Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/159

 her departure. She was hardly out of sight, before they rushed into the field where Cassy was at work, bound her, hand and foot, put her into a sort of covered wagon or carry-all, which they had provided for the occasion, and drove off as fast as possible. They travelled all that day, and the following night. Early the next morning, they reached a small village where they met a slave-trader with a gang of slaves, on his way to Richmond. The gentlemen-thieves soon struck up a bargain with the gentleman slave-trader; and having received their money, they delivered Cassy into his possession.

He seemed touched with her beauty and her distress, and treated her with a kindness which she hardly expected from one of his profession. Her shoes and clothes were nearly worn out. He bought her new ones; and as she was half dead with fatigue, terror and want of sleep, he even went so far as to wait a day at the village, in order that she might recover a little before setting out on the journey to Richmond.

But she soon found that she was expected to make a return for these favors. When they stopped for the night, at the end of the first day's journey, she received an intimation that she was to share the bed of her master; and directions were given to her how and when to come there. These directions she saw fit to disregard. In the morning her master called her to account. He laughed in her face, when she spoke of the wickedness of what he had commanded, and told her he did not want her to be preaching any of her sermons to him. He would excuse her disobedience this time; but she must take very good care not to repeat it.

The next evening she received directions similar to those which had been given the day before; and again she disobeyed them. Her master, who had been drinking and gambling half the night, with some boon companions whom he found at the tavern, enraged at not finding her in his room as he had expected, sallied forth in pursuit of her. Luckily he was too-drunk to know very well where he was going. He had gone but a few steps from the tavern door, before he stumbled over a pile of wood, and injured