I was too proud to ask Mr. Sands to do any thing for my own benefit; but I could bring myself to become a supplicant for my children.  I resolved to remind him of the promise he had made me, and to throw myself upon his honor for the performance of it.  I persuaded my grandmother to go to him, and tell him I was not dead, and that I earnestly entreated him to keep the promise he had made me; that I had heard of the recent proposals concerning my children, and did not feel easy to accept them; that he had promised to emancipate them, and it was time for him to redeem his pledge.  I knew there was some risk in thus betraying that I was in the vicinity; but what will not a mother do for her children?  He received the message with surprise, and said, “The children are free.  I have never intended to claim them as slaves.  Linda may decide their fate.  In my opinion, they had better be sent to the north.  I don’t think they are quite safe here.  Dr. Flint boasts that they are still in his power.  He says they were his daughter’s property, and as she was not of age when they were sold, the contract is not legally binding.”

So, then, after all I had endured for their sakes, my poor children were between two fires; between my old master and their new master!  And I was powerless.  There was no protecting arm of the law for me to invoke.  Mr. Sands proposed that Ellen should go, for the present, to some of his relatives, who had removed to Brooklyn, Long Island.  It was promised that she should be well taken care of, and sent to school.  I consented to it, as the best arrangement I could make for her.  My grandmother, of course, negotiated it all; and Mrs. Sands knew of no other person in the transaction.  She proposed that they should take Ellen with them to Washington, and keep her till they had a good chance of sending her, with friends, to Brooklyn.  She had an infant daughter.  I had had a glimpse of it, as the nurse passed with it in her arms.  It was not a pleasant thought to me, that the bondwoman’s child should tend her free-born sister; but there was no alternative.  Ellen was made ready for the journey.  O, how it tried my heart to send her away, so young, alone, among strangers!  Without a mother’s love to shelter her from the storms of life; almost without memory of a mother!  I doubted whether she and Benny would have for me the natural affection that children feel for a parent.  I thought to myself that I might perhaps never see my daughter again, and I had a great desire that she should look upon me, before she went, that she might take my image with her in her memory.  It seemed to me cruel to have her brought to my dungeon.  It was sorrow enough for her young heart to know that her mother was a victim of slavery, without seeing the wretched hiding-place to which it had driven her.  I begged permission to pass the last night in one of the open chambers, with my little girl.  They thought I was crazy to think of trusting such a young