You must not trouble me with any more stories about Mr.Covey; and if you do not go immediately home, I will get hold of you myself." This was just what I expected, when I found he had _prejudged_ the case against me.

"But, Sir," I said, "I am sick and tired, and I cannot get home to-night." At this, he again relented, and finally he allowed me to remain all night at St.Michael's; but said I must be off early in the morning, and concluded his directions by making me swallow a huge dose of _epsom salts_--about the only medicine ever administered to slaves.
It was quite natural for Master Thomas to presume I was feigning sickness to escape work, for he probably thought that were _he_ in the place of a slave with no wages for his work, no praise for well doing, no motive for toil but the lash--he would try every possible scheme by which to escape labor.

I say I have no doubt of this; the reason is, that there are not, under the whole heavens, a set of men who cultivate such an intense dread of labor as do the slaveholders.

The charge of laziness against the slave is ever on their lips, and is the standing apology for every species of cruelty and brutality.

These men literally "bind heavy burdens, grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they, themselves, will not move them with one of their fingers." My kind readers shall have, in the next chapter--what they were led, perhaps, to expect to find in this--namely: an account of my partial disenthrallment from the tyranny of Covey, and the marked change which it brought about..