chunk: When Linda discovers that Benny and Ellen are also to be sent to the fields, she makes a desperate plan. Escaping to the North with two small children would be nearly impossible. Unwilling either to submit to Dr. Flint's abuse or abandon her family, she hides in the attic of her grandmother Aunt Martha's cabin. She hopes that Dr. Flint, believing that she has fled to the North, will sell her children rather than risk having them escape as well. Linda is overjoyed when Dr. Flint sells Benny and Ellen to a slave trader secretly representing Sands. Promising to free the children one day, Sands assigns them to live with Aunt Martha. Linda becomes physically debilitated by being confined to the tiny attic, where she can neither sit nor stand. Her only pleasure is to watch her children through a tiny peephole.