weaker until I was reduced to helplessness, and was little else than “skin and bones.”  I really thought my time had come to die; and when I had strength to talk, I tried to arrange the few little business affairs I had, and give my father direction concerning them.  And then I began to examine my own condition before God, and to determine how the case stood between Him and my poor soul.  And “there was the rub.”  I had often excused myself, for frequent derelictions in duty, and often wild and passionate outbreaks, on account of the hardness of my lot, and the injustice with which I was treated, even in my best endeavors to do as well as I knew how.  But now, with death staring me in the face, I could see that though I was a friendless “slave-boy,” I had not always done as well as I knew how; that I had not served God as I knew I ought, nor had I always set a good example before my fellow-slaves, nor warned them as well as I might, “to flee the wrath to come.”  Then I prayed my Heavenly Father to spare me a little longer, that I might serve Him better; and in His mercy and gracious goodness, He did so; though when the fever was turning they gave me up; and I could hear them say, when they came to feel my pulse, “he is almost gone,” “it will soon be over,” &c., and then inquire if I knew them.  I did, but was too weak to say so.  I recollect with gratitude, the kindness of Mrs. H.A.  Townsend, who sent me many delicacies and cooling drinks to soften the rigor of my disease; and though I suppose she has long since “passed away” and gone to her reward, may the blessing of those who are ready to perish, rest upon the descendants of that excellent woman.

Capt.  Helm was driving on in his milling, distillery and farming business.  He now began to see the necessity of treating his slaves better by far than he had ever done before, and granted them greater privileges than he would have dared to do at the South.  Many of the slaves he had sold, were getting their liberty and doing well.

CHAPTER X.

HIRED OUT TO A NEW MASTER.

While I was staying with my master at Bath, he having little necessity for my services, hired me out to a man by the name of Joseph Robinson, for the purpose of learning me to drive a team.  Robinson lived about three miles from the village of Bath, on a small farm, and was not only a poor man but a very mean one.  He was cross and heartless in his family, as well as tyrannical and cruel to those in his employ; and having hired me as a “slave boy,” he appeared to feel at full liberty to wreak his brutal passion on me at any time, whether I deserved rebuke or not; nor did his terrible outbreaks of anger vent themselves in oaths, curses and threatenings only, but he would frequently draw from the cart-tongue a heavy iron pin, and beat me over the head with it, so unmercifully that he frequently sent the blood flowing over my scanty apparel, and from that to the ground, before he could feel satisfied.