Why didn't I get ahead of them? I didn't have a horse, and it was safer to follow them than have them follow me. They would ask at every house if a stranger had passed. In this way they had caught up to me once. Now they will be told at each house ahead of me that no one had been along that way.
That's the way I was arguing the question in my own mind that morning. I moved along rather hopefully, not intending under any circumstances to approach a house or to allow myself to be seen by any one.
But I was tired, weak and so hungry; and the best resolutions can be broken down by the pleasant odor of good cookery from a farmhouse, especially when it's wafted out to a poor hungry devil on the road.
I had discovered about sunrise some blue wood-smoke curling up over the tops of a little growth of trees to the side of the road yet some distance ahead. Knowing that I dare not approach from the road, I crawled wearily over the fence, and rather reluctantly began my old tactics of flanking the place and advancing in the rear of it. When I got through the woods and came to the opening nearest the house, I found myself almost behind it.
The house was larger than any that I had seen the previous evening, and I gathered from the appearance of several little outbuildings, which I judged were "quarters" for the negroes, that the place belonged to a well-to-do Virginia slave-owner. There was no smoke coming from the large house; it was from one of the little buildings that I supposed was an out-kitchen. The proprietors, or white folks, were evidently still asleep. An old aunty was prowling about the wood-yard gathering up chips.
The pangs of hunger and thirst were driving me pretty nearly wild, and, being so dreadfully weak and exhausted, I felt that I must have something to eat; that only a cup of coffee would do me for the rest of the day. But I must have something to eat to keep me alive. Desperate, and believing it to be the safest time to take the risk, I walked boldly out from my hiding place straight up to the quarters, determined to appeal to the old aunty, for a bite of something. She had gathered her apron full of chips and had gone back into the kitchen with them, so that I was able to follow her to the house unobserved, and was flattering myself that I had succeeded so well when all at once two dogs that I had not seen rushed savagely down the back yard toward me. I raised my two arms in a frightened way as they rushed on me; the foremost one sprang up, placing his feet on my breast and tried to reach my face or throat, but only succeeded in inserting his teeth in the fleshy part of the muscle of my left arm. As I had only the thin covering of the shirt, he tore this in a distressingly painful manner. I have the marks yet on that arm. The wound has been a painful one at many times during these twenty-five years; but the Pension Office regulations do not "compensate" for the bite of a bloodhound, so I have not mentioned it outside my own family.
The old colored woman rushed out, followed by her old man, who grabbed the dog by his hind legs and threw him over; the two other dogs, attracted by the scent of the dead man on my shoes and trousers, could scarcely be driven away from me.
The old woman kindly took me into the kitchen and washed the bloody arm, and bound it up with a piece of turban which she tore off for the purpose. Without asking any questions, I was given a cup of good black coffee and some hoe-cakes, which I gulped down with a relish.
These poor, ignorant, black people knew instinctively that they were succoring a friend, and at a very great risk to themselves; and to relieve them of any fear for their own safety, should their conduct be discovered, I told them the old, old story about being lost on the road, etc.
The old man, who had been watching out of the doorway as I ate my breakfast at the hearth, observed, knowingly: