n books, ever refused freedom; many of them ran
frightful risks to achieve it. Molly's parents were of the class, more
numerous in North Carolina than elsewhere, known as "old issue free
negroes," which took its rise in the misty colonial period, when race
lines were not so closely drawn, and the population of North Carolina
comprised many Indians, runaway negroes, and indentured white servants
from the seaboard plantations, who mingled their blood with great
freedom and small formality. Free colored people in North Carolina
exercised the right of suffrage as late as 1835, and some of them, in
spite of galling restrictions, attained to a considerable degree of
prosperity, and dreamed of a still brighter future, when the growing
tyranny of the slave power crushed their hopes and crowded the free
people back upon the black mass just beneath them. Mis' Molly's father
had been at one time a man of some means. In an evil hour, with an
overweening confidence in his fellow men, he indorsed a note for a
white man who, in a moment of financial hardship, clapped his colored
neighbor on the back and called him brother. Not poverty, but wealth,
is the most potent leveler. In due time the indorser was called upon to
meet the maturing obligation. This was the beginning of a series of
financial difficulties which speedily involved him in ruin. He died
prematurely, a disappointed and disheartened man, leaving his family in
dire poverty.

His widow and surviving children lived on for a little while at the
house he had owned, just outside of the town, on one of the main
traveled roads. By the wayside, near the house, there was a famous deep
well. The slim, barefoot girl, with sparkling eyes and voluminous
hair, who played about the yard and sometimes handed water in a gourd
to travelers, did not long escape critical observation. A gentleman
drove by one day, stopped at the well, smiled upon the girl, and said
kind words. He came again, more than once, and soon, while scarcely
more than a child in years, Molly was living in her own house, hers by
deed of gift, for her protector was rich and liberal. Her mother
nevermore knew want. Her poor relations could always find a meal in
Molly's kitchen. She did not flaunt her prosperity in the world's
face; she hid it discreetly behind the cedar screen. Those who wished
could know of it, for there were few secrets in Patesville; those who
chose could as easily ignore it. There were fe