Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/154

 were very little to the purpose. She blushed and stammered and held down her head, and the man completed her confusion by telling her, that it was very plain she had not come from Richmond, as she pretended; for he was well acquainted with the place, and it was clear enough, from her answers, that she knew nothing about it. He told her that it was no use to deny it; — her face betrayed her; — and he "reckoned," if the truth was told, she was no better than a runaway. At the sound of this word, the blood rushed into her face, and her heart sunk within her. It was in vain, that she denied, protested, and entreated. Her terror, confusion and alarm only served to give new assurance to her captors, who seemed to chuckle over their prize, and to amuse themselves with her fright and misery, very much as a cat plays with the mouse it has caught.

He told her that if she were in fact a free woman, there was not the slightest ground for alarm. If she had no free papers with her, she would only have to lie in jail till she could send to Richmond and get them. That was all!

But that was more than enough for poor Cassy. No proofs of freedom could she produce; and her going to jail would be almost certain to end in her being restored to colonel Moore, and becoming the wretched victim of his rage and lust. 'That fate, must be deferred as long as possible, and there seemed but one way of escaping it.

She confessed that she was a slave, and a runaway; but she positively refused to tell the name of her master. He lived, she said, a great way off; and she had run away from him not out of any spirit of discontent or disobedience, but because his cruelty and injustice were too great to be endured. There was nothing she would not choose rather than fall into his hands again; if they would only save her from that, — if they would only let her live with them, she would be their faithful and obedient servant as long as she lived.

The man and his wife looked at each other and seemed pleased with the idea. They walked aside and talked it over. Nothing appeared to deter them from accepting her proposal, at once, but the fear of being detected in harboring and detaining a runaway. Cassy did her best to quiet