But a new blow fell upon him. Captain Thomas Auld married again, after the death of his wife Mrs. Lucretia, and removed to St. Michael's,--an old village, the principal business of which was oyster fishing. He got into a quarrel with his brother, Mr. Hugh Auld of Baltimore, and demanded that Frederick should be sent back to him. So he was put on board a ship for St. Michael's. When swift steamboats on their way to Philadelphia passed the sloop that carried him, he bitterly regretted that he had not escaped to the Free States from Baltimore, where he could have had so many more opportunities for doing it than he could at the old fishing-village. Captain Thomas Auld and his new wife were both great professors of religion. He was an exhorter and class-leader in the Methodist Church. But their religion was not of a kind that taught them humanity to their fellow-creatures. They worked their slaves very hard, and kept them half fed and half clothed. Scolding and flogging were going on incessantly. Frederick soon discovered that they were violently opposed to colored people's knowing how to read; but when a pious young man in the neighborhood asked him to assist in a Sunday school for colored children, he resolved to seize the opportunity of being useful. When his master found out what he was doing, he was very angry; and the next Sunday he and two other Methodist class-leaders went to the school, armed with clubs and whips, and drove off both teachers and scholars. It was agreed that Frederick had been spoiled by living in Baltimore, and that it was necessary to cure him of his dangerous thirst for knowledge. For that purpose he was sent to a famous "negro-breaker" in the neighborhood named Covey. He was a great professor of religion, but a monster of cruelty. Frederick was almost killed by hard labor, and not a week passed without his being cruelly cut up with the whip. Escape was impossible, for Covey was on the watch at all times of day and night. Six months of such treatment wellnigh crushed all manhood out of him. But cruelty was carried so far that at last he became desperate, and when his master attempted to beat him, he struggled with him and threw him down. He expected to be hung for it, according to the laws of Maryland; but Covey prided himself on his reputation as a "negro-breaker," and he was ashamed to have it known that he had been conquered by a lad of seventeen. Frederick's time was not out for six months longer, but Covey never attempted to whip him again.