Mr. Brown started involuntarily. He looked me all over from head to feet, giving a keen search. "'Pears how I shouldn't tink you could hab de heart to do it, sir."
"Do I look as though I should like to kill your little ones?"
"No, sir, I don't tink you would."
I told him who the Abolitionists were, and what they wished to do,—that they were friends of the slaves, and always had been. He grasped my hand, and said, "God bless you, sir." And then burst into hearty laughter.
Having been informed that it would be impossible to obtain a fowl of the negroes at that season of the year, I made the attempt; but though I offered treble the value, not one would part with a hen. They were looking forward to broods of chickens which would bring them in "heaps" of money in the fall of the year. The negro race understands the value of money quite as well as we who boast of Anglo-Saxon blood.
Entering the head-quarters of the commanding officer one day, I saw a thin, spare colored woman sitting before the fire. She nodded and smiled, ran her eyes over me, as if to take in every feature or peculiarity of my person and dress, then gazed into the fire and seemed absorbed in her own thoughts. A friend said, "That is our Sojourner Truth."
She had brought off several companies of negroes from the mainland, and had given a great deal of information concerning the movements of the Rebels. She had penetrated swamps, endured hardships, eluded Rebel pickets, visiting the plantations at midnight, and conversing with the slaves.
"I can travel all through the South, I reckon," she said.
"Are you not afraid that the Rebels will catch you?"
"Well, honey, I reckon they couldn't keep me," she said, with a smile.