Page:Women of distinction.djvu/113

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WOMEN OF DISTINCTION.
67

where she had lived a slave and bought some fowls. While carrying these along the street in her native town she saw coming just ahead of her her former master, who, with others, had offered a liberal reward for her head. What to do now was the question of the moment. She disturbed her fowls so as to make them flutter, and with her sun-bonnet pulled over her face and she half bent as if trying to control her fowls, the master passed by, not once thinking he had come into touch with the one he desired to punish for stealing away so many of his slaves. At another time, while going North with a band of fleeing, trembling followers, she came at early morning to the residence of a colored man whose doors had ever been open to "underground railroad" passengers. The rain was falling heavily and thickly. Leaving her crowd, Harriet stepped to the door and knocked. Behold! a white man's face was seen, who informed her that the colored man had been forced to abandon the house because of "harboring runaway niggers." The rain still falling, yet Harriet was equal to the emergency. Daylight had come; she must not travel longer. After a prayer she thought of a thick swamp just out of town. To this she and her crowd went in great haste, having two babes in a basket well drenched with an opiate. While they thus lay all day in the swamp, wet and cold and hungry, a strange figure at evening appeared, dressed as a Quaker, and drawing near, talking as if to himself, saying, "My wagon stands in the barn-yard of the next farm across the way. The horse is in the stable; the harness hangs on a nail." After this he disappeared.