This first little wood, then, though somewhat dark and damp, had its pleasant and cheerful associations; but the wood beyond was weird and dismal, with its dense shade, its fallen trees rotting in dark gullies, its depth of decaying leaves, into which your feet sank down and down, until in alarm you doubted whether there were really any footing beneath, or if it would be possible ever to extricate yourself again. These two woods touched only at one point, included in an angle between a little burying-ground, whose solemn associations increased the gloom of the farther wood. As children, we had been wont, in adventurous moods, to cross one corner of the burying-ground, and striking into a ravine within this wood, down which trickled a little dark stream, wade up it barefoot, with grave, half-awe-stricken faces, until the stream sank again beneath the dead leaves, emptying itself I know not where. We had given wild and fantastic names to some of the ways and places about this ravine, but the rest of the wood was so little attractive and enjoyable that we generally avoided it, unless in some ramble of unusual length, we wished to strike across one portion of it, making thereby a somewhat shorter cut into the turnpike road a mile or two beyond. As I stood this hot summer-day looking toward the woods, suddenly there stood before me a strongly-made middle-aged negro woman. Whether she had glided round the house, or in what way she had come so suddenly and quietly before me, I do not know; but there she stood, bare-headed, and humbly asking for a piece of bread, or any cold food that I could spare. Her appearance struck me with surprise; her skin was of a deep, rich, yellow brown, her face soft and kindly in expression, but wonderfully swollen, and with the appearance of being one mass of bruises. Her red, inflamed eyes seemed to weep incessantly and involuntarily; whatever might be the expression of her mouth, so inflamed and suffering were they, that they were pitiful to see; and to complete the picture, the stump of one of her arms, which had been severed at some former period, close to the shoulder, was but partially hidden by her ragged, low-necked dress. Her whole appearance struck me as the most pathetic I had ever beheld. I speedily brought the poor thing some bread and cold meat, which she received with warm expressions of gratitude; and she then told me that she was a fugitive slave, and having come here at night with her husband, at the approach of day they had hidden themselves within the wood.