The huge green fragment of ice on which she alighted pitched and creaked as her weight came on it, but she staid there not a moment.  With wild cries and desperate energy she leaped to another and still another cake; stumbling—­leaping—­slipping—­springing upwards again!  Her shoes are gone—­her stockings cut from her feet—­while blood marked every step; but she saw nothing, felt nothing, till dimly, as in a dream, she saw the Ohio side, and a man helping her up the bank.

“Yer a brave gal, now, whoever ye ar!” said the man, with an oath.

Eliza recognized the voice and face for a man who owned a farm not far from her old home.

“O, Mr. Symmes!—­save me—­do save me—­do hide me!” said Elia.

“Why, what’s this?” said the man.  “Why, if ’tan’t Shelby’s gal!”

“My child!—­this boy!—­he’d sold him!  There is his Mas’r,” said she, pointing to the Kentucky shore.  “O, Mr. Symmes, you’ve got a little boy!”

“So I have,” said the man, as he roughly, but kindly, drew her up the steep bank.  “Besides, you’re a right brave gal.  I like grit, wherever I see it.”

When they had gained the top of the bank, the man paused.

“I’d be glad to do something for ye,” said he; “but then there’s nowhar I could take ye.  The best I can do is to tell ye to go thar,” said he, pointing to a large white house which stood by itself, off the main street of the village.  “Go thar; they’re kind folks.  Thar’s no kind o’ danger but they’ll help you,—­they’re up to all that sort o’ thing.”

“The Lord bless you!” said Eliza, earnestly.

“No ’casion, no ’casion in the world,” said the man.  “What I’ve done’s of no ’count.”

“And, oh, surely, sir, you won’t tell any one!”

“Go to thunder, gal!  What do you take a feller for?  In course not,” said the man.  “Come, now, go along like a likely, sensible gal, as you are.  You’ve arnt your liberty, and you shall have it, for all me.”

The woman folded her child to her bosom, and walked firmly and swiftly away.  The man stood and looked after her.

“Shelby, now, mebbe won’t think this yer the most neighborly thing in the world; but what’s a feller to do?  If he catches one of my gals in the same fix, he’s welcome to pay back.  Somehow I never could see no kind o’ critter a strivin’ and pantin’, and trying to clar theirselves, with the dogs arter ’em and go agin ’em.  Besides, I don’t see no kind of ’casion for me to be hunter and catcher for other folks, neither.”

So spoke this poor, heathenish Kentuckian, who had not been instructed in his constitutional relations, and consequently was betrayed into acting in a sort of Christianized manner, which, if he had been better situated and more enlightened, he would not have been left to do.

Haley had stood a perfectly amazed spectator of the scene, till Eliza had disappeared up the bank, when he turned a blank, inquiring look on Sam and Andy.