“Who are you?”

“Me Uncle Moses,” said the voice.  “Good night, sah; come again tomorrow.”

And then all was silent.

Picture if you can my state of mind as I crept back into my bed and lay down again, the precious note in my hand.  I was trembling with happiness:  Lucy knew of my presence, and had written to me.  And yet I was doomed to lie in a tantalizing impatience until the dawn should give me leave to read her message.  I had no more sleep that night, wonderment, conjecture, pleasure, hope, setting up a whirl in my brain.

As soon as there was the faintest tremor in the darkness I sat up and, unfolding the paper, sought vainly to decipher it.  Never had time seemed so long to me as I waited for the oncoming of the beneficent light of day.  And at last, lifting the paper almost to my eyes, I was able to make out the words.

’Twas in French, and I blessed the chance which enabled me to understand it, and the woman’s wit that had prompted Lucy to choose this disguise.  She said she had learned of what had happened through the gossip of the servants; the man who had heard my name in the rest house had mentioned it.  She told me that she was virtually a prisoner.  She knew not what Vetch intended (she did not name him, but wrote of him as cet homme mechant), but she was kept under strict surveillance; her movements were dogged; and though she had three times endeavored to make her escape along with the old nurse who had accompanied her from England, she had always been prevented, and those who had assisted her had been terribly punished.  Uncle Moses, her father’s bodyservant, who was devoted to her, had been whipped almost to death, and she dared make no further attempt, for the sake of the poor black people.

Dick Cludde had come up from Spanish Town, she told me, and crushing down her repugnance to meet him, she had besought him to interpose.  He had seemed troubled, and had gone away, as she thought, to plead with Vetch, but she had not seen him again.  It was after that that she had heard of my imprisonment.  She thanked me for coming to help her; she knew that was my purpose; had I not helped her before? and she prayed that I might find some means of escaping, so that I might take her away and save her from the wicked man who had her in his power.

I ground my teeth as I read all this, and vowed that if I could but get free I would wreak a vengeance on Vetch that he would not easily forget.  But the knowledge of my impotence wrought me to a pitch of fury that for a time almost bereft me of my senses, and I could only rage and fume in desperate misery.  My guardians, when they came in to attend to my wants, seemed to be conscious of my state of mind; they eyed me with suspicion, and the man at the door took up his musket ostentatiously, though neither said a word to me.