On the road between Williamsburg and Richmond Sophia had remained hopeful throughout her ordeal, but she had yet to be quite as hopeful as she was on the coach ride back from Williamsburg to Richmond. The pendulum of her emotions had swung from one extreme to the other and back again: from thinking that Isaac’s fate was sealed, to seeing the potential for proving he acted in self defense, only to then see that option robbed from them by a prejudiced clerk, and finally to have the document in her hand that must result in his freedom. Judge Tucker had actually convinced the clerk to make them out four copies of the will—a concession that the clerk seemed rather reluctant to grant—and Sophia had insisted on keeping one of the copies with her, folded neatly in the drawstring bag that the Kentucky Abolition Society had given her, a well-used gift that felt almost ancient now.
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