Dan would come up late in the evening to the house, and a nod to Dinah would be sufficient to send her flying down the garden to a clump of shrubs, where he would be waiting for her.
At these stolen meetings they were perfectly happy; for Tony said no word to her of the misery of his life--how he was always put to the hardest work and beaten on the smallest pretext, how in fact his life was made so unendurable that the idea of running away and taking to the swamps was constantly present to him.
As to making his way north, it did not enter his mind as possible.
Slaves did, indeed, at times succeed in traveling through the Northern States and making their way to Canada, but this was only possible by means of the organization known as the underground railway, an association consisting of a number of good people who devoted themselves to the purpose, giving shelter to fugitive slaves during the day, and then passing them on to the next refuge during the night.

For in the Northern States as well as the Southern any negro unprovided with papers showing that he was a free man was liable to be arrested and sent back to the South a prisoner, large rewards being given to those who arrested them.
As he was returning from one of these interviews with his wife, Tony was detected by the overseer, who was strolling about around the slaves' quarters, and was next morning flogged until he became insensible.

So terrible was the punishment that for some days he was unable to walk.

As soon as he could get about he was again set to work, but the following morning he was found to be missing.

Andrew Jackson at once rode into Richmond, and in half an hour placards and handbills were printed offering a reward for his capture.