my grandmother and grandfather. It was, evidently, a great thing to go
to Col. Lloyd's; and I was not without a little curiosity to see the
place; but no amount of coaxing could induce in me the wish to remain
there. The fact is, such was my dread of leaving the little cabin, that
I wished to remain little forever, for I knew the taller I grew the
shorter my stay. The old cabin, with its rail floor and rail bedsteads
upstairs, and its clay floor downstairs, and its dirt chimney, and
windowless sides, and that most curious piece of workmanship dug in
front of the fireplace, beneath which grandmammy placed the sweet
potatoes to keep them from the frost, was MY HOME--the only home I ever
had; and I loved it, and all connected with it. The old fences around
it, and the stumps in the edge of the woods near it, and the squirrels
that ran, skipped, and played upon them, were objects of interest and
affection. There, too, right at the side of the hut, stood the old well,
with its stately and skyward-pointing beam, so aptly placed between the
limbs of what had once been a tree, and so nicely balanced that I could
move it up and down with only one hand, and could get a drink myself
without calling for help. Where else in the world could such a well be
found, and where could such another home be met with? Nor were these
all the attractions of the place. Down in a little valley, not far from
grandmammy's cabin, stood Mr. Lee's mill, where the people came often in
large numbers to get their corn ground. It was a watermill; and I never
shall be able to tell the many things thought and felt, while I sat on
the bank and watched that mill, and the turning of that ponderous wheel.
The mill-pond, too, had its charms; and with my pinhook, and thread
line, I could get _nibbles_, if I could catch no fish. But, in all my
sports and plays, and in spite of them, there would, occasionally, come
the painful foreboding that I was not long to remain there, and that I
must soon be called away to the home of old master.

I was A SLAVE--born a slave and though the fact was in{35 DEPARTURE FROM
TUCKAHOE} comprehensible to me, it conveyed to my mind a sense of my
entire dependence on the will of _somebody_ I had never seen; and, from
some cause or other, I had been made to fear this somebody above all
else on earth. Born for another's benefit, as the _firstling_ of the
cabin flock I was soon to be selected as a meet offering to the fearful
and inexorabl