e she could
not avoid. She only hoped that, when she acknowledged her fault, and
frankly told her master that she did it under a wild and bewildering
excitement, he would pardon her and let it pass.

She dragged her weary steps back to her master's house, fainting with
fatigue and hunger, and presented herself before her mistress.

"I's right sorry I runned so," she said, "but I was kind o' scared like,
and didn't know jest what I did. I knows I's no business to run away
when massa cuffed me."

Her mistress made no reply but an angry look; but nothing was said by
any one about what had happened, and Tidy felt that trouble was brewing.
What it would be she could not tell, but her heart was heavy within her.
Nothing occurred that day, but the next morning she was told to tie up
her clothes and be ready to go up the river at ten o'clock. She
knew what going up the river meant. Mr. Turner owned a large cotton
plantation about twenty miles from Natchez, and the severest punishment
dreaded by his servants in the city was to be sent there.

Tom, the coachman, accompanied Tidy, bearing in his pocket a note to the
overseer of the plantation. Would you take a peep into it before she,
whom it most concerned, learned its contents? It ran thus,--

"NATCHEZ, Wednesday, A. M.

"DIOSSY,--

"Give this wench a hundred lashes with the long whip this afternoon.
Wash her down well, and when she is fit to work, put her into the cotton
field.

"ABRAM TURNER."

Oh, let us weep, dear children, for the poor girl, who, for no crime
at all, not even a misdeed, was made to bare her tender skin to such
shameless cruelty. No friend was there to help her, to plead for her, to
deliver her from the relentless, violent hand of the wicked oppressor.
She was left all alone to her terrible suffering. Can we wonder that she
felt that even the Lord had forgotten her?

That night there was scarcely an inch of flesh from her neck to her feet
that was not torn, raw, and bleeding. The salt brine, which is used to
heal the wounds, although when first applied it seems to aggravate
the torture, was poured pitilessly over her, and writhing with agony,
fainting, and almost dead, she was borne to a wretched hut, and laid
on a hard pallet. Three weeks she lay there, sick and helpless; but she
cried unto the Lord in her distress, and he heard her, and prepared to
deliver her, though the time of her deliverance was not yet fully come.
She had been brought low