Oh, I cannot endure the idea of seeing you sold for the Southern market, to say nothing of myself; and we shall most likely be separated, which I can't bear! Oh, Rosa, the thought distracts me,--I can't bear it!" "Are you sure," said Rosa, "that master thinks of such a frightful doom for us ?" "Oh yes, I know it; I heard master to-day making a bargain with the slave dealer that has been hanging about here so long; and when it was finished, I heard him reading over the list, and our names, wife, are the first on it." "Oh, dear!" sobbed the wife, "we shall certainly be retaken and whipped to death; or else we shall starve in the wilderness! Oh, it is very hard to be compelled to leave all our friends and the old plantation where we were born!" "Yes; it is both hard and unjust," said Joe, and an indignant frown contracted his brow,--"here is our birth-place, and here, for forty years have I toiled early and late to enrich my master; and you, my poor wife, a few years less; and now we are to be sold, separated, and all without a choice of our own.

We must go, Rosa.

If we die, let us die together!" "It shall be as you say, Joe," she replied, "but it frightens me to think of the hardships of the way, and the danger of being recaptured." "Courage, wife: no fate can be worse than the one designed for us; and we have no time to lose.

Tomorrow night, then, we must make the first effort to gain our liberty, and leave all that is dear to us except each other!" And they retired to rest, but not to sleep.
The following night was very dark; and as soon as all was quiet on the plantation, they stole out of their cabin and stealthily crept over the ground until they reached the highway; and then, guided only by the north star, they made their way to the nearest woods.

So fearful had they been of being suspected, that they took no provision of any kind with them.