-breed, Eliza, was nowhere to be found.

"The young master's body lay in state many days. Friends and neighbors
came bringing flowers. His mother, bowed with grief, looked on the still
face of her son and understood--understood why death had come and why
Eliza had gone away.

"The beautiful home on the Cumberland river with its more than 600 acres
of productive land was put into the hands of an administrator of estates
to be readjusted in the interest of the George heirs. It was only then
Mistress Hester went to Aunt Lucy and demanded of her to tell where
Eliza could be found.

'She has gone to Alabama, Ole Mistus', said Aunt Lucy, 'Eliza was scared
to stay here.' A party of searchers were sent out to look for Eliza.
They found her secreted in a cane brake in the low lands of Alabama
nursing her baby boy at her breast. They took Eliza and the baby back to
Kentucky. I am that baby, that child of unsatisfactory birth."

The face of George Fortman registered sorrow and pain, it had been hard
for him to retell the story of the dark road to strange ears.

"My white uncles had told Mistress Hester that if Eliza brought me back
they were going to build a fire and put me in it, my birth was so
unsatisfactory to all of them, but Mistress Hester always did what she
believed was right and I was brought up by my own mother.

"We lived in a cabin at the slave quarters and mother worked in the
broom cane. Mistress Hester named me Ford George, in derision, but
remained my friend. She was never angry with my mother. She knew a slave
had to submit to her master and besides Eliza did not know she was
Master Ford George's daughter."

The truth had been told at last. The master was both the father of Eliza
and the father of Eliza's son.

"Mistress Hester believed I would be feeble either in mind or body
because of my unsatisfactory birth, but I developed as other children
did and was well treated by Mistress Hester, Mistress Lorainne and her
children.

"Master Patent George died and Mistress Hester married Mr. Lam, while
slaves kept working at the rolling mills and amassing greater wealth for
the George families.

"Five years before the outbreak of the Civil War Mistress Hester called
all the slaves together and gave us our freedom. Courtney, my
grandmother, kept house for Mistress Lorainne and wanted to stay on, so
I too was kept at the George home. There was a sincere friendship as
great as the tie of blood between the white