"Princess Anne? where is it?"
"It's maybe, forty mile from yer, Mary; half-way between sunrise and sunset."
"Right south, sir?"
"That's it. Now I'll tell you how to git thar. Take this old woods road along Broad Creek and walk to Laurel, five miles; it's a little town on the creek. Keep in under the woods, but don't lose the road, fur every foot of it's dangerous to niggers. You kin git thar, maybe, by dark. I don't know nobody thar, Mary, an' I can't write, fur I never learned how. But you go right to the house of some preacher of the Gospel, and tell him a lie."
Mary opened her eyes.
"I wouldn't have you tell a lie to anybody but a good man," continued Phœbus, "fur then it's so close to the Lord it won't git fur an' pizen many, as lies always does. You must tell that preacher that you're the runaway slave of Judge Custis of Prencess Anne, an' you're sorry you run away, an' want to go home."
"Oh, sir, you are not like my wicked husband, trying to sell me too?"
"No, Mary, bad as you've been used, faith's your only sure friend. If you was to tell the preacher you had been kidnapped, he'd, maybe, be afraid to help you. They're a timid set down yer on any subject concernin' niggers; these preachers will help save black folks' souls, but never rescue their pore broken bodies. When you tell him you are the slave of a rich man like Judge Custis, he'll jump at the chance to do the Judge a favor, an' tell you that you do right to go back to your master. That's whair he's a liar, Mary—so he'll scratch your lie off."
"They'll turn me back at Princess Anne, and wont know me, maybe."
"Not if you do this, Mary. Make them take you to Judge Custis's daughter—the one that's just been married. Tell her you want to speak to her privately. Then tell her the nigger-skinned man—I'm him—that she sent away with her mother, found you whar you was chained in the woods. Take this link of the chain to show her. Tell her you want to be her cook till the one that run away is found."