“Who do you belong to?”

“I am free, sir.”

“Have you got papers?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, you must stop here.”

By this time he had got astride the fence, making his way into the road.  I said,

“My business is onward, sir, and I do not wish to stop.”

“I will see then if you don’t stop, you black rascal.”

He was now in the middle of the road, making after me in a brisk walk.

I saw that a crisis was at hand; I had no weapons of any kind, not even a pocket-knife; but I asked myself, shall I surrender without a struggle.  The instinctive answer was “No.”  What will you do? continue to walk; if he runs after you, run; get him as far from the house as you can, then turn suddenly and smite him on the knee with a stone; that will render him, at least, unable to pursue you.

This was a desperate scheme, but I could think of no other, and my habits as a blacksmith had given my eye and hand such mechanical skill, that I felt quite sure that if I could only get a stone in my hand, and have time to wield it, I should not miss his knee-pan.

He began to breathe short.  He was evidently vexed because I did not halt, and I felt more and more provoked at the idea of being thus pursued by a man to whom I had not done the least injury.  I had just began to glance my eye about for a stone to grasp, when he made a tiger-like leap at me.  This of course brought us to running.  At this moment he yelled out “Jake Shouster!” and at the next moment the door of a small house standing to the left was opened, and out jumped a shoemaker girded up in his leather apron, with his knife in hand.  He sprang forward and seized me by the collar, while the other seized my arms behind.  I was now in the grasp of two men, either of whom were larger bodied than myself, and one of whom was armed with a dangerous weapon.

Standing in the door of the shoemaker’s shop, was a third man; and in the potatoe lot I had passed, was still a fourth man.  Thus surrounded by superior physical force, the fortune of the day it seemed to me was gone.

My heart melted away, I sunk resistlessly into the hands of my captors, who dragged me immediately into the tavern which was near.  I ask my reader to go in with me, and see how the case goes.

* * * * *

GREAT MORAL DILEMMA.

A few moments after I was taken into the bar-room, the news having gone as by electricity, the house and yard were crowded with gossippers, who had left their business to come and see “the runaway nigger.”  This hastily assembled congregation consisted of men, women, and children, each one had a look to give at, and a word to say about, the “nigger.”

But among the whole, there stood one whose name I have never known, but who evidently wore the garb of a man whose profession bound him to speak for the dumb, but he, standing head and shoulders above all that were round about, spoke the first hard sentence against me.  Said he, “That fellow is a runaway I know; put him in jail a few days, and you will soon hear where he came from.”  And then fixing a fiend-like gaze upon me, he continued, “if I lived on this road, you fellows would not find such clear running as you do, I’d trap more of you.”