While lying on the cold ground under this tree, our “city of refuge,” we were greatly surprised at seeing a number of fox hounds, numbering, I suppose, from twenty to fifty, running about the forest near to us. They were accompanied by about fifty men on horseback, who were all white. The reader may judge the terrible anxiety we had to endure. We were slaves fleeing from bondage, they were freemen, and to have fallen into their hands would have been so much added to their gain, and to us, perhaps, a more sorrowful condition than the one we were fleeing from. They rode and hunted after a fox throughout the whole day. Several times the fleeing fox made his unwelcome appearance under the tree that secreted us from the horsemen’s view, and to my great astonishment I discovered we were lying over the hole that led to reynard’s den. He made two or three attempts to get into the hole but we succeeded in beating him off, and the result was he did not return any more that day. Our anxiety became more and more intense as we recognized among the band of hunters some well-known faces, who, it cannot be claimed, were “a terror to all evil doers,” but to all honest, trustworthy slaves. Had Mister Fox succeeded in entering the hole we would have been caught, and our jig would have been up sure. It was in this large, dense forest, in the State of Delaware, that I was led to see my own fate compared with that of the wild beast of the forest. True, there was some difference; the fox was free, and I was seeking for freedom; its pursuers were near by, but mine were, for all I knew, afar off. Our much-dreaded visitors remained in the neighborhood all day. It was almost dark before they relieved us of their presence. This was a day of “foes without and fears within,” for while I wondered how this day’s events would end from outward appearances, my two companions became so badly frightened that my words failed to comfort them. Their fears were so great that they determined to go back—not to the “flesh pots of Egypt,” but to the stinted fare and cowhide of slavery. I determined differently. I longed for the home of the free. Finally, to quiet their fears, I promised if they would only keep silent I would take them back home.