It was for this reason that Mr. Renfrew had instructed his agent to buy
her in his own name instead of that of Vincent; and the Jacksons, having
no idea of the transfer that had subsequently taken place, took no
further interest in the matter, believing that they had achieved their
object of torturing Tony, and avenging upon him the humiliation that
Andrew had suffered at Vincent's hands. Had they questioned their
slaves, and had these answered them truly, they would have discovered
the facts. For although Tony himself said no word to anyone of what he
had learned from Dan, the fact that Dinah was at the Orangery was
speedily known among the slaves; for the doings at one plantation were
soon conveyed to the negroes on the others by the occasional visits
which they paid at night to each other's quarters, or to some common
rendezvous far removed from interruption.

Occasionally Tony and Dinah met. Dan would come up late in the evening
to the house, and a nod to Dinah would be sufficient to send her flying
down the garden to a clump of shrubs, where he would be waiting for her.
At these stolen meetings they were perfectly happy; for Tony said no
word to her of the misery of his life--how he was always put to the
hardest work and beaten on the smallest pretext, how in fact his life
was made so unendurable that the idea of running away and taking to the
swamps was constantly present to him.

As to making his way north, it did not enter his mind as possible.
Slaves did, indeed, at times succeed in traveling through the Northern
States and making their way to Canada, but this was only possible by
means of the organization known as the underground railway, an
association consisting of a number of good people who devoted themselves
to the purpose, giving shelter to fugitive slaves during the day, and
then passing them on to the next refuge during the night. For in the
Northern States as well as the Southern any negro unprovided with papers
showing that he was a free man was liable to be arrested and sent back
to the South a prisoner, large rewards being given to those who arrested
them.

As he was returning from one of these interviews with his wife, Tony was
detected by the overseer, who was strolling about around the slaves'
quarters, and was next morning flogged until he became insensible. So
terrible was the punishment that for some days he was unable to walk. As
soon as he could get about he was again set to work, but