Page:Fifty Years in Chains, or the Life of an American Slave.djvu/168

166 gone into the swamp. All uncertainty upon this subject was, however, quickly removed from my mind; for within less than ten minutes, after I had ceased to hear them moving in the thicket, I was shocked by the faint, but shrill wailings of a female voice, accompanied with exclamations and supplications, in a tone so feeble that I could only distinguish a few solitary words.

My mind comprehended the whole ground of this matter, at a glance. The lady supposed to have been murdered on Sunday evening, was still living; and concealed by the two fiends who had passed out of my sight but a few minutes before. The one I knew, for I had examined his features, within a few feet of me, in the full light of the moon; and, that the other was Hardy, I was as perfectly convinced, as if I had seen him also.

I now rose to return home; the cries of the female in the swamp still continuing, but growing weaker, and dying away, as I receded from the place where I had sat.

I was now in possession of the clearest evidence of the guilt of the two murderers; but I was afraid to communicate my knowledge to my master, lest he should suspect me of being an accomplice in this crime; and, if the lady could not be recovered alive, I had no doubt that Hardy and his companion were