Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/308

 pedler, or Methodist minister, or other person of learning that wasn't too proud, came along, Susy would get a lesson from them, till she learnt to read as glib as could be; and now she teaches her children too. You wouldn't believe it, but that boy Jim, there," pointing to the boy who had taken my horse, "knows how to read! All his mother's doings; and if he can only now and then get hold of a newspaper, he is as proud as a peacock."

All this long history of her daughter, on the part of the old lady, served to confirm me in the conjecture I had formed that the barefooted matron before me, distinguished by such remarkable literary accomplishments and motherly tenderness, and to the first-rate excellency of whose corn cakes I was myself shortly after able to testify, must be the identical little girl to whom Thomas and myself had owed our escape on that night, so memorable to me, on which I had started on my northern travels in pursuit of freedom.

To make matters sure, while she was setting a table for my dinner in the other room, I inquired of: her if she could recollect how, a great many years ago, — it must have been before the time that the pedler taught her to read, — two men, one black, the other white, had been brought prisoners to her mother's house, and confined for the night in this very room. As I went into the matter somewhat in detail, I could easily perceive, as the circumstances were recalled to her memory, though she said nothing, a gleam of wondering recognition lighting up a face, which, though it could not be called handsome, more especially as the uncombed hair hanging about her head gave her a sort of wild appearance, had yet upon it an unmistakable stamp of good heartedness, which did not fail to make a very agreeable impression. But when, in the course of the story, I came to speak of the little girl who stole in at night, and, while their keepers slept, cut the bonds of the prisoners, alarm and anxiety spread over her before smiling features; and though she strove hard to preserve an unconscious