nly get a stone in my hand, and have time
to wield it, I should not miss his knee-pan.

He began to breathe short. He was evidently vexed because I did not halt,
and I felt more and more provoked at the idea of being thus pursued by a
man to whom I had not done the least injury. I had just began to glance my
eye about for a stone to grasp, when he made a tiger-like leap at me. This
of course brought us to running. At this moment he yelled out "Jake
Shouster!" and at the next moment the door of a small house standing to
the left was opened, and out jumped a shoemaker girded up in his leather
apron, with his knife in hand. He sprang forward and seized me by the
collar, while the other seized my arms behind. I was now in the grasp of
two men, either of whom were larger bodied than myself, and one of whom
was armed with a dangerous weapon.

Standing in the door of the shoemaker's shop, was a third man; and in the
potatoe lot I had passed, was still a fourth man. Thus surrounded by
superior physical force, the fortune of the day it seemed to me was gone.

My heart melted away, I sunk resistlessly into the hands of my captors,
who dragged me immediately into the tavern which was near. I ask my reader
to go in with me, and see how the case goes.

* * * * *

GREAT MORAL DILEMMA.

A few moments after I was taken into the bar-room, the news having gone as
by electricity, the house and yard were crowded with gossippers, who had
left their business to come and see "the runaway nigger." This hastily
assembled congregation consisted of men, women, and children, each one had
a look to give at, and a word to say about, the "nigger."

But among the whole, there stood one whose name I have never known, but
who evidently wore the garb of a man whose profession bound him to speak
for the dumb, but he, standing head and shoulders above all that were
round about, spoke the first hard sentence against me. Said he, "That
fellow is a runaway I know; put him in jail a few days, and you will soon
hear where he came from." And then fixing a fiend-like gaze upon me, he
continued, "if I lived on this road, _you_ fellows would not find such
clear running as you do, I'd trap more of you."

But now comes the pinch of the case, the case of conscience to me even at
this moment. Emboldened by the cruel speech just recited, my captors
enclosed me, and said, "Come now, this matter may easily be settled
without you goin