ait for us there, for several hours. They had
seen a reward out, for notices were put up in the most public places,
that fifty dollars would be paid for me, dead or alive, if I should
not return home within so many days. And the reader will remember that
neither Jack nor myself was able to read the advertisement. It was of
very little consequence with the slave catchers, whether they killed
us or took us alive, for the reward was the same to them.

After we were taken and tied, one of the men declared to me that he
would have shot me dead just as sure as he lived, if I had moved one
step after they commanded us to stop. He had his gun levelled at my
breast, already cocked, and his finger on the trigger. The way they
came to find us out was from the circumstance of Jack's taking the
man's hat in connection with the advertisement. The man whose hat was
taken was drunk; and the next morning when he came to look for his hat
it was gone and Jack's old hat lying in the place of it; and in
looking round he saw the tracks of two persons in the dust, who had
passed during the night, and one of them having but three toes on one
foot. He followed these tracks until they came to a large mud pond in
a lane on one side of which a person might pass dry shod; but the man
with three toes on one foot had plunged through the mud. This led the
man to think there must be runaway slaves, and from out of that
neighborhood; for all persons in that settlement knew which side of
that mud hole to go. He then got others to go with him, and they
followed us until our track left the road. They supposed that we had
gone off in the woods to lay by until night, after which we should
pursue our course.

After we were captured they took us off several miles to where one of
them lived, and kept us over night. One of our pigs was cooked for us
to eat that night; and the turkey the next morning. But we were both
tied that night with our hands behind us, and our feet were also tied.
The doors were locked, and a bedstead was set against the front door,
and two men slept in it to prevent our getting out in the night. They
said that they knew how to catch runaway negroes, and how to keep them
after they were caught.

They remarked that after they found we had stopped to lay by until
night, and they saw from our tracks what direction we were travelling,
they went about ten miles on that direction, and hid by the road side
until we came up that night. That nig