All this was very well, and I approved my wife’s contrivance as admirably good, both to keep me within doors eight or ten weeks at first, and to convey me away afterwards without any extraordinary bustle to be made about it; but still I did not know what it all tended to, and what the design of it all was. But my wife desired me to leave that to her; so I readily did, and she carried it all on with a prudence not to be disputed; and after she had wrapped my legs in flannel almost three months, she came and told me the sloop was ready and all the goods put on board. “And now, my dear,” says she, “I come to tell you all the rest of my design; for,” added she, “I hope you will not think I am going to kidnap you, and transport you from Virginia, as other people are transported to it, or that I am going to get you sent away and leave myself in possession of your estate; but you shall find me the same faithful, humble creature which I should have been if I had been still your slave, and not had any hopes of being your wife, and that in all my scheme which I have laid for your safety, in this new exigence, I have not proposed your going one step but where I shall go and be always with you, to assist and serve you on all occasions, and to take my portion with you, of what kind soever our lot may be.” This was so generous, and so handsome a declaration of her fidelity, and so great a token, too, of the goodness of her judgment in considering of the things which were before her, and of what my present circumstances called for, that, from that time forward, I gave myself cheerfully up to her management without any hesitation in the least, and after about ten days’ preparation we embarked in a large sloop of my own of about sixty tons. I should have mentioned here that I had still my faithful tutor, as I called him, at the head of my affairs; and, as he knew who to correspond with, and how to manage the correspondence in England, we left all that part to him, as I had done before; and I did this with a full satisfaction in his ability as well as in his integrity. It is true he had been a little chagrined in that affair of my wife, who, as I hinted before, had married me, after telling him, in answer to his solicitations, that she had a husband alive. Now, though this was literally true, yet, as it was a secret not fit to be opened to him, I was obliged to put him off with other reasons, as well as I could, perhaps not much to the purpose, and perhaps not much to his satisfaction, so that I reckoned he looked on himself as not very kindly used several ways. But he began to get over it, and to be easy, especially at our going away, when he found that the trust of everything was still left in his hands as it was before.