Here in her thirteenth year she is just recovering from the first
terrible effects of an injury inflicted by her master, who in an
ungovernable fit of rage threw a heavy weight at the unoffending
child, breaking in her skull, and causing a pressure upon her
brain, from which in her old age she is suffering still. This
pressure it was which caused the fits of somnolency so frequently
to come upon her, and which gave her the appearance of being
stupid and half-witted in those early years. But that brain which
seemed so dull was full of busy thoughts, and her life problem was
already trying to work itself out there.

She had heard the shrieks and cries of women who were being
flogged in the negro quarter; she had listened to the groaned out
prayer, "Oh, Lord, have mercy!" She had already seen two older
sisters taken away as part of a chain gang, and they had gone no
one knew whither; she had seen the agonized expression on their
faces as they turned to take a last look at their "Old Cabin
Home;" and had watched them from the top of the fence, as they
went off weeping and lamenting, till they were hidden from her
sight forever. She saw the hopeless grief of the poor old mother,
and the silent despair of the aged father, and already she began
to revolve in her mind the question, "Why should such things be?"
"Is there no deliverance for my people?"

The sun shone on, and Harriet still slept seated on the fence
rail. They, those others, had no anxious dreams of the future, and
even the occasional sufferings of the present time caused them but
a temporary grief. Plenty to eat, and warm sunshine to bask in,
were enough to constitute their happiness; Harriet, however, was