, that by painful experiences and narrow straits she
might learn what an all-sufficient Friend he could be to her; that she
might learn too the sinfulness of her own heart, and his free grace and
mercy for her pardon and salvation.

God "leads the blind in the way they know not." Tidy knew nothing of
the method by which he was guiding her, and when she found her hopes
crushed, and herself crouching, forlorn and friendless, weary and
half-famished, in a prison, she gave up all for lost. She felt indeed
cast off and forsaken. For hours she sat and cried despairingly, the
pretty dress crumpled and stained with tears, and the hat which had been
so much admired trampled under foot. Shame, grief, and fear of what was
to come drove her almost to distraction.

At the end of three days, Mr. Lee, acting as her master, who had been
apprised of her arrest, arrived at the prison. But what a wretched
object had he come to see! He could scarcely believe that the miserable,
dejected being before him was the once bright, beautiful Tidy,--such a
change had her disappointment and sorrow wrought. He really pitied
her, if a slaveholder ever can pity a slave, and yet he reproached her
severely. He told her she was a fool to run away; that niggers never
knew when they were well off; that if she had had a thimble-full of
sense she might have known she couldn't make her escape. He said they
had just been offered a thousand dollars for her,--which was then
considered an enormous price,--by a gentleman in Virginia, and they had
been on the point of selling her.

"I's Miss Matilda's," fiercely cried the poor gi