"Oh, I got out very well in the end, master," he said, "though I did think at one time I should have been killed. When first they came to the door, I made a noise in the room to make them think Miss Bessy was still there, for fear they should take it into their noddles to run round to the back staircase and cut you off. But when they began to hammer on the door with their hatchets, I went to the other door and listened, and hearing you open the outer door of the pantry-hall, I said to myself, 'They are safe!' Then I halloed out quite loud, 'She's not here, she's got away, up to some of the rooms at the top. I've come round the back way, but she's gone.' Then I told them to stop their hammering, and I would open the door for them. But they went on and crushed it in; and then those vagabonds, Hark and Will--they are the worst niggers of them all--got me by the throat, and asked me how I came in there? So I told them I came the back way; and then they vowed I had helped her away, and Hark lifted up his hatchet to split my skull. He would have found it a pretty hard one; for once de horse threw me down a bank thirty feet, and I fell on the top of my head among the stones. That did not break it, and I think it would have taken two or three good knocks to get inside. But just as Master Hark was going to try, Nat Turner came up, with a gun in his hand, and he caught the other gentleman's arm, and said, 'Let the man alone. The first man who sheds a drop of our own blood, I'll shoot him dead. Do you think if we get to killing each other, we shall ever get the better of the whites?' Then Hark said, 'That in that case, I must come along with them, and shed some white blood too;' and then I couldn't go back. But I told them I couldn't keep up with them all along of my game leg, which makes me hobble so; and then they said they would put me on a horse." "And how did you get away in the end?" demanded I.