"Take off those hand-cuffs," he cried; "take them off. I can not
bear them. Don't let them put on those chains. Oh, I can't move!
They'll drag me away! Stop them; help me! save me!"

But, alas! no one could save him. The man who had all his life
been loading his fellow-creatures with chains and fetters was now
in the grasp of One mightier than he, who was "delivering him
over into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto the judgment."

How dreadful was such an end!

"I would rather be a slave with all my sorrows," said Tidy, when she
related this sad story, "and wait for comfort until I get to heaven,
than to have all the riches of all the slaveholders in the world,
gained by injustice and oppression; for I could only carry them
as far as the grave, and there they would be an awful weight to drag
me down into torments for ever."


CHAPTER V.

A NEW HOME.

AFTER Colonel Lee's death, which happened when Tidy was about
ten years old, the plantation and all the slaves were sold,
and Miss Matilda, with Tidy, who was her own personal property,
found a home with her brother. Mr. Richard Lee owned an estate
about twenty miles from Rosevale. His lands had once been
well cultivated, but now received very little attention,
for medicinal springs had been discovered there a few years before,