Down in a little valley, not far from grandmammy's cabin, stood Mr.Lee's mill, where the people came often in large numbers to get their corn ground.

It was a watermill; and I never shall be able to tell the many things thought and felt, while I sat on the bank and watched that mill, and the turning of that ponderous wheel.
The mill-pond, too, had its charms; and with my pinhook, and thread line, I could get _nibbles_, if I could catch no fish.

But, in all my sports and plays, and in spite of them, there would, occasionally, come the painful foreboding that I was not long to remain there, and that I must soon be called away to the home of old master.
I was A SLAVE--born a slave and though the fact was in{35 DEPARTURE FROM TUCKAHOE} comprehensible to me, it conveyed to my mind a sense of my entire dependence on the will of _somebody_ I had never seen; and, from some cause or other, I had been made to fear this somebody above all else on earth.

Born for another's benefit, as the _firstling_ of the cabin flock I was soon to be selected as a meet offering to the fearful and inexorable _demigod_, whose huge image on so many occasions haunted my childhood's imagination.

When the time of my departure was decided upon, my grandmother, knowing my fears, and in pity for them, kindly kept me ignorant of the dreaded event about to transpire.