My mother was sold at Richmond, Virginia, and a gentleman bought her who
lived in Georgia, and we did not know that she was sold until she was
gone; and the saddest thought was to me to know which way she had gone,
and I used to go outside and look up to see if there was anything that
would direct me, and I saw a clear place in the sky, and it seemed to me
the way she had gone, and I watched it three and a half years, not
knowing what that meant, and it was there the whole time that mother was
gone from her little ones.

On one bright Sunday I asked my older sister to go with me for a nice
walk and she did so, for she was the one that was so kind to the rest of
us--and we saw some sweet flowers on the wayside and we began to have
delight in picking them, when all at once I was led to leave her alone
with the flowers and to go where I could look up at that nice, clear
spot, and as I wanted to get as near to it as I could, I got on the
fence, and as I looked that way I saw a form coming to me that looked
like my dear mother's, and calling to my sister Frances to come at once
and see if that did not look like my dear mother and she came to us, so
glad to see us, and to ask after her baby that she was sold from that
was only six weeks old when she was taken from it; and I would that the
whole world could have seen the joy of a mother and her two girls on
that heaven-made day--a mother returning back to her own once more, a
mother that we did not know that we should ever see her face on this
earth more. And mother, not feeling good over the past events, had made
up her mind that she would take her children to a part of this land
where she thought that they would never be in bondage any more on this
earth.

So she sought out the head man that was placed there by the North to