We found the evidence against us to be the testimony of one person; our master would not tell who it was; but we came to a unanimous decision among ourselves as to who their informant was.  We were sent off to the jail at Easton.  When we got there, we were delivered up to the sheriff, Mr. Joseph Graham, and by him placed in jail.  Henry, John, and myself, were placed in one room together—­Charles, and Henry Bailey, in another.  Their object in separating us was to hinder concert.

We had been in jail scarcely twenty minutes, when a swarm of slave traders, and agents for slave traders, flocked into jail to look at us, and to ascertain if we were for sale.  Such a set of beings I never saw before!  I felt myself surrounded by so many fiends from perdition.  A band of pirates never looked more like their father, the devil.  They laughed and grinned over us, saying, “Ah, my boys! we have got you, haven’t we?” And after taunting us in various ways, they one by one went into an examination of us, with intent to ascertain our value.  They would impudently ask us if we would not like to have them for our masters.  We would make them no answer, and leave them to find out as best they could.  Then they would curse and swear at us, telling us that they could take the devil out of us in a very little while, if we were only in their hands.

While in jail, we found ourselves in much more comfortable quarters than we expected when we went there.  We did not get much to eat, nor that which was very good; but we had a good clean room, from the windows of which we could see what was going on in the street, which was very much better than though we had been placed in one of the dark, damp cells.  Upon the whole, we got along very well, so far as the jail and its keeper were concerned.  Immediately after the holidays were over, contrary to all our expectations, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Freeland came up to Easton, and took Charles, the two Henrys, and John, out of jail, and carried them home, leaving me alone.  I regarded this separation as a final one.  It caused me more pain than any thing else in the whole transaction.  I was ready for any thing rather than separation.  I supposed that they had consulted together, and had decided that, as I was the whole cause of the intention of the others to run away, it was hard to make the innocent suffer with the guilty; and that they had, therefore, concluded to take the others home, and sell me, as a warning to the others that remained.  It is due to the noble Henry to say, he seemed almost as reluctant at leaving the prison as at leaving home to come to the prison.  But we knew we should, in all probability, be separated, if we were sold; and since he was in their hands, he concluded to go peaceably home.