and two men returned with her. They
carried him in, and laid him on the floor. The back of his shirt was one
clot of blood. By means of lard, my friend loosened it from the raw flesh.
She bandaged him, gave him cool drink, and left him to rest. The master
said he deserved a hundred more lashes. When his own labor was stolen from
him, he had stolen food to appease his hunger. This was his crime.

Another neighbor was a Mrs. Wade. At no hour of the day was there cessation
of the lash on her premises. Her labors began with the dawn, and did not
cease till long after nightfall. The barn was her particular place of
torture. There she lashed the slaves with the might of a man. An old slave
of hers once said to me, "It is hell in missis's house. 'Pears I can never
get out. Day and night I prays to die."

The mistress died before the old woman, and, when dying, entreated her
husband not to permit any one of her slaves to look on her after death. A
slave who had nursed her children, and had still a child in her care,
watched her chance, and stole with it in her arms to the room where lay her
dead mistress. She gazed a while on her, then raised her hand and dealt two
blows on her face, saying, as she did so, "The devil is got you _now_!" She
forgot that the child was looking on. She had just begun to talk; and she
said to her father, "I did see ma, and mammy did strike ma, so," striking
her own face with her little hand. The master was startled. He could not
imagine how the nurse could obtain access to the room where the corpse lay;
for he kept the door locked. He questioned her. She confessed that what the
child had said was true, and told how she had procured the key. She was
sold to Georgia.

In my childhood I knew a valuable slave, named Charity, and loved her, as
all children did. Her young mistress married, and took her to Louisiana.
Her little boy, James, was sold to a good sort of master. He became
involved in debt, and James was sold again to a wealthy slaveholder, noted
for his cruelty. With this man he grew up to manhood, receiving the
treatment of a dog. After a severe whipping, to save himself from further
infliction of the lash, with which he was threatened, he took to the woods.
He was in a most miserable condition--cut by the cowskin, half naked, half
starved, and without the means of procuring a crust of bread.

Some weeks after his escape, he was captured, tied, and carried back to his
master's plantation. Th