of slaves fleeing from a bondage which was worse
than death. There was now no escape--the tribes of Israel had
banded against them. On the side of the oppressor there is
power. And the young wife and mother, into whose very soul
the iron had entered, hearing the cry of the master: "Now
we'll have you all!" turning from the side of her husband and
father, with whom she had stood to repel the foe, seized a
knife, and with a single blow nearly severed the head from
the body of her darling daughter, and throwing its bloody
corpse at his feet, exclaimed, "Yes, you _shall_ have us all!
take that!" and with another blow inflicted a ghastly wound
upon the head of her beautiful son, repeating, "Yes, you
_shall_ have us all--take that!" meanwhile calling upon her
old mother to help her in the quick work of emancipation--for
there were two more. But the pious old grandmother could not
do it, and it was now too late--the rescuers had subdued and
bound them. They were on their way back to the house of their
bondage--a life more bitter than death! On their way through
that city of churches whose hundred spires told of Jesus and
the good Father above; on their way amid the throng of
Christian men, whose noble sires had said and sung, "Give me
_liberty_, or give me _death_."

But they all tarried in the great Queen City of the West--in
chains, and in a felon's cell. There our preacher visited
them again and again. There he saw the old grandfather and
his aged companion, whose weary pilgrimage of unrequited toil
and tears was nearly at its end. And there stood the young
father and the heroic wife "Margaret." Said the preacher,
"Margaret, why did you kill your child?" "It was my own," she
said, "given me of God, to do the best a mother could in its
behalf. _I have done the best I could!_ I would have done
more and better for the rest! I knew it was better for them
to go home to God than back to slavery." "But why did you not
trust in God--why not wait and hope?" "I did wait, and then
we dared to do, and fled in fear, but in hope; hope fled--God
did not appear to save--_I did the best I could!"_

And who was this woman? A noble, womanly, amiable,
_affectionate mother_. "But was she not deranged?" Not at
all--calm, intelligent, but resolute and dete