less driver, sure that her fate was sealed.

[illustration omitted]

Was there no eye to pity, and no arm to rescue? Yes, the unseen God,
whose name is love, was leading her still. Through all the dark, rough
places of her life, his kind, invisible hand was laying link to link in
that wondrous chain which was finally to bring her safe and happy into
his own bosom.

CHAPTER XVI. RESCUE.

THE slaves on Mr. Turner's plantation had no SABBATH. To be sure, they
were not driven to the field on Sunday, because it was considered an
economic provision to let man and beast rest one day out of the seven.
But they had no church to attend, and never had any meetings among
themselves. Indeed there were no pious ones among them. The men took the
day for sport; the women washed and ironed, sewed and cooked, and did
various necessary chores for themselves and children, for which they
were allowed no other opportunity; and spent the rest of the day in rude
singing, dancing, and boisterous merriment.

Tidy could not live as the rest did. She could not forget the
instructions and habits of the past. She preferred to sit up later on
Saturday evening to do the work which others did on Sunday, and when
that day came, she never entered into their coarse gayety and mirth. She
had no heart for it, and did not care though she was reviled and scoffed
at for her particular, pious ways.

One Sunday afternoon, weary with the noise and rioting at the quarters,
homesick and sad, she wandered away from her hovel, and strolling down
the path which led to the cotton-field, she kept on through bush and
brake and wood until she reached the bank of the river. Here, where the
great Mississippi, the Father of Waters, seemed to have broken his way
through tangled and interminable forests, she stood and looked out upon
the broad stream. It lay like a vast mirror reflecting the sunlight,
its surface only now and then disturbed by a passing boat or prowling
king-fisher. Up and down the bank, with folded arms and pensive
countenance, the toil-worn, weary girl walked, her soul in unison with
the solitude and silence of the place. Recollections of the past, which
continually haunted her, but which she had of late striven with all her
might to banish from her mind, now rushed like a mighty tide over
her. She could not help thinking of the pleasant Sabbath days in old
Virginia, when she and Mammy Grace were always permitted to go to
church; and of those su