Imagine his terror, then, as she seized him rudely by the wrists and exclaimed, “It’s you, is it? a little slave boy!  I’ll fix you so they’ll never get you!”

Then she picked him up in her arms and started to run with him, as if she would throw him into the well.  The little fellow screamed with fright.  Aunt Sally ran after her, crying at the top of her voice, “Nancy, O Nancy! don’t now!” And then a big negro darted out of the stables, crying “Stop her there! catch her!”

All this hubbub roused the people at the house, and Master Stamford forthwith appeared on the verandah, with a crowd of servants of all sizes.  Amid the orders, and cries, and general confusion that followed, Nancy was caught, Lewis was taken away, and she was carried back to the cabin, while the big negro was preparing to tie her.  As she entered the cabin, her eye caught sight of a knife that lay there, and snatching it up, she gave herself a bad wound with it.  Poor woman, she was tired of her miserable life.  I don’t wonder that she wanted to die.

Was it right, you ask, for her to take her own life?  Certainly not.  But let us see what led to this attempt.

For a long time she had been separated from Lewis and Ned, the last of her children that remained to her.  To be sure, the other three were probably living somewhere, and so was her husband.  But she only knew that they had gone into hopeless servitude, where she knew not.  Indeed, she did not know but that they were already dead, and she did not expect ever to hear, for slaves are seldom able to write, and often not permitted to when they can.  If there had only been hope of hearing from them at some time or other she could have endured it.  But between her and those loved ones there rested a thick cloud of utter darkness; beyond that they might be toiling, groaning, bleeding, starving, dying beneath the oppressor’s lash in the deadly swamp, or in the teeth of the cruel hounds, and she could not have the privilege of ministering to the least of their wants, of soothing one of their sorrows, or even dropping a silent tear beside them.  If she could have heard only one fact about them it would have been some relief.  But she could not enjoy even this poor privilege.  And then came the dead, heavy stillness of despair creeping over her spirits.

Do you wonder that she became perfectly wild, and beside herself at times?  How would you feel if all you loved best were carried off by a cruel slave-driver, and you had no hope of hearing from them again in this world?

During these dreadful fits of insanity she would bewail the living as worse than dead, and pray God to take them away.  Then she would curse herself for being the mother of slave children, declaring that it would be far better to see them die in their childhood, than to see them grow up to suffer as she had suffered.