to sleep and jerked the churn over on top of me, and consequently got
a whipping.

My mother came for us at the end of the year 1865, and demanded that
her children be given up to her. This, mistress refused to do, and
threatened to set the dogs on my mother if she did not at once leave
the place. My mother went away, and remained with some of the
neighbors until supper time. Then she got a boy to tell Caroline to
come down to the fence. When she came, my mother told her to go back
and get Henry and myself and bring us down to the gap in the fence as
quick as she could. Then my mother took Henry in her arms, and my
sister carried me on her back. We climbed fences and crossed fields,
and after several hours came to a little hut which my mother had
secured on a plantation. We had no more than reached the place, and
made a little fire, when master's two sons rode up and demanded that
the children be returned. My mother refused to give us up. Upon her
offering to go with them to the Yankee headquarters to find out if it
were really true that all negroes had been made free, the young men
left, and troubled us no more.

The cabin that was now our home was made of logs. It had one door, and
an opening in one wall, with an inside shutter, was the only window.
The door was fastened with a latch. Our beds were some straw.

There were six in our little family; my mother, Caroline, Henry, two
other children that my mother had brought with her upon her return,
and myself.

The man on whose plantation this cabin stood, hired my mother as
cook, and gave us this little home. We children used to sell