Willis Hamilton, an emancipated slave, the hero of this narrative, who fled to Canada with his slave wife, Elsie, to seek for her the protection of the British lion from the merciless talons of the freedom-shrieking American eagle, was emancipated three years previous to the date of this chapter, together with nineteen others (the reputed goods and chattels of John Bayliss, a Baptist deacon, near Jonesborough, Tennessee). Slaveholder though he was, John Bayliss evidently thought his black people had souls as well as those of white skins, for he allowed his house servants to remain in the dining-room during evening family worship, thus giving them instruction which, as the sequel will show, made the slave the teacher of the master; for one morning, as "Aunt Lucy," an old and privileged servant, was passing through his room, she said: "Massa John, I's bin thinkin' a heap o' dat ar what you read in the Bible t' other night." "Ah, what's that, Aunt Lucy?" said the deacon. "It's to do oder folks as you'd want 'em to do to you, or somehow dat fashion. I tell you, Massa John, 't would be mighty hard for you white folks to work great many years and get noffin'. Den, if you dies, whar'd we go to? I specks we'd go down de riber, like Jones's poor people did las' week." "Well, well, Aunt Lucy, that was too bad; but Jones was in debt, and I suppose they had to be sold." "O yes, I s'pose so; but dat you read in de Bible sort o' sticks to me--I can't help it," said this faithful old mother in Israel, as she went out to her work. In a moment or two Mrs. Bayliss entered the room, and the deacon said: "Wife, what kind of a text do you think Aunt Lucy has just given me?" "Text?" "Yes, text." "What's got into her head now?" "She says she's been thinking about what I read in prayer-time the other evening, referring to the golden rule, and that it sort o' sticks to her. She spoke, of the excitement over Jones's black people who were sent down the river the other day; and I tell you, the way she applied her text, it 'sort o' sticks' to me." "O hush!" indignantly exclaimed Mrs. Bayliss. "Aunt Lucy's mighty religious, and has so many notions of her own she's not worth minding, any how." "But she asked me what would become of my black people if I should die, and if I thought they would ever be torn apart as Jones's were. I tell you, wife, I have witnessed such scenes too often to feel right in risking a contingency of that kind," said the deacon, gravely. "Don't be a fool, now, John Baybss," angrily exclaimed his wife, "about Aunt Lucy's fuss over Jones's niggers." "Well," said the deacon, "I don't wonder at her feeling grieved; they belonged to her Church, and many of them were her relatives."