.
She has had laudanum enough to keep her still; my daughter powdered her;
let me kiss her once before she goes."

As the woman departed, the black boy, looking around him, muttered:

"Whar is dat loft? I've hearn about it."

Some movements overhead in the low dwelling directed his attention to a
small trap-door, and, standing on a stool, he unbolted it and pushed it
upwards, whispering,

"Any passengers for Philadelfy? De gangplank's bein' pulled in!"

First a woolly head, then another, and next two pairs of legs appeared
above.

"Take hold yer and carry de sick woman to de dearborn," the boy said,
not a particle disturbed, as two frightened blacks dropped from the
loft, with handcuffs upon them.

* * * * *

In the clear evening a wagon sped along towards the east, through the
saffron marshes, tramping down the stickweed and ironweed and the
golden rod, and, while the people in it cowered close, the negro driver
sang, as carelessly as if he was the lord of the country:

"De people of Tuckyhoe
Dey is so lazy an' loose,
Dey sows no buttons upon deir clothes,
And goes widout deir use;
So nature she gib dem buttons,
To grow right outen deir hides,
Dat dey may take life easy,
And buy no buttons besides.

"But de people of Tuckyhoe
Refuse to button deir warts,
Unless dey's paid a salary
For practisin' of sech arts;
Like de militia sogers,
Dat runs to buttons an' pay,
De folks is truly shifless,
On Tuckyhoe side of de bay."

A sail was seen in the starlight, rising out of the marshes at an old
landing in the last elbow of Jones's Creek, and hardly had the fugitives
been put on board when the anchor was weighed and the packet stood out
for the broad Delaware, her captain a negro, her owner a Quaker.

The girl was awakened by the cold air of the bay striking her face.

"Freedom!" she murmured; "it must be this. Oh, I am faint for father's
arms to take me."

* * * * *

Was this Teackle Hall that Virgie looked upon--a square, bright room,
and her bed beside a window, and below her stretching streets of
cobblestone and brick, and roofs of houses, to green marshes filled with
cows, and a river that seemed blue as heaven, which sipped it from above
like a boy drinking head downward in a spring? How beautiful! It must be
freedom, Virgie thought, but why was she so cold? Her eyes, looking
around the