Page:Fifty Years in Chains, or the Life of an American Slave.djvu/164

162 this place, at this time of night, alone. I was about two miles from home, and an equal distance from the spot where the girl had been seized.

Of her subsequent murder, no one entertained a doubt; for it was not to be expected, that the fellow who had been guilty of one great crime, would flinch from the commission of another, of equal magnitude, and suffer his victim to exist, as a witness to identify his person.

I felt animated, by a spirit of revenge, against the wretch, whoever he might be, who had brought me so near to torture and death; and feeble and weak as I was, resolved to pursue the foot-steps of this coachman, at a wary and cautious distance, and ascertain, if possible, the object of his visit to these woods, at this time of night.

I waited until he had passed me more than a hundred yards, and until I could barely discover his form in the faint light of the deep shade of the trees, when stealing quietly into the road, I followed, with the caution of a spy traversing the camp of an enemy. — We were now in a dark pine forest, and on both sides of us were tracts of low, swampy ground, covered with thickets so dense as to be difficult of penetration even by a person on foot. The road led along a neck of elevated and dry ground, that divided these swamps for more than a mile, when they terminated, and were