"Oh, putty, far angel, don't leab me. I kan't let you leab me—stay here. I has no peace when you is gone. Dey will come and beat me agin, and dey will take my chil'en frum me. Oh, please now, you stay wid me."
And she held on to him with such a pitiful fondness, and there was so much anxiety in her face, such an infantile look of tenderness, with the hopeless vacancy of idiocy in the eye, that to refuse her would have been harsh; and of this young master was incapable. So, turning to me, he said,
"You go, Ann, for the doctor, and I will stay with her—poor old creature I have never done anything for her, and now I will gratify her."
As the horses had all been taken by the pursuers of Lindy, I was forced to walk to Dr. Mandy's farm, which was about two miles distant from Mr. Peterkin's. I was glad of this, for of late it was indeed but seldom that I had been allowed to indulge in a walk through the woods. All through the leafy glory of the summer season I had looked toward the old sequestered forest with a longing eye. Each little bird seemed wooing me away, yet my occupations confined me closely to the house; and a pleasure-walk, even on Sunday, was a luxury which a negro might dream of but never indulge. Now, though it was the lonely autumn time, yet loved I still the woods, dismantled as they were. There is something in the grandeur of the venerable forests, that always lifts the soul to devotion! The patriarchal trees and the delicate sward, the wind-music and the almost ceaseless miserere of the grove, elevate the heart, and to the cultivated mind speak with a power to which that of books is but poor and tame.
CHAPTER XV.
QUIETUDE OF THE WOODS—A GLIMPSE OF THE STRANGER—MRS. MANDY'S WORDS OF CRUEL IRONY—SAD REFLECTIONS.
The freshening breeze, tempered with the keen chill of the coming winter, made a lively music through the woods, as, floating along, it toyed with the fallen leaves that lay dried and sere upon the earth. There stood the giant trees, rearing their bald and lofty heads to the heavens, whilst at their feet was spread their splendid summer livery. Like the philosophers of old, in their calm serenity they looked away from earth and its troubles to the "bright above."
I wandered on, with a quick step, in the direction of the doctor's. The recent painful events were not calculated to color my thoughts very pleasingly; yet I had taught myself to live so entirely within, to be so little affected by what was without, that I could be happy in imagination, notwithstanding what was going on in the external world. 'Tis well that the negro is of an imaginative cast. Suppose he were by nature strongly practical and matter-of-fact; life could not endure with him. His dreaminess, his fancy, makes him happy in spite of the dreary reality which surrounds him. The poor slave, with not a sixpence in his pocket, dreams of the time when he shall be able to buy himself, and revels in this most delightful Utopia.