likely to fall upon any black woman traveling North, she would
turn at the next station, and journey towards the South. Who would
suspect a fugitive with such a price set upon her head, of rushing
at railway speed into the jaws of destruction? With a daring
almost heedless, she went even to the very village where she would
be most likely to meet one of the masters to whom she had been
hired; and having stopped at the Market and bought a pair of live
fowls, she went along the street with her sun-bonnet well over her
face, and with the bent and decrepit air of an aged, woman.
Suddenly on turning a corner, she spied her old master coming
towards her. She pulled the string which tied the legs of the
chickens; they began to flutter and scream, and as her master
passed, she was stooping and busily engaged in attending to the
fluttering fowls. And he went on his way, little thinking that he
was brushing the very garments of the woman who had dared to steal
herself, and others of his belongings.

At one time the pursuit was very close and vigorous. The woods
were scoured in all directions, every house was visited, and every
person stopped and questioned as to a band of black fugitives,
known to be fleeing through that part of the country. Harriet had
a large party with her then; the children were sleeping the sound
sleep that opium gives; but all the others were on the alert, each
one hidden behind his own tree, and silent as death. They had been
long without food, and were nearly famished; and as the pursuers
seemed to have passed on, Harriet decided to make the attempt to
reach a certain "station of the underground railroad" well known
to her; and procure food for her starving party. Under cover of
the darkness, she started, leaving a cowering and trembling group
in the woods, to whom a fluttering leaf, or a moving animal, were