Page:Orange Grove.djvu/389

 I was sittin', thinkin' how I'd like to be free, when a sperit seemed to say to me, run. And I says to myself, where shall I run to? and it kept sayin', run. Then I got to thinkin' about ray child, how it would be born a slave and might be sold, and I did run that very night, and got away without bein' overtaken. I had money that my master gave me and good clothes so I could pass for a white woman with a veil over my face. I lived at the north ten years, but I never could get over the feelin' generally that I should be took sometime, and it grew upon me. I won't stop to tell you all I suffered from the want of a home and the fear of bein' discovered, but it seemed so good to be free. To prevent the child's bein' took if I was I didn't let folks know she was mine when I went into the city to get work, and when they got me at last I never said a word, but went right off for fear of making a stir that would bring it all out. She was as white as any child and looked some like her father. If I could only know that she was took care of, it wouldn't hurt me so to think of her. When they got me back my young master, that I'd all along kind o' clung to, brought in an old black nigger, that was the ugliest one then on the plantation, and always the one that done the whippin's, and told me I'd got to marry him. If 't had been my old master, nothin' would 'a been too bad for him to do, but that it should 'ave been him, and all because I wanted to have his child free, and he knew how I felt about it. Well, that wan't all I suffered, but it was the worst for me to bear. He went north soon after, and I found out