Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/54

 by the offender's life. But beyond this, he did not dream of prohibition or restraint. Hardened and emboldened by certain impunity, — provided the sufferer were a slave, — he regarded the most atrocious outrage that could be perpetrated upon the person and feelings of a woman, rather asa matter of jest, a thing to be laughed at over the fourth bottle, than a subject of serious and sober reprehension.

Of all this, I was well aware. I had from the first foreseen, that Cassy would be devoted by her master to the same purposes which had been fulfilled by my mother and her own. It was from these intentions, as I had all along believed, that his opposition to our marriage had originated. In imagining that it might spring from another cause, I had done him an honor to which — as was now too evident — he had not the slightest title, What 1 had just now heard, I had daily expected to hear. I had expected it; yet such had been my intoxication, that even anticipations terrible as this, had not been able to alarm or distress me; and now that anticipation was changed into reality, still I remained unmoved. The ecstasy of passion still sustained me; and as I pressed my wretched, trembling wife to my bosom, I still rose superior to the calamity that assailed me; even yet, I was happy.

This seems incredible? —

Love then as I did; or if that suit your temperament better, hate with the same intensity with which I loved. Be absorbed in any passion, and while the fit continues, you will find yourself endowed with a surprising and almost superhuman energy.

My mind was already made up. The unhappy slave has but one way of escaping any threatening infliction; a poor and wretched resource, to which he recurs always at the imminent risk of redoubling his miseries. That remedy is flight.

Our preparations were soon made, My wife returned to the House, and gathered up a little bundle of clothing. In the mean time, I employed myself in collecting such provisions as I could readiest lay my hands on, A couple of blankets, a hatchet, a little kettle, and a few other small: articles, completed my equipments; and by the time my