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It 's been falling away in enormous chunks for most of my adult life . But I had now been three months in their valley , as nearly as I could estimate ; I had grown familiar with the narrow limits to which my wanderings had been confined ; and I began bitterly to feel the state of captivity in which I was held . And at last , when it hit me all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in heaven , whilst I was stealing a poor old woman 's nigger that had n't ever done me no harm , and now was showing me there 's One that 's always on the lookout , and ai n't agoing to allow no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further , I most dropped in my tracks I was so scared . When I thought of the loved friends who were thousands and thousands of miles from the savage island in which I was held a captive - when I reflected that my dreadful fate would for ever be concealed from them , and that , with hope deferred , they might continue to await my return long after my inanimate form had blended with the dust of the valley , I could not repress a shudder of anguish . I descended from the pi-pi , and attended by Kory-Kory , who on this occasion did not show his usual commiseration for my lameness , but seemed only anxious to hurry me on , walked away from the place .