is your masters?--oh, my
children! my children! while Mrs. Peter screamed, my husband! my husband!
oh, pa! oh, pa! The strength of the flames inside at length burst open the
barn door, when we beheld through the red flames the figures of the two
wretched brothers lying side by side dead drunk and helpless upon the
floor. The fire rapidly seized upon everything around. At this moment Mrs.
Peter Burmey rushed into the flames to save her husband, but just as she
attempted to enter, the beam over the door fell in upon her head, and
struck her back senseless and suffocated to the ground; but,
notwithstanding the most intense hatred to Burmey and his family, we
negroes rushed forward to rescue them--but all in vain. After getting
miserably scorched we were compelled to retreat and give them over, and
with bleeding hearts to behold the fire consume their bodies. The barn was
rapidly consigned to ashes, which being speedily swept away by the
violence of the wind, left the victims side by side crisped skeletons on
the ground. This was the dreadful end of the two chief actors in the
roasting of poor Dan.

When I arrived at the age of 20, my master told me I must marry Jane, one
of the slaves. We had been about five months married when she gave birth
to a child, I then asked who was the father of the child, and she said the
master, and I had every reason to believe her, as the child was nearly
white, had blue eyes and veins, yet notwithstanding this we lived happily
together, and I felt happy and comfortable, and I should never have
thought of running away if she had not been sold. We lived together six
years and had two children. Shortly after my marriage my master's wife
died, and when he fixed upon Tillotson's daughter as his future wife, she
made a condition that all female slaves whom he had at any time been
intimate with must be sold, and my wife being one was sold with the
children as well as any other female slaves. My wife was sold while I was
away on an errand at Centreville, and any one situated as I was may
imagine my feelings when I say that I left them in the morning all well
and happy, in entire ignorance of any evil, and returned to find them all
sold and gone away, and from then until now I have never seen any of them.
I went to my master and complained to him, when he told me he knew nothing
about it, as it was all done by his wife. I then went to her and she said
she knew nothing about, as it was all done by my