Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/149

 questions that were put to her, she took care to say nothing that would betray her condition. One of the men who questioned her, shook his head, and did not seem satisfied; another, sat on his horse and watched her till she was fairly out of sight; a third told her, that she was a very suspicious character; — but all three suffered her to pass. She was the less liable to interruption, because in Virginia, the houses of the inhabitants are not generally situated along the public voads. The planters usually prefer to build at some distance from the high way, — and the roads, passing along the highest and most barren tracts, wind their weary length through a desolate, and what seems almost an uninhabited country. When morning approached again, she concealed herself as before, and waited for the return of night to pursue her journey.

She proceeded in this way for four days, or rather nights, at the end of which time her provisions were entirely exhausted. She had wandered she knew not whither, — and the hope of reaching Baltimore, which at first had lightened her fatigue, was now quite gone. She knew not what to do. 'To go much further without assistance was scarcely possible. Yet should she ask any where for food or guidance, though she stood some chance perhaps of passing for a free white woman, still her complexion, and the circumstance of her travelling alone, might cause her to be suspected as a runaway, and very probably, she would be stopped, put into some jail, and detained there, till suspicion was changed into certainty.

She was travelling slowly along, the fifth night, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, and reflecting upon her unhappy situation, when descending a hill, the road came 'suddenly upon the banks of a broad river. There was no bridge; but a ferry boat was fastened to the shore, and close by was the ferry house, which seemed also to be a tavern. Here was a new perplexity. She could not cross the river without calling up the ferry people or waiting till they made their appearance, and this would be exposing herself at once to that risk of detection which she had resolved to defer to the very last moment. Yet to turn back and seek another road seemed to be an expedient equally desperate. Any