CHAPTER II.
It seemed that on this very day my eyes were opened with a new intelligence, and not only my spiritual but my physical surroundings became clearer. I saw our great stone house as I had never seen it before, the wooded hill-sides, deep with grass, stretching far away; the white-washed cabins, quarter-circling the spacious yard, the broad garden and the weeping-willow trees whereunder Old Master's father and mother were buried; the village street which came abruptly to our big gate and there stopped in a fringe of clover. Through our place a bright creek ran, as many toned as a pack of hounds; and far to the right the turn-pike lay, white and glistening in the sun. Yes, my eyes were wider opened on this day, and a half-frightening glimmer of reason shot across my mind. I wondered why I should have been created a piece of property, while one, nearly of my own color and whom I could fling upon the ground, should possess me. This thought stung me, but there came a balm in the reflection that if I wore fetters at all, they were bright and lined with velvet. Of course, at this age I did not thus reason with myself, but I had the feeling, the substance of the thought, and the dressing of it must have come long afterward.
Bob and I slept in the same room up-stairs, he in a canopied bed, I on a low lounge. Old Master and Old Miss slept in a large room just across the hall; and now it seems to me that many a time at midnight, a stray fancy, wandering throughout the world of space, looking for entertainment in a human mind, would come to me as I lay in that little bed—come to me and rob me of sleep—compel me to lie there and listen to Old Master's slippered feet, slowly pacing up and down the long hall. One night, and it must have followed the day when I had been given over as Bob's exclusive property, I awoke to hear the old man's distressful shambling up and down the hall. The night was so dark, all the household was so still save those restless feet, that a strange pity came upon me. I heard Old Miss call him, and I heard him reply, "Go to sleep and pay no attention to me." But he seemed so lonely out there walking alone, that I found the courage to open the door and peep out at him. A dim light hung from the ceiling, not far from my peeping place, and as he turned about he saw me.
"What are you doing, Dan?" he asked, halting and turning to me.
"Will you please let me come out and walk with you?" was my bold reply.
"Walk with me? What could have put that into your head?"
"'Cause I thought you must be tired of walking by yourself."