At the end of three days, Mr. Lee, acting as her master, who had been apprised of her arrest, arrived at the prison. But what a wretched object had he come to see! He could scarcely believe that the miserable, dejected being before him was the once bright, beautiful Tidy,--such a change had her disappointment and sorrow wrought. He really pitied her, if a slaveholder ever can pity a slave, and yet he reproached her severely. He told her she was a fool to run away; that niggers never knew when they were well off; that if she had had a thimble-full of sense she might have known she couldn't make her escape. He said they had just been offered a thousand dollars for her,--which was then considered an enormous price,--by a gentleman in Virginia, and they had been on the point of selling her. "I's Miss Matilda's," fiercely cried the poor girl at this, "and SHE wouldn't a sold me; she said she never would." "Yes, she would, Miss," replied Mr. Lee; "we don't let her throw away such a valuable piece of property for nothing, I can tell you. A thousand dollars in the bank isn't a small thing. It wouldn't find feet to walk off with very soon, that we know." "Miss Matilda TOLD me to take my liberty," said Tidy, disconsolately. "Miss Matilda is a fool, like you. But we shall look out she don't cheat herself in such a fashion. Now you can have your choice, little one; you can go home with me, and take a good flogging for an example to the rest, and stay with us till another buyer comes up,--for Mr. Nicholson won't take such an uncertain piece of goods as you have showed yourself to be,--or you can go South. There's a trader here ready to take you right off. I'll give you till tomorrow morning to make up your mind." "I'll go South," said the poor girl, the next morning. "I can't bear ever to see Miss Tilda again." And she settled herself down to her fate. She knew her life of bondage would be hard there, and she would not have much chance of getting her freedom. But it was better than the mortification of going back. So she was sold to Mr. Pervis, the slave-trader. Mr. Pervis made about fifty purchases in Baltimore and the vicinity, and then organizing his gang he started for the South. Oh, what a different journey from that which Tidy had intended when she left home. A thousand miles South, into the very heart of slavery's dominions, with a company of coarse, stupid, filthy, wretched creatures, such as she never would have willingly associated with at home, so much more delicately had she been reared. Many of these were field-hands sold to go to the cotton plantations,--sold for "rascality."