Page:The Under-Ground Railroad.djvu/47

27 The dead silence was now and then broken by the bark of a neighbour's dog, at a distance. The darkness was augmented by the dim forest into which we were suddenly to plunge, a place pre-eminently suited for an enemy to lie in ambush. The woman pressed close to my side as she walked, at times walking on her toes. Occasionally a deep sigh and a stifled groan emanated from her heaving bosom. Just here we saw, in the distance, a man meeting us on a horse, whom she took to be an enemy. She ran a few paces, but returning, crouched by my side, trembling as in the arms of death itself, pleading for her child with the resistless power of a woman's eloquence; in a soft and plaintive tone, in which the power of woman's eloquence principally consists. Under other circumstances I should have been overcome. Again she started, but returned as before, and said, "For God's sake give me the child." Something like a determination spontaneously arose in my mind. I was as ignorant as herself as to whom we were meeting. I replied, "No one man can take you, stick to me like an heroine." Her steps grew steady, and her fears began to subside. To her my counsel was "a word in season," its effect was much more powerful than I anticipated: it proceeded from the impulse of nature. To our delightful surprise, (to me as well as to her) it was the gentleman to whom we were going;