attempt to wake us, but would
begin cutting and slashing with a cowhide. He treated his wife very bad
too; sometimes when she would stand up for the servants he would knock
her down. Many times at midnight she would have to leave the house and
go to her mother's for safety; she was a very nice woman, but he was the
very old Satan himself."

While William Henry was debarred from learning letters under his brutal
overseer, he nevertheless learned how to plan ways and means by which to
escape his bondage. He left his old mother and two brothers wholly
ignorant of his movements.

John Henry Moore, another one of the Arlington party, was about
twenty-four years of age, a dark, spare-built man. He named David
Mitchell, of Havre-de-Grace, as the individual above all others who had
kept his foot on his neck. Without undertaking to give John Henry's
description of Mitchell in full, suffice it to give the following facts:
"Mitchell would go off and get drunk, and come home, and if the slaves
had not as much work done as he had tasked them with, he would go to
beating them with clubs or anything he could get in his hand. He was a
tall, spare-built man, with sandy hair. He had a wife and family, but
his wife was no better than he was." When charges or statements were
made by fugitives against those from whom they escaped, particular pains
were taken to find out if such statements could be verified; if the
explanation appeared valid, the facts as given were entered on the
books.

John Henry could not read, but greatly desired to learn, and he looked
as though he had a good head for so doing. Before he left there had been
some talk of selling him South. This rumor had a marked effect upon John
Henry's nervous system; it also expanded his idea touching traveling,
the Underground Rail Road, etc. As he had brothers and sisters who had
been sold to Georgia he made up his mind that his master was not to be
trusted for a single day; he was therefore one of the most
willing-hearted passengers in the party.

George Hill, also a fellow-passenger, was about twenty-four years of
age, quite black, medium size, and of fair, natural mother wit. In
looking back upon his days of bondage, his mind reverted to Dr.
Savington, of Harford county, as the person who owed him for years of
hard and unrequited toil, and at the same time was his so-called owner.

The Doctor, it seemed, had failed to treat George well, for he declared
that he had