THE QUEST OF THE SILVER FLEECE

A Novel

W.E.B. DU BOIS

1911

A.C. McClurg & Co.

Contents

• Note from the Author
• One   DREAMS
• Two   THE SCHOOL
• Three   MISS MARY TAYLOR
• Four   TOWN
• Five   ZORA
• Six   COTTON
• Seven   THE PLACE OF DREAMS
• Eight   MR. HARRY CRESSWELL
• Nine   THE PLANTING
• Ten   MR. TAYLOR CALLS
• Eleven   THE FLOWERING OF THE FLEECE
• Twelve   THE PROMISE
• Thirteen   MRS. GREY GIVES A DINNER
• Fourteen   LOVE
• Fifteen   REVELATION
• Sixteen   THE GREAT REFUSAL
• Seventeen   THE RAPE OF THE FLEECE
• Eighteen   THE COTTON CORNER
• Nineteen   THE DYING OF ELSPETH
• Twenty   THE WEAVING OF THE SILVER FLEECE
• Twenty-one   THE MARRIAGE MORNING
• Twenty-two   MISS CAROLINE WYNN
• Twenty-three   THE TRAINING OF ZORA
• Twenty-four   THE EDUCATION OF ALWYN
• Twenty-five   THE CAMPAIGN
• Twenty-six   CONGRESSMAN CRESSWEL
• Twenty-seven   THE VISION OF ZORA
• Twenty-eight   THE ANNUNCIATION
• Twenty-nine   A MASTER OF FATE
• Thirty   THE RETURN OF ZORA
• Thirty-one   A PARTING OF WAYS
• Thirty-two   ZORA'S WAY
• Thirty-three   THE BUYING OF THE SWAMP
• Thirty-four   THE RETURN OF ALWYN
• Thirty-five   THE COTTON MILL
• Thirty-six   THE LAND
• Thirty-seven   THE MOB
• Thirty-eight   ATONEMENT

THE QUEST OF THE SILVER FLEECE

TO ONE

whose name may not be written but to whose tireless
faith the shaping of these cruder thoughts to forms
more fitly perfect is doubtless due, this
finished work is herewith dedicated

Note

He who would tell a tale must look toward three ideals: to tell it well, to tell it beautifully, and to tell the truth.

The first is the Gift of God, the second is the Vision of Genius, but the third is the Reward of Honesty.

In The Quest of the Silver Fleece there is little, I ween, divine or ingenious; but, at least, I have been honest. In no fact or picture have I consciously set down aught the counterpart of which I have not seen or known; and whatever the finished picture may lack of completeness, this lack is due now to the story-teller, now to the artist, but never to the herald of the Truth.

NEW YORK CITY

August 15, 1911

THE AUTHOR

One

DREAMS

Night fell. The red waters of the swamp grew sinister and sullen. The tall pines lost their slimness and stood in wide blurred blotches all across the way, and a great shadowy bird arose, wheeled and melted, murmuring, into the black-green sky.

The boy wearily dropped his heavy bundle and stood still, listening as the voice of crickets split the shadows and made the silence audible. A tear wandered down his brown cheek. They were at supper now, he whispered—the father and old mother, away back yonder beyond the night. They were far away; they would never be as near as once they had been, for he had stepped into the world. And the cat and Old Billy—ah, but the world was a lonely thing, so wide and tall and empty! And so bare, so bitter bare! Somehow he had never dreamed of the world as lonely before; he had fared forth to beckoning hands and luring, and to the eager hum of human voices, as of some great, swelling music.

Yet now he was alone; the empty night was closing all about him here in a strange land, and he was afraid. The bundle with his earthly treasure had hung heavy and heavier on his shoulder; his little horde of money was tightly wadded in his sock, and the school lay hidden somewhere far away in the shadows. He wondered how far it was; he looked and harkened, starting at his own heartbeats, and fearing more and more the long dark fingers of the night.

Then of a sudden up from the darkness came music. It was human music, but of a wildness and a weirdness that startled the boy as it fluttered and danced across the dull red waters of the swamp. He hesitated, then impelled by some strange power, left the highway and slipped into the forest of the swamp, shrinking, yet following the song hungrily and half forgetting his fear. A harsher, shriller note struck in as of many and ruder voices; but above it flew the first sweet music, birdlike, abandoned, and the boy crept closer.

The cabin crouched ragged and black at the edge of black waters. An old chimney leaned drunkenly against it, raging with fire and smoke, while through the chinks winked red gleams of warmth and wild cheer. With a revel of shouting and noise, the music suddenly ceased. Hoarse staccato cries and peals of laughter shook the old hut, and as the boy stood there peering through the black trees, abruptly the door flew open and a flood of light illumined the wood.

Amid this mighty halo, as on clouds of flame, a girl was dancing. She was black, and lithe, and tall, and willowy. Her garments twined and flew around the delicate moulding of her dark, young, half-naked limbs. A heavy mass of hair clung motionless to her wide forehead. Her arms twirled and flickered, and body and soul seemed quivering and whirring in the poetry of her motion.

As she danced she sang. He heard her voice as before, fluttering like a bird's in the full sweetness of her utter music. It was no tune nor melody, it was just formless, boundless music. The boy forgot himself and all the world besides. All his darkness was sudden light; dazzled he crept forward, bewildered, fascinated, until with one last wild whirl the elf-girl paused. The crimson light fell full upon the warm and velvet bronze of her face—her midnight eyes were aglow, her full purple lips apart, her half hid bosom panting, and all the music dead. Involuntarily the boy gave a gasping cry and awoke to swamp and night and fire, while a white face, drawn, red-eyed, peered outward from some hidden throng within the cabin.

"Who's that?" a harsh voice cried.

"Where?" "Who is it?" and pale crowding faces blurred the light.

The boy wheeled blindly and fled in terror stumbling through the swamp, hearing strange sounds and feeling stealthy creeping hands and arms and whispering voices. On he toiled in mad haste, struggling toward the road and losing it until finally beneath the shadows of a mighty oak he sank exhausted. There he lay a while trembling and at last drifted into dreamless sleep.

It was morning when he awoke and threw a startled glance upward to the twisted branches of the oak that bent above, sifting down sunshine on his brown face and close curled hair. Slowly he remembered the loneliness, the fear and wild running through the dark. He laughed in the bold courage of day and stretched himself.

Then suddenly he bethought him again of that vision of the night—the waving arms and flying limbs of the girl, and her great black eyes looking into the night and calling him. He could hear her now, and hear that wondrous savage music. Had it been real? Had he dreamed? Or had it been some witch-vision of the night, come to tempt and lure him to his undoing? Where was that black and flaming cabin? Where was the girl—the soul that had called him? She must have been real; she had to live and dance and sing; he must again look into the mystery of her great eyes. And he sat up in sudden determination, and, lo! gazed straight into the very eyes of his dreaming.

She sat not four feet from him, leaning against the great tree, her eyes now languorously abstracted, now alert and quizzical with mischief. She seemed but half-clothed, and her warm, dark flesh peeped furtively through the rent gown; her thick, crisp hair was frowsy and rumpled, and the long curves of her bare young arms gleamed in the morning sunshine, glowing with vigor and life. A little mocking smile came and sat upon her lips.

"What you run for?" she asked, with dancing mischief in her eyes.

"Because—" he hesitated, and his cheeks grew hot.

"I knows," she said, with impish glee, laughing low music.

"Why?" he challenged, sturdily.

"You was a-feared."

He bridled. "Well, I reckon you'd be a-feared if you was caught out in the black dark all alone."

"Pooh!" she scoffed and hugged her knees. "Pooh! I've stayed out all alone heaps o' nights."

He looked at her with a curious awe.

"I don't believe you," he asserted; but she tossed her head and her eyes grew scornful.

"Who's a-feared of the dark? I love night." Her eyes grew soft.

He watched her silently, till, waking from her daydream, she abruptly asked:

"Where you from?"

"Georgia."

"Where's that?"

He looked at her in surprise, but she seemed matter-of-fact.

"It's away over yonder," he answered.

"Behind where the sun comes up?"

"Oh, no!"

"Then it ain't so far," she declared. "I knows where the sun rises, and I knows where it sets." She looked up at its gleaming splendor glinting through the leaves, and, noting its height, announced abruptly:

"I'se hungry."

"So'm I," answered the boy, fumbling at his bundle; and then, timidly: "Will you eat with me?"

"Yes," she said, and watched him with eager eyes.

Untying the strips of cloth, he opened his box, and disclosed chicken and biscuits, ham and corn-bread. She clapped her hands in glee.

"Is there any water near?" he asked.

Without a word, she bounded up and flitted off like a brown bird, gleaming dull-golden in the sun, glancing in and out among the trees, till she paused above a tiny black pool, and then came tripping and swaying back with hands held cupwise and dripping with cool water.

"Drink," she cried. Obediently he bent over the little hands that seemed so soft and thin. He took a deep draught; and then to drain the last drop, his hands touched hers and the shock of flesh first meeting flesh startled them both, while the water rained through. A moment their eyes looked deep into each other's—a timid, startled gleam in hers; a wonder in his. Then she said dreamily:

"We'se known us all our lives, and—before, ain't we?"

He hesitated.

"Ye—es—I reckon," he slowly returned. And then, brightening, he asked gayly: "And we'll be friends always, won't we?"

"Yes," she said at last, slowly and solemnly, and another brief moment they stood still.

Then the mischief danced in her eyes, and a song bubbled on her lips. She hopped to the tree.

"Come—eat!" she cried. And they nestled together amid the big black roots of the oak, laughing and talking while they ate.

"What's over there?" he asked pointing northward.

"Cresswell's big house."

"And yonder to the west?"

"The school."

He started joyfully.

"The school! What school?"

"Old Miss' School."

"Miss Smith's school?"

"Yes." The tone was disdainful.

"Why, that's where I'm going. I was a-feared it was a long way off; I must have passed it in the night."

"I hate it!" cried the girl, her lips tense.

"But I'll be so near," he explained. "And why do you hate it?"

"Yes—you'll be near," she admitted; "that'll be nice; but—" she glanced westward, and the fierce look faded. Soft joy crept to her face again, and she sat once more dreaming.

"Yon way's nicest," she said.

"Why, what's there?"

"The swamp," she said mysteriously.

"And what's beyond the swamp?"

She crouched beside him and whispered in eager, tense tones: "Dreams!"

He looked at her, puzzled.

"Dreams?" vaguely—"dreams? Why, dreams ain't—nothing."

"Oh, yes they is!" she insisted, her eyes flaming in misty radiance as she sat staring beyond the shadows of the swamp. "Yes they is! There ain't nothing but dreams—that is, nothing much.

"And over yonder behind the swamps is great fields full of dreams, piled high and burning; and right amongst them the sun, when he's tired o' night, whispers and drops red things, 'cept when devils make 'em black."

The boy stared at her; he knew not whether to jeer or wonder.

"How you know?" he asked at last, skeptically.

"Promise you won't tell?"

"Yes," he answered.

She cuddled into a little heap, nursing her knees, and answered slowly.

"I goes there sometimes. I creeps in 'mongst the dreams; they hangs there like big flowers, dripping dew and sugar and blood—red, red blood. And there's little fairies there that hop about and sing, and devils—great, ugly devils that grabs at you and roasts and eats you if they gits you; but they don't git me. Some devils is big and white, like ha'nts; some is long and shiny, like creepy, slippery snakes; and some is little and broad and black, and they yells—"

The boy was listening in incredulous curiosity, half minded to laugh, half minded to edge away from the black-red radiance of yonder dusky swamp. He glanced furtively backward, and his heart gave a great bound.

"Some is little and broad and black, and they yells—" chanted the girl. And as she chanted, deep, harsh tones came booming through the forest:

"Zo-ra! Zo-ra! O—o—oh, Zora!"

He saw far behind him, toward the shadows of the swamp, an old woman—short, broad, black and wrinkled, with fangs and pendulous lips and red, wicked eyes. His heart bounded in sudden fear; he wheeled toward the girl, and caught only the uncertain flash of her garments—the wood was silent, and he was alone.

He arose, startled, quickly gathered his bundle, and looked around him. The sun was strong and high, the morning fresh and vigorous. Stamping one foot angrily, he strode jauntily out of the wood toward the big road.

But ever and anon he glanced curiously back. Had he seen a haunt? Or was the elf-girl real? And then he thought of her words:

"We'se known us all our lives."

Two

THE SCHOOL

Day was breaking above the white buildings of the Negro school and throwing long, low lines of gold in at Miss Sarah Smith's front window. She lay in the stupor of her last morning nap, after a night of harrowing worry. Then, even as she partially awoke, she lay still with closed eyes, feeling the shadow of some great burden, yet daring not to rouse herself and recall its exact form; slowly again she drifted toward unconsciousness.

"Bang! bang! bang!" hard knuckles were beating upon the door below.

She heard drowsily, and dreamed that it was the nailing up of all her doors; but she did not care much, and but feebly warded the blows away, for she was very tired.

"Bang! bang! bang!" persisted the hard knuckles.

She started up, and her eye fell upon a letter lying on her bureau. Back she sank with a sigh, and lay staring at the ceiling—a gaunt, flat, sad-eyed creature, with wisps of gray hair half-covering her baldness, and a face furrowed with care and gathering years.

It was thirty years ago this day, she recalled, since she first came to this broad land of shade and shine in Alabama to teach black folks.

It had been a hard beginning with suspicion and squalor around; with poverty within and without the first white walls of the new school home. Yet somehow the struggle then with all its helplessness and disappointment had not seemed so bitter as today: then failure meant but little, now it seemed to mean everything; then it meant disappointment to a score of ragged urchins, now it meant two hundred boys and girls, the spirits of a thousand gone before and the hopes of thousands to come. In her imagination the significance of these half dozen gleaming buildings perched aloft seemed portentous—big with the destiny not simply of a county and a State, but of a race—a nation—a world. It was God's own cause, and yet—

"Bang! bang! bang!" again went the hard knuckles down there at the front.

Miss Smith slowly arose, shivering a bit and wondering who could possibly be rapping at that time in the morning. She sniffed the chilling air and was sure she caught some lingering perfume from Mrs. Vanderpool's gown. She had brought this rich and rare-apparelled lady up here yesterday, because it was more private, and here she had poured forth her needs. She had talked long and in deadly earnest. She had not spoken of the endowment for which she had hoped so desperately during a quarter of a century—no, only for the five thousand dollars to buy the long needed new land. It was so little—so little beside what this woman squandered—

The insistent knocking was repeated louder than before.

"Sakes alive," cried Miss Smith, throwing a shawl about her and leaning out the window. "Who is it, and what do you want?"

"Please, ma'am. I've come to school," answered a tall black boy with a bundle.

"Well, why don't you go to the office?" Then she saw his face and hesitated. She felt again the old motherly instinct to be the first to welcome the new pupil; a luxury which, in later years, the endless push of details had denied her.

"Wait!" she cried shortly, and began to dress.

A new boy, she mused. Yes, every day they straggled in; every day came the call for more, more—this great, growing thirst to know—to do—to be. And yet that woman had sat right here, aloof, imperturbable, listening only courteously. When Miss Smith finished, she had paused and, flicking her glove,—

"My dear Miss Smith," she said softly, with a tone that just escaped a drawl—"My dear Miss Smith, your work is interesting and your faith—marvellous; but, frankly, I cannot make myself believe in it. You are trying to treat these funny little monkeys just as you would your own children—or even mine. It's quite heroic, of course, but it's sheer madness, and I do not feel I ought to encourage it. I would not mind a thousand or so to train a good cook for the Cresswells, or a clean and faithful maid for myself—for Helene has faults—or indeed deft and tractable laboring-folk for any one; but I'm quite through trying to turn natural servants into masters of me and mine. I—hope I'm not too blunt; I hope I make myself clear. You know, statistics show—"

"Drat statistics!" Miss Smith had flashed impatiently. "These are folks."

Mrs. Vanderpool smiled indulgently. "To be sure," she murmured, "but what sort of folks?"

"God's sort."

"Oh, well—"

But Miss Smith had the bit in her teeth and could not have stopped. She was paying high for the privilege of talking, but it had to be said.

"God's sort, Mrs. Vanderpool—not the sort that think of the world as arranged for their exclusive benefit and comfort."

"Well, I do want to count—"

Miss Smith bent forward—not a beautiful pose, but earnest.

"I want you to count, and I want to count, too; but I don't want us to be the only ones that count. I want to live in a world where every soul counts—white, black, and yellow—all. That's what I'm teaching these children here—to count, and not to be like dumb, driven cattle. If you don't believe in this, of course you cannot help us."

"Your spirit is admirable, Miss Smith," she had said very softly; "I only wish I could feel as you do. Good-afternoon," and she had rustled gently down the narrow stairs, leaving an all but imperceptible suggestion of perfume. Miss Smith could smell it yet as she went down this morning.

The breakfast bell jangled. "Five thousand dollars," she kept repeating to herself, greeting the teachers absently—"five thousand dollars." And then on the porch she was suddenly aware of the awaiting boy. She eyed him critically: black, fifteen, country-bred, strong, clear-eyed.

"Well?" she asked in that brusque manner wherewith her natural timidity was wont to mask her kindness. "Well, sir?"

"I've come to school."

"Humph—we can't teach boys for nothing."

The boy straightened. "I can pay my way," he returned.

"You mean you can pay what we ask?"

"Why, yes. Ain't that all?"

"No. The rest is gathered from the crumbs of Dives' table."

Then he saw the twinkle in her eyes. She laid her hand gently upon his shoulder.

"If you don't hurry you'll be late to breakfast," she said with an air of confidence. "See those boys over there? Follow them, and at noon come to the office—wait! What's your name?"

"Blessed Alwyn," he answered, and the passing teachers smiled.

Three

MISS MARY TAYLOR

Miss Mary Taylor did not take a college course for the purpose of teaching Negroes. Not that she objected to Negroes as human beings—quite the contrary. In the debate between the senior societies her defence of the Fifteenth Amendment had been not only a notable bit of reasoning, but delivered with real enthusiasm. Nevertheless, when the end of the summer came and the only opening facing her was the teaching of children at Miss Smith's experiment in the Alabama swamps, it must be frankly confessed that Miss Taylor was disappointed.

Her dream had been a post-graduate course at Bryn Mawr; but that was out of the question until money was earned. She had pictured herself earning this by teaching one or two of her "specialties" in some private school near New York or Boston, or even in a Western college. The South she had not thought of seriously; and yet, knowing of its delightful hospitality and mild climate, she was not averse to Charleston or New Orleans. But from the offer that came to teach Negroes—country Negroes, and little ones at that—she shrank, and, indeed, probably would have refused it out of hand had it not been for her queer brother, John. John Taylor, who had supported her through college, was interested in cotton. Having certain schemes in mind, he had been struck by the fact that the Smith School was in the midst of the Alabama cotton-belt.

"Better go," he had counselled, sententiously. "Might learn something useful down there."

She had been not a little dismayed by the outlook, and had protested against his blunt insistence.

"But, John, there's no society—just elementary work—"

John had met this objection with, "Humph!" as he left for his office. Next day he had returned to the subject.

"Been looking up Tooms County. Find some Cresswells there—big plantations—rated at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Some others, too; big cotton county."

"You ought to know, John, if I teach Negroes I'll scarcely see much of people in my own class."

"Nonsense! Butt in. Show off. Give 'em your Greek—and study Cotton. At any rate, I say go."

And so, howsoever reluctantly, she had gone.

The trial was all she had anticipated, and possibly a bit more. She was a pretty young woman of twenty-three, fair and rather daintily moulded. In favorable surroundings, she would have been an aristocrat and an epicure. Here she was teaching dirty children, and the smell of confused odors and bodily perspiration was to her at times unbearable.

Then there was the fact of their color: it was a fact so insistent, so fatal she almost said at times, that she could not escape it. Theoretically she had always treated it with disdainful ease.

"What's the mere color of a human soul's skin," she had cried to a Wellesley audience and the audience had applauded with enthusiasm. But here in Alabama, brought closely and intimately in touch with these dark skinned children, their color struck her at first with a sort of terror—it seemed ominous and forbidding. She found herself shrinking away and gripping herself lest they should perceive. She could not help but think that in most other things they were as different from her as in color. She groped for new ways to teach colored brains and marshal colored thoughts and the result was puzzling both to teacher and student. With the other teachers she had little commerce. They were in no sense her sort of folk. Miss Smith represented the older New England of her parents—honest, inscrutable, determined, with a conscience which she worshipped, and utterly unselfish. She appealed to Miss Taylor's ruddier and daintier vision but dimly and distantly as some memory of the past. The other teachers were indistinct personalities, always very busy and very tired, and talking "school-room" with their meals. Miss Taylor was soon starving for human companionship, for the lighter touches of life and some of its warmth and laughter. She wanted a glance of the new books and periodicals and talk of great philanthropies and reforms. She felt out of the world, shut in and mentally anæmic; great as the "Negro Problem" might be as a world problem, it looked sordid and small at close range. So for the hundredth time she was thinking today, as she walked alone up the lane back of the barn, and then slowly down through the bottoms. She paused a moment and nodded to the two boys at work in a young cotton field.

"Cotton!"

She paused. She remembered with what interest she had always read of this little thread of the world. She had almost forgotten that it was here within touch and sight. For a moment something of the vision of Cotton was mirrored in her mind. The glimmering sea of delicate leaves whispered and murmured before her, stretching away to the Northward. She remembered that beyond this little world it stretched on and on—how far she did not know—but on and on in a great trembling sea, and the foam of its mighty waters would one time flood the ends of the earth.

She glimpsed all this with parted lips, and then sighed impatiently. There might be a bit of poetry here and there, but most of this place was such desperate prose.

She glanced absently at the boys.

One was Bles Alwyn, a tall black lad. (Bles, she mused,—now who would think of naming a boy "Blessed," save these incomprehensible creatures!) Her regard shifted to the green stalks and leaves again, and she started to move away. Then her New England conscience stepped in. She ought not to pass these students without a word of encouragement or instruction.

"Cotton is a wonderful thing, is it not, boys?" she said rather primly. The boys touched their hats and murmured something indistinctly. Miss Taylor did not know much about cotton, but at least one more remark seemed called for.

"How long before the stalks will be ready to cut?" she asked carelessly. The farther boy coughed and Bles raised his eyes and looked at her; then after a pause he answered slowly. (Oh! these people were so slow—now a New England boy would have answered and asked a half-dozen questions in the time.)

"I—I don't know," he faltered.

"Don't know! Well, of all things!" inwardly commented Miss Taylor—"literally born in cotton, and—Oh, well," as much as to ask, "What's the use?" She turned again to go.

"What is planted over there?" she asked, although she really didn't care.

"Goobers," answered the smaller boy.

"Goobers?" uncomprehendingly.

"Peanuts," Bles specified.

"Oh!" murmured Miss Taylor. "I see there are none on the vines yet. I suppose, though, it's too early for them."

Then came the explosion. The smaller boy just snorted with irrepressible laughter and bolted across the fields. And Bles—was Miss Taylor deceived?—or was he chuckling? She reddened, drew herself up, and then, dropping her primness, rippled with laughter.

"What is the matter, Bles?" she asked.

He looked at her with twinkling eyes.

"Well, you see, Miss Taylor, it's like this: farming don't seem to be your specialty."

The word was often on Miss Taylor's lips, and she recognized it. Despite herself she smiled again.

"Of course, it isn't—I don't know anything about farming. But what did I say so funny?"

Bles was now laughing outright.

"Why, Miss Taylor! I declare! Goobers don't grow on the tops of vines, but underground on the roots—like yams."

"Is that so?"

"Yes, and we—we don't pick cotton stalks except for kindling."

"I must have been thinking of hemp. But tell me more about cotton."

His eyes lighted, for cotton was to him a very real and beautiful thing, and a life-long companion, yet not one whose friendship had been coarsened and killed by heavy toil. He leaned against his hoe and talked half dreamily—where had he learned so well that dream-talk?

"We turn up the earth and sow it soon after Christmas. Then pretty soon there comes a sort of greenness on the black land and it swells and grows and, and—shivers. Then stalks shoot up with three or four leaves. That's the way it is now, see? After that we chop out the weak stalks, and the strong ones grow tall and dark, till I think it must be like the ocean—all green and billowy; then come little flecks here and there and the sea is all filled with flowers—flowers like little bells, blue and purple and white."

"Ah! that must be beautiful," sighed Miss Taylor, wistfully, sinking to the ground and clasping her hands about her knees.

"Yes, ma'am. But it's prettiest when the bolls come and swell and burst, and the cotton covers the field like foam, all misty—"

She bent wondering over the pale plants. The poetry of the thing began to sing within her, awakening her unpoetic imagination, and she murmured:

"The Golden Fleece—it's the Silver Fleece!"

He harkened.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Have you never heard of the Golden Fleece, Bles?"

"No, ma'am," he said eagerly; then glancing up toward the Cresswell fields, he saw two white men watching them. He grasped his hoe and started briskly to work.

"Some time you'll tell me, please, won't you?"

She glanced at her watch in surprise and arose hastily.

"Yes, with pleasure," she said moving away—at first very fast, and then more and more slowly up the lane, with a puzzled look on her face.

She began to realize that in this pleasant little chat the fact of the boy's color had quite escaped her; and what especially puzzled her was that this had not happened before. She had been here four months, and yet every moment up to now she seemed to have been vividly, almost painfully conscious, that she was a white woman talking to black folk. Now, for one little half-hour she had been a woman talking to a boy—no, not even that: she had been talking—just talking; there were no persons in the conversation, just things—one thing: Cotton.

She started thinking of cotton—but at once she pulled herself back to the other aspect. Always before she had been veiled from these folk: who had put the veil there? Had she herself hung it before her soul, or had they hidden timidly behind its other side? Or was it simply a brute fact, regardless of both of them?

The longer she thought, the more bewildered she grew. There seemed no analogy that she knew. Here was a unique thing, and she climbed to her bedroom and stared at the stars.

Four

TOWN

John Taylor had written to his sister. He wanted information, very definite information, about Tooms County cotton; about its stores, its people—especially its people. He propounded a dozen questions, sharp, searching questions, and he wanted the answers tomorrow. Impossible! thought Miss Taylor. He had calculated on her getting this letter yesterday, forgetting that their mail was fetched once a day from the town, four miles away. Then, too, she did not know all these matters and knew no one who did. Did John think she had nothing else to do? And sighing at the thought of to-morrow's drudgery, she determined to consult Miss Smith in the morning.

Miss Smith suggested a drive to town—Bles could take her in the top-buggy after school—and she could consult some of the merchants and business men. She could then write her letter and mail it there; it would be but a day or so late getting to New York.

"Of course," said Miss Smith drily, slowly folding her napkin, "of course, the only people here are the Cresswells."

"Oh, yes," said Miss Taylor invitingly. There was an allurement about this all-pervasive name; it held her by a growing fascination and she was anxious for the older woman to amplify. Miss Smith, however, remained provokingly silent, so Miss Taylor essayed further.

"What sort of people are the Cresswells?" she asked.

"The old man's a fool; the young one a rascal; the girl a ninny," was Miss Smith's succinct and acid classification of the county's first family; adding, as she rose, "but they own us body and soul." She hurried out of the dining-room without further remark. Miss Smith was more patient with black folk than with white.

The sun was hanging just above the tallest trees of the swamp when Miss Taylor, weary with the day's work, climbed into the buggy beside Bles. They wheeled comfortably down the road, leaving the sombre swamp, with its black-green, to the right, and heading toward the golden-green of waving cotton fields. Miss Taylor lay back, listlessly, and drank the soft warm air of the languorous Spring. She thought of the golden sheen of the cotton, and the cold March winds of New England; of her brother who apparently noted nothing of leaves and winds and seasons; and of the mighty Cresswells whom Miss Smith so evidently disliked. Suddenly she became aware of her long silence and the silence of the boy.

"Bles," she began didactically, "where are you from?"

He glanced across at her and answered shortly:

"Georgia, ma'am," and was silent.

The girl tried again.

"Georgia is a large State,"—tentatively.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Are you going back there when you finish?"

"I don't know."

"I think you ought to—and work for your people."

"Yes, ma'am."

She stopped, puzzled, and looked about. The old horse jogged lazily on, and Bles switched him unavailingly. Somehow she had missed the way today. The Veil hung thick, sombre, impenetrable. Well, she had done her duty, and slowly she nestled back and watched the far-off green and golden radiance of the cotton.

"Bles," she said impulsively, "shall I tell you of the Golden Fleece?"

He glanced at her again.

"Yes'm, please," he said.

She settled herself almost luxuriously, and began the story of Jason and the Argonauts.

The boy remained silent. And when she had finished, he still sat silent, elbow on knee, absently flicking the jogging horse and staring ahead at the horizon. She looked at him doubtfully with some disappointment that his hearing had apparently shared so little of the joy of her telling; and, too, there was mingled a vague sense of having lowered herself to too familiar fellowship with this—this boy. She straightened herself instinctively and thought of some remark that would restore proper relations. She had not found it before he said, slowly:

"All yon is Jason's."

"What?" she asked, puzzled.

He pointed with one sweep of his long arm to the quivering mass of green-gold foliage that swept from swamp to horizon.

"All yon golden fleece is Jason's now," he repeated.

"I thought it was—Cresswell's," she said.

"That's what I mean."

She suddenly understood that the story had sunk deeply.

"I am glad to hear you say that," she said methodically, "for Jason was a brave adventurer—"

"I thought he was a thief."

"Oh, well—those were other times."

"The Cresswells are thieves now."

Miss Taylor answered sharply.

"Bles, I am ashamed to hear you talk so of your neighbors simply because they are white."

But Bles continued.

"This is the Black Sea," he said, pointing to the dull cabins that crouched here and there upon the earth, with the dark twinkling of their black folk darting out to see the strangers ride by.

Despite herself Miss Taylor caught the allegory and half whispered, "Lo! the King himself!" as a black man almost rose from the tangled earth at their side. He was tall and thin and sombre-hued, with a carven face and thick gray hair.

"Your servant, mistress," he said, with a sweeping bow as he strode toward the swamp. Miss Taylor stopped him, for he looked interesting, and might answer some of her brother's questions. He turned back and stood regarding her with sorrowful eyes and ugly mouth.

"Do you live about here?" she asked.

"I'se lived here a hundred years," he answered. She did not believe it; he might be seventy, eighty, or even ninety—indeed, there was about him that indefinable sense of age—some shadow of endless living; but a hundred seemed absurd.

"You know the people pretty well, then?"

"I knows dem all. I knows most of 'em better dan dey knows demselves. I knows a heap of tings in dis world and in de next."

"This is a great cotton country?"

"Dey don't raise no cotton now to what dey used to when old Gen'rel Cresswell fust come from Carolina; den it was a bale and a half to the acre on stalks dat looked like young brushwood. Dat was cotton."

"You know the Cresswells, then?"

"Know dem? I knowed dem afore dey was born."

"They are—wealthy people?"

"Dey rolls in money and dey'se quality, too. No shoddy upstarts dem, but born to purple, lady, born to purple. Old Gen'ral Cresswell had niggers and acres no end back dere in Carolina. He brung a part of dem here and here his son, de father of dis Colonel Cresswell, was born. De son—I knowed him well—he had a tousand niggers and ten tousand acres afore de war."

"Were they kind to their slaves?"

"Oh, yaas, yaas, ma'am, dey was careful of de're niggers and wouldn't let de drivers whip 'em much."

"And these Cresswells today?"

"Oh, dey're quality—high-blooded folks—dey'se lost some land and niggers, but, lordy, nuttin' can buy de Cresswells, dey naturally owns de world."

"Are they honest and kind?"

"Oh, yaas, ma'am—dey'se good white folks."

"Good white folk?"

"Oh, yaas, ma'am—course you knows white folks will be white folks—white folks will be white folks. Your servant, ma'am." And the swamp swallowed him.

The boy's eyes followed him as he whipped up the horse.

"He's going to Elspeth's," he said.

"Who is he?"

"We just call him Old Pappy—he's a preacher, and some folks say a conjure man, too."

"And who is Elspeth?"

"She lives in the swamp—she's a kind of witch, I reckon, like—like—"

"Like Medea?"

"Yes—only—I don't know—" and he grew thoughtful.

The road turned now and far away to the eastward rose the first straggling cabins of the town. Creeping toward them down the road rolled a dark squat figure. It grew and spread slowly on the horizon until it became a fat old black woman, hooded and aproned, with great round hips and massive bosom. Her face was heavy and homely until she looked up and lifted the drooping cheeks, and then kindly old eyes beamed on the young teacher, as she curtsied and cried:

"Good-evening, honey! Good-evening! You sure is pretty dis evening."

"Why, Aunt Rachel, how are you?" There was genuine pleasure in the girl's tone.

"Just tolerable, honey, bless de Lord! Rumatiz is kind o' bad and Aunt Rachel ain't so young as she use ter be."

"And what brings you to town afoot this time of day?"

The face fell again to dull care and the old eyes crept away. She fumbled with her cane.

"It's de boys again, honey," she returned solemnly; "dey'se good boys, dey is good to de're old mammy, but dey'se high strung and dey gits fighting and drinking and—and—last Saturday night dey got took up again. I'se been to Jedge Grey—I use to tote him on my knee, honey—I'se been to him to plead him not to let 'em go on de gang, 'cause you see, honey," and she stroked the girl's sleeve as if pleading with her, too, "you see it done ruins boys to put 'em on de gang."

Miss Taylor tried hard to think of something comforting to say, but words seemed inadequate to cheer the old soul; but after a few moments they rode on, leaving the kind face again beaming and dimpling.

And now the country town of Toomsville lifted itself above the cotton and corn, fringed with dirty straggling cabins of black folk. The road swung past the iron watering trough, turned sharply and, after passing two or three pert cottages and a stately house, old and faded, opened into the wide square. Here pulsed the very life and being of the land. Yonder great bales of cotton, yellow-white in its soiled sacking, piled in lofty, dusty mountains, lay listening for the train that, twice a day, ran out to the greater world. Round about, tied to the well-gnawed hitching rails, were rows of mules—mules with back cloths; mules with saddles; mules hitched to long wagons, buggies, and rickety gigs; mules munching golden ears of corn, and mules drooping their heads in sorrowful memory of better days.

Beyond the cotton warehouse smoked the chimneys of the seed-mill and the cotton-gin; a red livery-stable faced them and all about three sides of the square ran stores; big stores and small wide-windowed, narrow stores. Some had old steps above the worn clay side-walks, and some were flush with the ground. All had a general sense of dilapidation—save one, the largest and most imposing, a three-story brick. This was Caldwell's "Emporium"; and here Bles stopped and Miss Taylor entered.

Mr. Caldwell himself hurried forward; and the whole store, clerks and customers, stood at attention, for Miss Taylor was yet new to the county.

She bought a few trifles and then approached her main business.

"My brother wants some information about the county, Mr. Caldwell, and I am only a teacher, and do not know much about conditions here."

"Ah! where do you teach?" asked Mr. Caldwell. He was certain he knew the teachers of all the white schools in the county. Miss Taylor told him. He stiffened slightly but perceptibly, like a man clicking the buckles of his ready armor, and two townswomen who listened gradually turned their backs, but remained near.

"Yes—yes," he said, with uncomfortable haste. "Any—er—information—of course—" Miss Taylor got out her notes.

"The leading land-owners," she began, sorting the notes searchingly, "I should like to know something about them."

"Well, Colonel Cresswell is, of course, our greatest landlord—a high-bred gentleman of the old school. He and his son—a worthy successor to the name—hold some fifty thousand acres. They may be considered representative types. Then, Mr. Maxwell has ten thousand acres and Mr. Tolliver a thousand."

Miss Taylor wrote rapidly. "And cotton?" she asked.

"We raise considerable cotton, but not nearly what we ought to; nigger labor is too worthless."

"Oh! The Negroes are not, then, very efficient?"

"Efficient!" snorted Mr. Caldwell; at last she had broached a phase of the problem upon which he could dilate with fervor. "They're the lowest-down, ornriest—begging your pardon—good-for-nothing loafers you ever heard of. Why, we just have to carry them and care for them like children. Look yonder," he pointed across the square to the court-house. It was an old square brick-and-stucco building, sombre and stilted and very dirty. Out of it filed a stream of men—some black and shackled; some white and swaggering and liberal with tobacco-juice; some white and shaven and stiff. "Court's just out," pursued Mr. Caldwell, "and them niggers have just been sent to the gang—young ones, too; educated but good for nothing. They're all that way."

Miss Taylor looked up a little puzzled, and became aware of a battery of eyes and ears. Everybody seemed craning and listening, and she felt a sudden embarrassment and a sense of half-veiled hostility in the air. With one or two further perfunctory questions, and a hasty expression of thanks, she escaped into the air.

The whole square seemed loafing and lolling—the white world perched on stoops and chairs, in doorways and windows; the black world filtering down from doorways to side-walk and curb. The hot, dusty quadrangle stretched in dreary deadness toward the temple of the town, as if doing obeisance to the court-house. Down the courthouse steps the sheriff, with Winchester on shoulder, was bringing the last prisoner—a curly-headed boy with golden face and big brown frightened eyes.

"It's one of Dunn's boys," said Bles. "He's drunk again, and they say he's been stealing. I expect he was hungry." And they wheeled out of the square.

Miss Taylor was tired, and the hastily scribbled letter which she dropped into the post in passing was not as clearly expressed as she could wish.

A great-voiced giant, brown and bearded, drove past them, roaring a hymn. He greeted Bles with a comprehensive wave of the hand.

"I guess Tylor has been paid off," said Bles, but Miss Taylor was too disgusted to answer. Further on they overtook a tall young yellow boy walking awkwardly beside a handsome, bold-faced girl. Two white men came riding by. One leered at the girl, and she laughed back, while the yellow boy strode sullenly ahead. As the two white riders approached the buggy one said to the other:

"Who's that nigger with?"

"One of them nigger teachers."

"Well, they'll stop this damn riding around or they'll hear something," and they rode slowly by.

Miss Taylor felt rather than heard their words, and she was uncomfortable. The sun fell fast; the long shadows of the swamp swept soft coolness on the red road. Then afar in front a curled cloud of white dust arose and out of it came the sound of galloping horses.

"Who's this?" asked Miss Taylor.

"The Cresswells, I think; they usually ride to town about this time." But already Miss Taylor had descried the brown and tawny sides of the speeding horses.

"Good gracious!" she thought. "The Cresswells!" And with it came a sudden desire not to meet them—just then. She glanced toward the swamp. The sun was sifting blood-red lances through the trees. A little wagon-road entered the wood and disappeared. Miss Taylor saw it.

"Let's see the sunset in the swamp," she said suddenly. On came the galloping horses. Bles looked up in surprise, then silently turned into the swamp. The horses flew by, their hoof-beats dying in the distance. A dark green silence lay about them lit by mighty crimson glories beyond. Miss Taylor leaned back and watched it dreamily till a sense of oppression grew on her. The sun was sinking fast.

"Where does this road come out?" she asked at last.

"It doesn't come out."

"Where does it go?"

"It goes to Elspeth's."

"Why, we must turn back immediately. I thought—" But Bles was already turning. They were approaching the main road again when there came a fluttering as of a great bird beating its wings amid the forest. Then a girl, lithe, dark brown, and tall, leaped lightly into the path with greetings on her lips for Bles. At the sight of the lady she drew suddenly back and stood motionless regarding Miss Taylor, searching her with wide black liquid eyes. Miss Taylor was a little startled.

"Good—good-evening," she said, straightening herself.

The girl was still silent and the horse stopped. One tense moment pulsed through all the swamp. Then the girl, still motionless—still looking Miss Taylor through and through—said with slow deliberateness:

"I hates you."

The teacher in Miss Taylor strove to rebuke this unconventional greeting but the woman in her spoke first and asked almost before she knew it—

"Why?"

Five

ZORA

Zora, child of the swamp, was a heathen hoyden of twelve wayward, untrained years. Slight, straight, strong, full-blooded, she had dreamed her life away in wilful wandering through her dark and sombre kingdom until she was one with it in all its moods; mischievous, secretive, brooding; full of great and awful visions, steeped body and soul in wood-lore. Her home was out of doors, the cabin of Elspeth her port of call for talking and eating. She had not known, she had scarcely seen, a child of her own age until Bles Alwyn had fled from her dancing in the night, and she had searched and found him sleeping in the misty morning light. It was to her a strange new thing to see a fellow of like years with herself, and she gripped him to her soul in wild interest and new curiosity. Yet this childish friendship was so new and incomprehensible a thing to her that she did not know how to express it. At first she pounced upon him in mirthful, almost impish glee, teasing and mocking and half scaring him, despite his fifteen years of young manhood.

"Yes, they is devils down yonder behind the swamp," she would whisper, warningly, when, after the first meeting, he had crept back again and again, half fascinated, half amused to greet her; "I'se seen 'em, I'se heard 'em, 'cause my mammy is a witch."

The boy would sit and watch her wonderingly as she lay curled along the low branch of the mighty oak, clinging with little curved limbs and flying fingers. Possessed by the spirit of her vision, she would chant, low-voiced, tremulous, mischievous:

"One night a devil come to me on blue fire out of a big red flower that grows in the south swamp; he was tall and big and strong as anything, and when he spoke the trees shook and the stars fell. Even mammy was afeared; and it takes a lot to make mammy afeared, 'cause she's a witch and can conjure. He said, 'I'll come when you die—I'll come when you die, and take the conjure off you,' and then he went away on a big fire."

"Shucks!" the boy would say, trying to express scornful disbelief when, in truth, he was awed and doubtful. Always he would glance involuntarily back along the path behind him. Then her low birdlike laughter would rise and ring through the trees.

So passed a year, and there came the time when her wayward teasing and the almost painful thrill of her tale-telling nettled him and drove him away. For long months he did not meet her, until one day he saw her deep eyes fixed longingly upon him from a thicket in the swamp. He went and greeted her. But she said no word, sitting nested among the greenwood with passionate, proud silence, until he had sued long for peace; then in sudden new friendship she had taken his hand and led him through the swamp, showing him all the beauty of her swamp-world—great shadowy oaks and limpid pools, lone, naked trees and sweet flowers; the whispering and flitting of wild things, and the winging of furtive birds. She had dropped the impish mischief of her way, and up from beneath it rose a wistful, visionary tenderness; a mighty half-confessed, half-concealed, striving for unknown things. He seemed to have found a new friend.

And today, after he had taken Miss Taylor home and supped, he came out in the twilight under the new moon and whistled the tremulous note that always brought her.

"Why did you speak so to Miss Taylor?" he asked, reproachfully. She considered the matter a moment.

"You don't understand," she said. "You can't never understand. I can see right through people. You can't. You never had a witch for a mammy—did you?"

"No."

"Well, then, you see I have to take care of you and see things for you."

"Zora," he said thoughtfully, "you must learn to read."

"What for?"

"So that you can read books and know lots of things."

"Don't white folks make books?"

"Yes—most of the books."

"Pooh! I knows more than they do now—a heap more."

"In some ways you do; but they know things that give them power and wealth and make them rule."

"No, no. They don't really rule; they just thinks they rule. They just got things—heavy, dead things. We black folks is got the spirit. We'se lighter and cunninger; we fly right through them; we go and come again just as we wants to. Black folks is wonderful."

He did not understand what she meant; but he knew what he wanted and he tried again.

"Even if white folks don't know everything they know different things from us, and we ought to know what they know."

This appealed to her somewhat.

"I don't believe they know much," she concluded; "but I'll learn to read and just see."

"It will be hard work," he warned. But he had come prepared for acquiescence. He took a primer from his pocket and, lighting a match, showed her the alphabet.

"Learn those," he said.

"What for?" she asked, looking at the letters disdainfully.

"Because that's the way," he said, as the light flared and went out.

"I don't believe it," she disputed, disappearing in the wood and returning with a pine-knot. They lighted it and its smoky flame threw wavering shadows about. She turned the leaves till she came to a picture which she studied intently.

"Is this about this?" she asked, pointing alternately to reading and picture.

"Yes. And if you learn—"

"Read it," she commanded. He read the page.

"Again," she said, making him point out each word. Then she read it after him, accurately, with more perfect expression. He stared at her. She took the book, and with a nod was gone.

It was Saturday and dark. She never asked Bles to her home—to that mysterious black cabin in mid-swamp. He thought her ashamed of it, and delicately refrained from going. So tonight she slipped away, stopped and listened till she heard his footsteps on the pike, and then flew homeward. Presently the old black cabin loomed before her with its wide flapping door. The old woman was bending over the fire, stirring some savory mess, and a yellow girl with a white baby on one arm was placing dishes on a rickety wooden table when Zora suddenly and noiselessly entered the door.

"Come, is you? I 'lowed victuals would fetch you," grumbled the hag.

But Zora deigned no answer. She walked placidly to the table, where she took up a handful of cold corn-bread and meat, and then went over and curled up by the fire.

Elspeth and the girl talked and laughed coarsely, and the night wore on.

By and by loud laughter and tramping came from the road—a sound of numerous footsteps. Zora listened, leapt to her feet and started to the door. The old crone threw an epithet after her; but she flashed through the lighted doorway and was gone, followed by the oath and shouts from the approaching men. In the hut night fled with wild song and revel, and day dawned again. Out from some fastness of the wood crept Zora. She stopped and bathed in a pool, and combed her close-clung hair, then entered silently to breakfast.

Thus began in the dark swamp that primal battle with the Word. She hated it and despised it, but her pride was in arms and her one great life friendship in the balance. She fought her way with a dogged persistence that brought word after word of praise and interest from Bles. Then, once well begun, her busy, eager mind flew with a rapidity that startled; the stories especially she devoured—tales of strange things and countries and men gripped her imagination and clung to her memory.

"Didn't I tell you there was lots to learn?" he asked once.

"I knew it all," she retorted; "every bit. I'se thought it all before; only the little things is different—and I like the little, strange things."

Spring ripened to summer. She was reading well and writing some.

"Zora," he announced one morning under their forest oak, "you must go to school."

She eyed him, surprised.

"Why?"

"You've found some things worth knowing in this world, haven't you, Zora?"

"Yes," she admitted.

"But there are more—many, many more—worlds on worlds of things—you have not dreamed of."

She stared at him, open-eyed, and a wonder crept upon her face battling with the old assurance. Then she looked down at her bare brown feet and torn gown.

"I've got a little money, Zora," he said quickly.

But she lifted her head.

"I'll earn mine," she said.

"How?" he asked doubtfully.

"I'll pick cotton."

"Can you?"

"Course I can."

"It's hard work."

She hesitated.

"I don't like to work," she mused. "You see, mammy's pappy was a king's son, and kings don't work. I don't work; mostly I dreams. But I can work, and I will—for the wonder things—and for you."

So the summer yellowed and silvered into fall. All the vacation days Bles worked on the farm, and Zora read and dreamed and studied in the wood, until the land lay white with harvest. Then, without warning, she appeared in the cotton-field beside Bles, and picked.

It was hot, sore work. The sun blazed; her bent and untrained back pained, and the soft little hands bled. But no complaint passed her lips; her hands never wavered, and her eyes met his steadily and gravely. She bade him good-night, cheerily, and then stole away to the wood, crouching beneath the great oak, and biting back the groans that trembled on her lips. Often, she fell supperless to sleep, with two great tears creeping down her tired cheeks.

When school-time came there was not yet money enough, for cotton-picking was not far advanced. Yet Zora would take no money from Bles, and worked earnestly away.

Meantime there occurred to the boy the momentous question of clothes. Had Zora thought of them? He feared not. She knew little of clothes and cared less. So one day in town he dropped into Caldwell's "Emporium" and glanced hesitantly at certain ready-made dresses. One caught his eye. It came from the great Easterly mills in New England and was red—a vivid red. The glowing warmth of this cloth of cotton caught the eye of Bles, and he bought the gown for a dollar and a half.

He carried it to Zora in the wood, and unrolled it before her eyes that danced with glad tears. Of course, it was long and wide; but he fetched needle and thread and scissors, too. It was a full month after school had begun when they, together back in the swamp, shadowed by the foliage, began to fashion the wonderful garment. At the same time she laid ten dollars of her first hard-earned money in his hands.

"You can finish the first year with this money," Bles assured her, delighted, "and then next year you must come in to board; because, you see, when you're educated you won't want to live in the swamp."

"I wants to live here always."

"But not at Elspeth's."

"No-o—not there, not there." And a troubled questioning trembled in her eyes, but brought no answering thought in his, for he was busy with his plans.

"Then, you see, Zora, if you stay here you'll need a new house, and you'll want to learn how to make it beautiful."

"Yes, a beautiful, great castle here in the swamp," she dreamed; "but," and her face fell, "I can't get money enough to board in; and I don't want to board in—I wants to be free."

He looked at her, curled down so earnestly at her puzzling task, and a pity for the more than motherless child swept over him. He bent over her, nervously, eagerly, and she laid down her sewing and sat silent and passive with dark, burning eyes.

"Zora," he said, "I want you to do all this—for me."

"I will, if you wants me to," she said quietly, but with something in her voice that made him look half startled into her beautiful eyes and feel a queer flushing in his face. He stretched his hand out and taking hers held it lightly till she quivered and drew away, bending again over her sewing.

Then a nameless exaltation rose within his heart.

"Zora," he whispered, "I've got a plan."

"What is it?" she asked, still with bowed head.

"Listen, till I tell you of the Golden Fleece."

Then she too heard the story of Jason. Breathless she listened, dropping her sewing and leaning forward, eager-eyed. Then her face clouded.

"Do you s'pose mammy's the witch?" she asked dubiously.

"No; she wouldn't give her own flesh and blood to help the thieving Jason."

She looked at him searchingly.

"Yes, she would, too," affirmed the girl, and then she paused, still intently watching him. She was troubled, and again a question eagerly hovered on her lips. But he continued:

"Then we must escape her," he said gayly. "See! yonder lies the Silver Fleece spread across the brown back of the world; let's get a bit of it, and hide it here in the swamp, and comb it, and tend it, and make it the beautifullest bit of all. Then we can sell it, and send you to school."

She sat silently bent forward, turning the picture in her mind. Suddenly forgetting her trouble, she bubbled with laughter, and leaping up clapped her hands.

"And I knows just the place!" she cried eagerly, looking at him with a flash of the old teasing mischief—"down in the heart of the swamp—where dreams and devils lives."

Up at the school-house Miss Taylor was musing. She had been invited to spend the summer with Mrs. Grey at Lake George, and such a summer!—silken clothes and dainty food, motoring and golf, well-groomed men and elegant women. She would not have put it in just that way, but the vision came very close to spelling heaven to her mind. Not that she would come to it vacant-minded, but rather as a trained woman, starved for companionship and wanting something of the beauty and ease of life. She sat dreaming of it here with rows of dark faces before her, and the singsong wail of a little black reader with his head aslant and his patched kneepants.

The day was warm and languorous, and the last pale mist of the Silver Fleece peeped in at the windows. She tried to follow the third-reader lesson with her finger, but persistently off she went, dreaming, to some exquisite little parlor with its green and gold, the clink of dainty china and hum of low voices, and the blue lake in the window; she would glance up, the door would open softly and—

Just here she did glance up, and all the school glanced with her. The drone of the reader hushed. The door opened softly, and upon the threshold stood Zora. Her small feet and slender ankles were black and bare; her dark, round, and broad-browed head and strangely beautiful face were poised almost defiantly, crowned with a misty mass of waveless hair, and lit by the velvet radiance of two wonderful eyes. And hanging from shoulder to ankle, in formless, clinging folds, blazed the scarlet gown.

Six

COTTON

The cry of the naked was sweeping the world. From the peasant toiling in Russia, the lady lolling in London, the chieftain burning in Africa, and the Esquimaux freezing in Alaska; from long lines of hungry men, from patient sad-eyed women, from old folk and creeping children went up the cry, "Clothes, clothes!" Far away the wide black land that belts the South, where Miss Smith worked and Miss Taylor drudged and Bles and Zora dreamed, the dense black land sensed the cry and heard the bound of answering life within the vast dark breast. All that dark earth heaved in mighty travail with the bursting bolls of the cotton while black attendant earth spirits swarmed above, sweating and crooning to its birth pains.

After the miracle of the bursting bolls, when the land was brightest with the piled mist of the Fleece, and when the cry of the naked was loudest in the mouths of men, a sudden cloud of workers swarmed between the Cotton and the Naked, spinning and weaving and sewing and carrying the Fleece and mining and minting and bringing the Silver till the Song of Service filled the world and the poetry of Toil was in the souls of the laborers. Yet ever and always there were tense silent white-faced men moving in that swarm who felt no poetry and heard no song, and one of these was John Taylor.

He was tall, thin, cold, and tireless and he moved among the Watchers of this World of Trade. In the rich Wall Street offices of Grey and Easterly, Brokers, Mr. Taylor, as chief and confidential clerk surveyed the world's nakedness and the supply of cotton to clothe it. The object of his watching was frankly stated to himself and to his world. He purposed going into business neither for his own health nor for the healing or clothing of the peoples but to apply his knowledge of the world's nakedness and of black men's toil in such a way as to bring himself wealth. In this he was but following the teaching of his highest ideal, lately deceased, Mr. Job Grey. Mr. Grey had so successfully manipulated the cotton market that while black men who made the cotton starved in Alabama and white men who bought it froze in Siberia, he himself sat—

Notwithstanding this he died eventually, leaving the burden of his wealth to his bewildered wife, and his business to the astute Mr. Easterly; not simply to Mr. Easterly, but in a sense to his spiritual heir, John Taylor.

To be sure Mr. Taylor had but a modest salary and no financial interest in the business, but he had knowledge and business daring—effrontery even—and the determination was fixed in his mind to be a millionaire at no distant date. Some cautious fliers on the market gave him enough surplus to send his sister Mary through the high school of his country home in New Hampshire, and afterward through Wellesley College; although just why a woman should want to go through college was inexplicable to John Taylor, and he was still uncertain as to the wisdom of his charity.

When she had an offer to teach in the South, John Taylor hurried her off for two reasons: he was profoundly interested in the cotton-belt, and there she might be of service to him; and secondly, he had spent all the money on her that he intended to at present, and he wanted her to go to work. As an investment he did not consider Mary a success. Her letters intimated very strongly her intention not to return to Miss Smith's School; but they also brought information—disjointed and incomplete, to be sure—which mightily interested Mr. Taylor and sent him to atlases, encyclopædias, and census-reports. When he went to that little lunch with old Mrs. Grey he was not sure that he wanted his sister to leave the cotton-belt just yet. After lunch he was sure that he did not want her to leave.

The rich Mrs. Grey was at the crisis of her fortunes. She was an elderly lady, in those uncertain years beyond fifty, and had been left suddenly with more millions than she could easily count. Personally she was inclined to spend her money in bettering the world right off, in such ways as might from time to time seem attractive. This course, to her husband's former partner and present executor, Mr. Edward Easterly, was not only foolish but wicked, and, incidentally, distinctly unprofitable to him. He had expressed himself strongly to Mrs. Grey last night at dinner and had reinforced his argument by a pointed letter written this morning.

To John Taylor Mrs. Grey's disposal of the income was unbelievable blasphemy against the memory of a mighty man. He did not put this in words to Mrs. Grey—he was only head clerk in her late husband's office—but he became watchful and thoughtful. He ate his soup in silence when she descanted on various benevolent schemes.

"Now, what do you know," she asked finally, "about Negroes—about educating them?" Mr. Taylor over his fish was about to deny all knowledge of any sort on the subject, but all at once he recollected his sister, and a sudden gleam of light radiated his mental gloom.

"Have a sister who is—er—devoting herself to teaching them," he said.

"Is that so!" cried Mrs. Grey, joyfully. "Where is she?"

"In Tooms County, Alabama—in—" Mr. Taylor consulted a remote mental pocket—"in Miss Sara Smith's school."

"Why, how fortunate! I'm so glad I mentioned the matter. You see, Miss Smith is a sister of a friend of ours, Congressman Smith of New Jersey, and she has just written to me for help; a very touching letter, too, about the poor blacks. My father set great store by blacks and was a leading abolitionist before he died."

Mr. Taylor was thinking fast. Yes, the name of Congressman Peter Smith was quite familiar. Mr. Easterly, as chairman of the Republican State Committee of New Jersey, had been compelled to discipline Mr. Smith pretty severely for certain socialistic votes in the House, and consequently his future career was uncertain. It was important that such a man should not have too much to do with Mrs. Grey's philanthropies—at least, in his present position.

"Should like to have you meet and talk with my sister, Mrs. Grey; she's a Wellesley graduate," said Taylor, finally.

Mrs. Grey was delighted. It was a combination which she felt she needed. Here was a college-girl who could direct her philanthropies and her etiquette during the summer. Forthwith Mary Taylor received an intimation from her brother that vast interests depended on her summer vacation.

Thus it had happened that Miss Taylor came to Lake George for her vacation after the first year at the Smith School, and she and Miss Smith had silently agreed as she left that it would be better for her not to return. But the gods of lower Broadway thought otherwise. Not that Mary Taylor did not believe in Miss Smith's work, she was too honest not to believe in education; but she was sure that this was not her work, and she had not as yet perfected in her own mind any theory of the world into which black folk fitted. She was rather taken back, therefore, to be regarded as an expert on the problem. First her brother attacked her, not simply on cotton, but, to her great surprise, on Negro education; and after listening to her halting uncertain remarks, he suggested to her certain matters which it would be better for her to believe when Mrs. Grey talked to her.

"Interested in darkies, you see," he concluded, "and looks to you to tell things. Better go easy and suggest a waiting-game before she goes in heavy."

"But Miss Smith needs money—" the New England conscience prompted. John Taylor cut in sharply:

"We all need money, and I know people who need Mrs. Grey's more than Miss Smith does at present."

Miss Taylor found the Lake George colony charming. It was not ultra-fashionable, but it had wealth and leisure and some breeding. Especially was this true of a circumscribed, rather exclusive, set which centred around the Vanderpools of New York and Boston. They, or rather Mr. Vanderpool's connections, were of Old Dutch New York stock; his father it was who had built the Lake George cottage.

Mrs. Vanderpool was a Wells of Boston, and endured Lake George now and then during the summer for her husband's sake, although she regarded it all as rather a joke. This summer promised to be unusually lonesome for her, and she was meditating a retreat to the Massachusetts north shore when she chanced to meet Mary Taylor, at a miscellaneous dinner, and found her interesting. She discovered that this young woman knew things, that she could talk books, and that she was rather pretty. To be sure she knew no people, but Mrs. Vanderpool knew enough to even things.

"By the bye, I met some charming Alabama people last winter, in Montgomery—the Cresswells; do you know them?" she asked one day, as they were lounging in wicker chairs on the Vanderpool porch. Then she answered the query herself: "No, of course you could not. It is too bad that your work deprives you of the society of people of your class. Now my ideal is a set of Negro schools where the white teachers could know the Cresswells."

"Why, yes—" faltered Miss Taylor; "but—wouldn't that be difficult?"

"Why should it be?"

"I mean, would the Cresswells approve of educating Negroes?"

"Oh, 'educating'! The word conceals so much. Now, I take it the Cresswells would object to instructing them in French and in dinner etiquette and tea-gowns, and so, in fact, would I; but teach them how to handle a hoe and to sew and cook. I have reason to know that people like the Cresswells would be delighted."

"And with the teachers of it?"

"Why not?—provided, of course, they were—well, gentlefolk and associated accordingly."

"But one must associate with one's pupils."

"Oh, certainly, certainly; just as one must associate with one's maids and chauffeurs and dressmakers—cordially and kindly, but with a difference."

"But—but, dear Mrs. Vanderpool, you wouldn't want your children trained that way, would you?"

"Certainly not, my dear. But these are not my children, they are the children of Negroes; we can't quite forget that, can we?"

"No, I suppose not," Miss Taylor admitted, a little helplessly. "But—it seems to me—that's the modern idea of taking culture to the masses."

"Frankly, then, the modern idea is not my idea; it is too socialistic. And as for culture applied to the masses, you utter a paradox. The masses and work is the truth one must face."

"And culture and work?"

"Quite incompatible, I assure you, my dear." She stretched her silken limbs, lazily, while Miss Taylor sat silently staring at the waters.

Just then Mrs. Grey drove up in her new red motor.

Up to the time of Mary Taylor's arrival the acquaintance of the Vanderpools and Mrs. Grey had been a matter chiefly of smiling bows. After Miss Taylor came there had been calls and casual intercourse, to Mrs. Grey's great gratification and Mrs. Vanderpool's mingled amusement and annoyance. Mrs. Grey announced the arrival of the Easterlys and John Taylor for the week-end. As Mrs. Vanderpool could think of nothing less boring, she consented to dine.

The atmosphere of Mrs. Grey's ornate cottage was different from that of the Vanderpools. The display of wealth and splendor had a touch of the barbaric. Mary Taylor liked it, although she found the Vanderpool atmosphere more subtly satisfying. There was a certain grim power beneath the Greys' mahogany and velvets that thrilled while it appalled. Precisely that side of the thing appealed to her brother. He would have seen little or nothing in the plain elegance yonder, while here he saw a Japanese vase that cost no cent less than a thousand dollars. He meant to be able to duplicate it some day. He knew that Grey was poor and less knowing than he sixty years ago.

The dead millionaire had begun his fortune by buying and selling cotton—travelling in the South in reconstruction times, and sending his agents. In this way he made his thousands. Then he took a step forward, and instead of following the prices induced the prices to follow him. Two or three small cotton corners brought him his tens of thousands. About this time Easterly joined him and pointed out a new road—the buying and selling of stock in various cotton-mills and other industrial enterprises. Grey hesitated, but Easterly pushed him on and he made his hundreds of thousands. Then Easterly proposed buying controlling interests in certain large mills and gradually consolidating them. The plan grew and succeeded, and Grey made his millions.

Then Grey stopped; he had money enough, and he would venture no farther. He "was going to retire and eat peanuts," he said with a chuckle.

Easterly was disgusted. He, too, had made millions—not as many as Grey, but a few. It was not, however, simply money that he wanted, but power. The lust of financial dominion had gripped his soul, and he had a vision of a vast trust of cotton manufacturing covering the land. He talked this incessantly into Grey, but Grey continued to shake his head; the thing was too big for his imagination. He was bent on retiring, and just as he had set the date a year hence he inadvertently died. On the whole, Mr. Easterly was glad of his partner's definite withdrawal, since he left his capital behind him, until he found his vast plans about to be circumvented by Mrs. Grey withdrawing this capital from his control. "To give to the niggers and Chinamen," he snorted to John Taylor, and strode up and down the veranda. John Taylor removed his coat, lighted a black cigar, and elevated his heels. The ladies were in the parlor, where the female Easterlys were prostrating themselves before Mrs. Vanderpool.

"Just what is your plan?" asked Taylor, quite as if he did not know.

"Why, man, the transfer of a hundred millions of stock would give me control of the cotton-mills of America. Think of it!—the biggest trust next to steel."

"Why not bigger?" asked Taylor, imperturbably puffing away. Mr. Easterly eyed him. He had regarded Taylor hitherto as a very valuable asset to the business—had relied on his knowledge of routine, his judgment and his honesty; but he detected tonight a new tone in his clerk, something almost authoritative and self-reliant. He paused and smiled at him.

"Bigger?"

But John Taylor was dead in earnest. He did not smile.

"First, there's England—and all Europe; why not bring them into the trust?"

"Possibly, later; but first, America. Of course, I've got my eyes on the European situation and feelers out; but such matters are more difficult and slower of adjustment over there—so damned much law and gospel."

"But there's another side."

"What's that?"

"You are planning to combine and control the manufacture of cotton—"

"Yes."

"But how about your raw material? The steel trust owns its iron mines."

"Of course—mines could be monopolized and hold the trust up; but our raw material is perfectly safe—farms growing smaller, farms isolated, and we fixing the price. It's a cinch."

"Are you sure?" Taylor surveyed him with a narrowed look.

"Certain."

"I'm not. I've been looking up things, and there are three points you'd better study: First, cotton farms are not getting smaller; they're getting bigger almighty fast, and there's a big cotton-land monopoly in sight. Second, the banks and wholesale houses in the South can control the cotton output if they work together. Third, watch the Southern 'Farmers' League' of big landlords."

Mr. Easterly threw away his cigar and sat down. Taylor straightened up, switched on the porch light, and took a bundle of papers from his coat pocket.

"Here are census figures," he said, "commercial reports and letters." They pored over them a half hour. Then Easterly arose.

"There's something in it," he admitted, "but what can we do? What do you propose?"

"Monopolize the growth as well as the manufacture of cotton, and use the first to club European manufacturers into submission."

Easterly stared at him.

"Good Lord!" he ejaculated; "you're crazy!"

But Taylor smiled a slow, thin smile, and put away his papers. Easterly continued to stare at his subordinate with a sort of fascination, with the awe that one feels when genius unexpectedly reveals itself from a source hitherto regarded as entirely ordinary. At last he drew a long breath, remarking indefinitely:

"I'll think it over."

A stir in the parlor indicated departure.

"Well, you watch the Farmers' League, and note its success and methods," counselled John Taylor, his tone and manner unchanged. "Then figure what it might do in the hands of—let us say, friends."

"Who's running it?"

"A Colonel Cresswell is its head, and happens also to be the force behind it. Aristocratic family—big planter—near where my sister teaches."

"H'm—well, we'll watch him."

"And say," as Easterly was turning away, "you know Congressman Smith?"

"I should say I did."

"Well, Mrs. Grey seems to be depending on him for advice in distributing some of her charity funds."

Easterly appeared startled.

"She is, is she!" he exclaimed. "But here come the ladies." He went forward at once, but John Taylor drew back. He noted Mrs. Vanderpool, and thought her too thin and pale. The dashing young Miss Easterly was more to his taste. He intended to have a wife like that one of these days.

"Mary," said he to his sister as he finally rose to go, "tell me about the Cresswells."

Mary explained to him at length the impossibility of her knowing much about the local white aristocracy of Tooms County, and then told him all she had heard.

"Mrs. Grey talked to you much?"

"Yes."

"About darky schools?"

"Yes."

"What does she intend to do?"

"I think she will aid Miss Smith first."

"Did you suggest anything?"

"Well, I told her what I thought about coöperating with the local white people."

"The Cresswells?"

"Yes—you see Mrs. Vanderpool knows the Cresswells."

"Does, eh? Good! Say, that's a good point. You just bear heavy on it—coöperate with the Cresswells."

"Why, yes. But—you see, John, I don't just know whether one could coöperate with the Cresswells or not—one hears such contradictory stories of them. But there must be some other white people—"

"Stuff! It's the Cresswells we want."

"Well," Mary was very dubious, "they are—the most important."

Seven

THE PLACE OF DREAMS

When she went South late in September, Mary Taylor had two definite but allied objects: she was to get all possible business information concerning the Cresswells, and she was to induce Miss Smith to prepare for Mrs. Grey's benevolence by interesting the local whites in her work. The programme attracted Miss Taylor. She felt in touch, even if dimly and slightly, with great industrial movements, and she felt, too, like a discerning pioneer in philanthropy. Both roles she liked. Besides, they held, each, certain promises of social prestige; and society, Miss Taylor argued, one must have even in Alabama.

Bles Alwyn met her at the train. He was growing to be a big fine bronze giant, and Mary was glad to see him. She especially tried, in the first few weeks of opening school, to glean as much information as possible concerning the community, and particularly the Cresswells. She found the Negro youth quicker, surer, and more intelligent in his answers than those she questioned elsewhere, and she gained real enjoyment from her long talks with him.

"Isn't Bles developing splendidly?" she said to Miss Smith one afternoon. There was an unmistakable note of enthusiasm in her voice. Miss Smith slowly closed her letter-file but did not look up.

"Yes," she said crisply. "He's eighteen now—quite a man."

"And most interesting to talk with."

"H'm—very"—drily. Mary was busy with her own thoughts, and she did not notice the other woman's manner.

"Do you know," she pursued, "I'm a little afraid of one thing."

"So am I."

"Oh, you've noted it, too?—his friendship for that impossible girl, Zora?"

Miss Smith gave her a searching look.

"What of it?" she demanded.

"She is so far beneath him."

"How so?"

"She is a bold, godless thing; I don't understand her."

"The two are not quite the same."

"Of course not; but she is unnaturally forward."

"Too bright," Miss Smith amplified.

"Yes; she knows quite too much. You surely remember that awful scarlet dress? Well, all her clothes have arrived, or remained, at a simplicity and vividness that is—well—immodest."

"Does she think them immodest?"

"What she thinks is a problem."

"The problem, you mean?"

"Well, yes."

They paused a moment. Then Miss Smith said slowly: "What I don't understand, I don't judge."

"No, but you can't always help seeing and meeting it," laughed Miss Taylor.

"Certainly not. I don't try; I court the meeting and seeing. It is the only way."

"Well, perhaps, for us—but not for a boy like Bles, and a girl like Zora."

"True; men and women must exercise judgment in their intercourse and"—she glanced sharply at Miss Taylor—"my dear, you yourself must not forget that Bles Alwyn is a man."

Far up the road came a low, long, musical shouting; then with creaking and straining of wagons, four great black mules dashed into sight with twelve bursting bales of yellowish cotton looming and swaying behind. The drivers and helpers were lolling and laughing and singing, but Miss Taylor did not hear nor see. She had sat suddenly upright; her face had flamed crimson, and then went dead white.

"Miss—Miss Smith!" she gasped, overwhelmed with dismay, a picture of wounded pride and consternation.

Miss Smith turned around very methodically and took her hand; but while she spoke the girl merely stared at her in stony silence.

"Now, dear, don't mean more than I do. I'm an old woman, and I've seen many things. This is but a little corner of the world, and yet many people pass here in thirty years. The trouble with new teachers who come is, that like you, they cannot see black folk as human. All to them are either impossible Zoras, or else lovable Blessings. They forget that Zora is not to be annihilated, but studied and understood, and that Bles is a young man of eighteen and not a clod."

"But that he should dare—" Mary began breathlessly.

"He hasn't dared," Miss Smith went gently on. "No thought of you but as a teacher has yet entered his dear, simple head. But, my point is simply this: he's a man, and a human one, and if you keep on making much over him, and talking to him and petting him, he'll have the right to interpret your manner in his own way—the same that any young man would."

"But—but, he's a—a—"

"A Negro. To be sure, he is; and a man in addition. Now, dear, don't take this too much to heart; this is not a rebuke, but a clumsy warning. I am simply trying to make clear to you why you should be careful. Treat poor Zora a little more lovingly, and Bles a little less warmly. They are just human—but, oh! so human."

Mary Taylor rose up stiffly and mumbled a brief good-night. She went to her room, and sat down in the dark. The mere mention of the thing was to her so preposterous—no, loathsome, she kept repeating.

She slowly undressed in the dark, and heard the rumbling of the cotton wagons as they swayed toward town. The cry of the Naked was sweeping the world, and yonder in the night black men were answering the call. They knew not what or why they answered, but obeyed the irresistible call, with hearts light and song upon their lips—the Song of Service. They lashed their mules and drank their whiskey, and all night the piled fleece swept by Mary Taylor's window, flying—flying to that far cry. Miss Taylor turned uneasily in her bed and jerked the bed-clothes about her ears.

"Mrs. Vanderpool is right," she confided to the night, with something of the awe with which one suddenly comprehends a hidden oracle; "there must be a difference, always, always! That impudent Negro!"

All night she dreamed, and all day,—especially when trim and immaculate she sat in her chair and looked down upon fifty dark faces—and upon Zora.

Zora sat thinking. She saw neither Miss Taylor nor the long straight rows of desks and faces. She heard neither the drone of the spellers nor did she hear Miss Taylor say, "Zora!" She heard and saw none of this. She only heard the prattle of the birds in the wood, far down where the Silver Fleece would be planted.

For the time of cotton-planting was coming; the gray and drizzle of December was past and the hesitation, of January. Already a certain warmth and glow had stolen into the air, and the Swamp was calling its child with low, seductive voice. She knew where the first leaves were bursting, where tiny flowers nestled, and where young living things looked upward to the light and cried and crawled. A wistful longing was stealing into her heart. She wanted to be free. She wanted to run and dance and sing, but Bles wanted—

"Zora!"

This time she heard the call, but did not heed it. Miss Taylor was very tiresome, and was forever doing and saying silly things. So Zora paid no attention, but sat still and thought. Yes, she would show Bles the place that very night; she had kept it secret from him until now, out of perverseness, out of her love of mystery and secrets. But tonight, after school, when he met her on the big road with the clothes, she would take him and show him the chosen spot.

Soon she was aware that school had been dismissed, and she leisurely gathered up her books and rose. Mary Taylor regarded her in perplexed despair. Oh, these people! Mrs. Vanderpool was right: culture and—some masses, at least—were not to be linked; and, too, culture and work—were they incompatible? At any rate, culture and this work were.

Now, there was Mrs. Vanderpool—she toiled not, neither did she spin, and yet! If all these folk were like poor, stupid, docile Jennie it would be simpler, but what earthly sense was there in trying do to anything with a girl like Zora, so stupid in some matters, so startlingly bright in others, and so stubborn in everything? Here, she was doing some work twice as well and twice as fast as the class, and other work she would not touch because she "didn't like it." Her classification in school was nearly as difficult as her classification in the world, and Miss Taylor reached up impatiently and removed the gold pin from her stock to adjust it more comfortably when Zora sauntered past unseeing, unheeding, with that curious gliding walk which Miss Taylor called stealthy. She laid the pin on the desk and on sudden impulse spoke again to the girl as she arranged her neck trimmings.

"Zora," she said evenly, "why didn't you come to class when I called?"

"I didn't hear you," said Zora, looking at her full-eyed and telling the half-truth easily.

Miss Taylor was sure Zora was lying, and she knew that she had lied to her on other occasions. Indeed, she had found lying customary in this community, and she had a New England horror of it. She looked at Zora disapprovingly, while Zora looked at her quite impersonally, but steadily. Then Miss Taylor braced herself, mentally, and took the war into Africa.

"Do you ever tell lies, Zora?"

"Yes."

"Don't you know that is a wicked, bad habit?"

"Why?"

"Because God hates them."

"How does you know He does?" Zora's tone was still impersonal.

"He hates all evil."

"But why is lies evil?"

"Because they make us deceive each other."

"Is that wrong?"

"Yes."

Zora bent forward and looked squarely into Miss Taylor's blue eyes. Miss Taylor looked into the velvet blackness of hers and wondered what they veiled.

"Is it wrong," asked Zora, "to make believe you likes people when you don't, when you'se afeared of them and thinks they may rub off and dirty you?"

"Why—why—yes, if you—if you, deceive."

"Then you lies sometimes, don't you?"

Miss Taylor stared helplessly at the solemn eyes that seemed to look so deeply into her.

"Perhaps—I do, Zora; I'm sure I don't mean to, and—I hope God will forgive me."

Zora softened.

"Oh, I reckon He will if He's a good God, because He'd know that lies like that are heaps better than blabbing the truth right out. Only," she added severely, "you mustn't keep saying it's wicked to lie 'cause it ain't. Sometimes I lies," she reflected pensively, "and sometimes I don't—it depends."

Miss Taylor forgot her collar, and fingered the pin on the desk. She felt at once a desperate desire to know this girl better and to establish her own authority. Yet how should she do it? She kept toying with the pin, and Zora watched her. Then Miss Taylor said, absently:

"Zora, what do you propose to do when you grow up?"

Zora considered.

"Think and walk—and rest," she concluded.

"I mean, what work?"

"Work? Oh, I sha'n't work. I don't like work—do you?"

Miss Taylor winced, wondering if the girl were lying again. She said quickly:

"Why, yes—that is, I like some kinds of work."

"What kinds?"

But Miss Taylor refused to have the matter made personal, as Zora had a disconcerting way of pointing all their discussions.

"Everybody likes some kinds of work," she insisted.

"If you likes it, it ain't work," declared Zora; but Mary Taylor proceeded around her circumscribed circle:

"You might make a good cook, or a maid."

"I hate cooking. What's a maid?"

"Why, a woman who helps others."

"Helps folks that they love? I'd like that."

"It is not a question of affection," said Miss Taylor, firmly: "one is paid for it."

"I wouldn't work for pay."

"But you'll have to, child; you'll have to earn a living."

"Do you work for pay?"

"I work to earn a living."

"Same thing, I reckon, and it ain't true. Living just comes free, like—like sunshine."

"Stuff! Zora, your people must learn to work and work steadily and work hard—" She stopped, for she was sure Zora was not listening; the far away look was in her eyes and they were shining. She was beautiful as she stood there—strangely, almost uncannily, but startlingly beautiful with her rich dark skin, softly moulded features, and wonderful eyes.

"My people?—my people?" she murmured, half to herself. "Do you know my people? They don't never work; they plays. They is all little, funny dark people. They flies and creeps and crawls, slippery-like; and they cries and calls. Ah, my people! my poor little people! they misses me these days, because they is shadowy things that sing and smell and bloom in dark and terrible nights—"

Miss Taylor started up. "Zora, I believe you're crazy!" she cried. But Zora was looking at her calmly again.

"We'se both crazy, ain't we?" she returned, with a simplicity that left the teacher helpless.

Miss Taylor hurried out, forgetting her pin. Zora looked it over leisurely, and tried it on. She decided that she liked it, and putting it in her pocket, went out too.

School was out but the sun was still high, as Bles hurried from the barn up the big road beside the soft shadows of the swamp. His head was busy with new thoughts and his lips were whistling merrily, for today Zora was to show him the long dreamed of spot for the planting of the Silver Fleece. He hastened toward the Cresswell mansion, and glanced anxiously up the road. At last he saw her coming, swinging down the road, lithe and dark, with the big white basket of clothes poised on her head.

"Zora," he yodled, and she waved her apron.

He eased her burden to the ground and they sat down together, he nervous and eager; she silent, passive, but her eyes restless. Bles was full of his plans.

"Zora," he said, "we'll make it the finest bale ever raised in Tooms; we'll just work it to the inch—just love it into life."

She considered the matter intently.

"But,"—presently,—"how can we sell it without the Cresswells knowing?"

"We won't try; we'll just take it to them and give them half, like the other tenants."

"But the swamp is mortal thick and hard to clear."

"We can do it."

Zora had sat still, listening; but now, suddenly, she leapt to her feet.

"Come," she said, "I'll take the clothes home, then we'll go"—she glanced at him—"down where the dreams are." And laughing, they hurried on.

Elspeth stood in the path that wound down to the cottage, and without a word Zora dropped the basket at her feet. She turned back; but Bles, struck by a thought, paused. The old woman was short, broad, black and wrinkled, with yellow fangs, red hanging lips, and wicked eyes. She leered at them; the boy shrank before it, but stood his ground.

"Aunt Elspeth," he began, "Zora and I are going to plant and tend some cotton to pay for her schooling—just the very best cotton we can find—and I heard"—he hesitated,—"I heard you had some wonderful seed."

"Yes," she mumbled, "I'se got the seed—I'se got it—wonder seed, sowed wid the three spells of Obi in the old land ten tousand moons ago. But you couldn't plant it," with a sudden shrillness, "it would kill you."

"But—" Bles tried to object, but she waved him away.

"Git the ground—git the ground; dig it—pet it, and we'll see what we'll see." And she disappeared.

Zora was not sure that it had been wise to tell their secret.

"I was going to steal the seed," she said. "I knows where it is, and I don't fear conjure."

"You mustn't steal, Zora," said Bles, gravely.

"Why?" Zora quickly asked.

But before he answered, they both forgot; for their faces were turned toward the wonder of the swamp. The golden sun was pouring floods of glory through the slim black trees, and the mystic sombre pools caught and tossed back the glow in darker, duller crimson. Long echoing cries leapt to and fro; silent footsteps crept hither and yonder; and the girl's eyes gleamed with a wild new joy.

"The dreams!" she cried. "The dreams!" And leaping ahead, she danced along the shadowed path. He hastened after her, but she flew fast and faster; he followed, laughing, calling, pleading. He saw her twinkling limbs a-dancing as once he saw them dance in a halo of firelight; but now the fire was the fire of the world. Her garments twined and flew in shadowy drapings about the perfect moulding of her young and dark half-naked figure. Her heavy hair had burst its fastenings and lay in stiffened, straggling masses, bending reluctantly to the breeze, like curled smoke; while all about, the mad, wild singing rose and fell and trembled, till his head whirled. He paused uncertainly at a parting of the paths, crying:

"Zora! Zora!" as for some lost soul. "Zora! Zora!" echoed the cry, faintly.

Abruptly the music fell; there came a long slow-growing silence; and then, with a flutter, she was beside him again, laughing in his ears and crying with mocking voice:

"Is you afeared, honey?"

He saw in her eyes sweet yearnings, but could speak nothing. He could only clasp her hand tightly, and again down they raced through the wood.

All at once the swamp changed and chilled to a dull grayness; tall, dull trees started down upon the murky waters; and long pendent streamings of moss-like tears dripped from tree to earth. Slowly and warily they threaded their way.

"Are you sure of the path, Zora?" he once inquired anxiously.

"I could find it asleep," she answered, skipping sure-footed onward. He continued to hold her hand tightly, and his own pace never slackened. Around them the gray and death-like wilderness darkened. They felt and saw the cold white mist rising slowly from the ground, and waters growing blacker and broader.

At last they came to what seemed the end. Silently and dismally the half-dead forest, with its ghostly moss, lowered and darkened, and the black waters spread into a great silent lake of slimy ooze. The dead trunk of a fallen tree lay straight in front, torn and twisted, its top hidden yonder and mingled with impenetrable undergrowth.

"Where now, Zora?" he cried.

In a moment she had slipped her hand away and was scrambling upon the tree trunk. The waters yawned murkily below.

"Careful! careful!" he warned, struggling after her until she disappeared amid the leaves. He followed eagerly, but cautiously; and all at once found himself confronting a paradise.

Before them lay a long island, opening to the south, on the black lake, but sheltered north and east by the dense undergrowth of the black swamp and the rampart of dead and living trees. The soil was virgin and black, thickly covered over with a tangle of bushes, vines, and smaller growth all brilliant with early leaves and wild flowers.

"A pretty tough proposition for clearing and ploughing," said Bles, with practised eye. But Zora eagerly surveyed the prospect.

"It's where the Dreams lives," she whispered.

Meantime Miss Taylor had missed her brooch and searched for it in vain. In the midst of this pursuit the truth occurred to her—Zora had stolen it. Negroes would steal, everybody said. Well, she must and would have the pin, and she started for Elspeth's cabin.

On the way she met the old woman in the path, but got little satisfaction. Elspeth merely grunted ungraciously while eyeing the white woman with suspicion.

Mary Taylor, again alone, sat down at a turn in the path, just out of sight of the house, and waited. Soon she saw, with a certain grim satisfaction, Zora and Bles emerging from the swamp engaged in earnest conversation. Here was an opportunity to overwhelm both with an unforgettable reprimand. She rose before them like a spectral vengeance.

"Zora, I want my pin."

Bles started and stared; but Zora eyed her calmly with something like disdain.

"What pin?" she returned, unmoved.

"Zora, don't deny that you took my pin from the desk this afternoon," the teacher commanded severely.

"I didn't say I didn't take no pin."

"Persons who will lie and steal will do anything."

"Why shouldn't people do anything they wants to?"

"And you knew the pin was mine."

"I saw you a-wearing of it," admitted Zora easily.

"Then you have stolen it, and you are a thief."

Still Zora appeared to be unimpressed with the heinousness of her fault.

"Did you make that pin?" she asked.

"No, but it is mine."

"Why is it yours?"

"Because it was given to me."

"But you don't need it; you've got four other prettier ones—I counted."

"That makes no difference."

"Yes it does—folks ain't got no right to things they don't need."

"That makes no difference, Zora, and you know it. The pin is mine. You stole it. If you had wanted a pin and asked me I might have given you—"

The girl blazed.

"I don't want your old gifts," she almost hissed. "You don't own what you don't need and can't use. God owns it and I'm going to send it back to Him."

With a swift motion she whipped the pin from her pocket and raised her arm to hurl it into the swamp. Bles caught her hand. He caught it lightly and smiled sorrowfully into her eyes. She wavered a moment, then the answering light sprang to her face. Dropping the brooch into his hand, she wheeled and fled toward the cabin.

Bles handed it silently to Miss Taylor. Mary Taylor was beside herself with impatient anger—and anger intensified by a conviction of utter helplessness to cope with any strained or unusual situations between herself and these two.

"Alwyn," she said sharply, "I shall report Zora for stealing. And you may report yourself to Miss Smith tonight for disrespect toward a teacher."

Eight

MR. HARRY CRESSWELL

The Cresswells, father and son, were at breakfast. The daughter was taking her coffee and rolls up stairs in bed.

"P'sh! I don't like it!" declared Harry Cresswell, tossing the letter back to his father. "I tell you, it is a damned Yankee trick."

He was a man of thirty-five, smooth and white, slight, well-bred and masterful. His father, St. John Cresswell, was sixty, white-haired, mustached and goateed; a stately, kindly old man with a temper and much family pride.

"Well, well," he said, his air half preoccupied, half unconcerned, "I suppose so—and yet"—he read the letter again, aloud: "'Approaching you as one of the most influential landowners of Alabama, on a confidential matter'—h'm—h'm—'a combination of capital and power, such as this nation has never seen'—'cotton manufacturers and cotton growers.' ... Well, well! Of course, I suppose there's nothing in it. And yet, Harry, my boy, this cotton-growing business is getting in a pretty tight pinch. Unless relief comes somehow—well, we'll just have to quit. We simply can't keep the cost of cotton down to a remunerative figure with niggers getting scarcer and dearer. Every year I have to pinch 'em closer and closer. I had to pay Maxwell two hundred and fifty to get that old darky and his boys turned over to me, and one of the young ones has run away already."

Harry lighted a cigarette.

"We must drive them more. You're too easy, father; they understand that. By the way, what did that letter say about a 'sister'?"

"Says he's got a sister over at the nigger school whom perhaps we know. I suppose he thinks we dine there occasionally." The old man chuckled. "That reminds me, Elspeth is sending her girl there."

"What's that?" An angry gleam shot into the younger man's eye.

"Yes. She announced this morning, pert as you please, that she couldn't tote clothes any more—she had to study."

"Damn it! This thing is going too far. We can't keep a maid or a plough-boy on the place because of this devilish school. It's going to ruin the whole labor system. We've been too mild and decent. I'm going to put my foot down right here. I'll make Elspeth take that girl out of school if I have to horse-whip her, and I'll warn the school against further interference with our tenants. Here, in less than a week, go two plough-hands—and now this girl."

The old man smiled.

"You'll hardly miss any work Zora does," he said.

"I'll make her work. She's giving herself too many damned airs. I know who's back of this—it's that nigger we saw talking to the white woman in the field the other day."

"Well, don't work yourself up. The wench don't amount to much anyhow. By the way, though, if you do go to the school it won't hurt to see this Taylor's sister and size the family up."

"Pshaw! I'm going to give the Smith woman such a scare that she'll keep her hands off our niggers." And Harry Cresswell rode away.

Mary Taylor had charge of the office that morning, while Miss Smith, shut up in her bedroom, went laboriously over her accounts. Miss Mary suddenly sat up, threw a hasty glance into the glass and felt the back of her belt. It was—it couldn't be—surely, it was Mr. Harry Cresswell riding through the gateway on his beautiful white mare. He kicked the gate open rather viciously, did not stop to close it, and rode straight across the lawn. Miss Taylor noticed his riding breeches and leggings, his white linen and white, clean-cut, high-bred face. Such apparitions were few about the country lands. She felt inclined to flutter, but gripped herself.

"Good-morning," she said, a little stiffly.

Mr. Cresswell halted and stared; then lifting the hat which he had neglected to remove in crossing the hall, he bowed in stately grace. Miss Taylor was no ordinary picture. Her brown hair was almost golden; her dark eyes shone blue; her skin was clear and healthy, and her white dress—happy coincidence!—had been laundered that very morning. Her half-suppressed excitement at the sudden duty of welcoming the great aristocrat of the county, gave a piquancy to her prettiness.

"The—devil!" commented Mr. Harry Cresswell to himself. But to Miss Taylor:

"I beg pardon—er—Miss Smith?"

"No—I'm sorry. Miss Smith is engaged this morning. I am Miss Taylor."

"I cannot share Miss Taylor's sorrow," returned Mr. Cresswell gravely, "for I believe I have the honor of some correspondence with Miss Taylor's brother." Mr. Cresswell searched for the letter, but did not find it.

"Oh! Has John written you?" She beamed suddenly. "I'm so glad. It's more than he's done for me this three-month. I beg your pardon—do sit down—I think you'll find this one easier. Our stock of chairs is limited."

It was delightful to have a casual meeting receive this social stamp; the girl was all at once transfigured—animated, glowing, lovely; all of which did not escape the caller's appraising inspection.

"There!" said Mr. Cresswell. "I've left your gate gaping."

"Oh, don't mind ... I hope John's well?"

"The truth is," confessed Cresswell, "it was a business matter—cotton, you know."

"John is nothing but cotton; I tell him his soul is fibrous."

"He mentioned your being here and I thought I'd drop over and welcome you to the South."

"Thank you," returned Miss Taylor, reddening with pleasure despite herself. There was a real sincerity in the tone. All this confirmed so many convictions of hers.

"Of course, you know how it is in the South," Cresswell pursued, the opening having been so easily accomplished.

"I understand perfectly."

"My sister would be delighted to meet you, but—"

"Oh I realize the—difficulties."

"Perhaps you wouldn't mind riding by some day—it's embarrassing to suggest this, but, you know—"

Miss Taylor was perfectly self-possessed.

"Mr. Cresswell," she said seriously, "I know very well that it wouldn't do for your sister to call here, and I sha'n't mind a bit coming by to see her first. I don't believe in standing on stupid ceremony."

Cresswell thanked her with quiet cordiality, and suggested that when he was driving by he might pick her up in his gig some morning. Miss Taylor expressed her pleasure at the prospect. Then the talk wandered to general matters—the rain, the trees, the people round about, and, inevitably—the Negro.

"Oh, by the bye," said Mr. Cresswell, frowning and hesitating over the recollection of his errand's purpose, "there was one matter"—he paused. Miss Taylor leant forward, all interest. "I hardly know that I ought to mention it, but your school—"

This charming young lady disarmed his truculent spirit, and the usually collected and determined young man was at a loss how to proceed. The girl, however, was obviously impressed and pleased by his evidence of interest, whatever its nature; so in a manner vastly different from the one he had intended to assume, he continued:

"There is a way in which we may be of service to you, and that is by enlightening you upon points concerning which the nature of your position—both as teacher and socially—must keep you in the dark.

"For instance, all these Negroes are, as you know, of wretchedly low morals; but there are a few so depraved that it would be suicidal to take them into this school. We recognize the good you are doing, but we do not want it more than offset by utter lack of discrimination in choosing your material."

"Certainly not—have we—" Miss Mary faltered. This beginning was a bit ominous, wholly unexpected.

"There is a girl, Zora, who has just entered, who—I must speak candidly—who ought not to be here; I thought it but right to let you know."

"Thank you, so much. I'll tell Miss Smith." Mary Taylor suddenly felt herself a judge of character. "I suspected that she was—not what she ought to be. Believe me, we appreciate your interest."

A few more words, and Mr. Cresswell, after bending courteously over her hand with a deference no New Englander had ever shown, was riding away on his white mare.

For a while Mary Taylor sat very quietly. It was like a breath of air from the real world, this hour's chat with a well-bred gentleman. She wondered how she had done her part—had she been too eager and school-girlish? Had she met this stately ceremony with enough breeding to show that she too was somebody? She pounced upon Miss Smith the minute that lady entered the office.

"Miss Smith, who do you think has been here?" she burst out enthusiastically.

"I saw him on the lawn." There was a suspicious lack of warmth in this brief affirmation.

"He was so gracious and kindly, and he knows my brother. And oh, Miss Smith! we've got to send that Zora right away."

"Indeed"—the observation was not even interrogatory. The preceptress of the struggling school for Negro children merely evinced patience for the younger woman's fervency.

"Yes; he says she's utterly depraved."

"Said that, did he?" Miss Smith watched her with tranquil regard. Miss Taylor paused.

"Of course, we cannot think of keeping her."

Miss Smith pursed her lips, offering her first expression of opinion.

"I guess we'll worry along with her a little while anyhow," she said.

The girl stared at Miss Smith in honest, if unpardonable, amazement.

"Do you mean to say that you are going to keep in this school a girl who not only lies and steals but is positively—immoral?"

Miss Smith smiled, wholly unmoved.

"No; but I mean that I am here to learn from those whose ideas of right do not agree with mine, to discover why they differ, and to let them learn of me—so far as I am worthy."

Mary Taylor was not unappreciative of Miss Smith's stern high-mindedness, but her heart hardened at this, to her, misdirected zeal. Echo of the spirit of an older day, Miss Smith seemed, to her, to be cramped and paralyzed in an armor of prejudice and sectionalisms. Plain-speaking was the only course, and Mary, if a little complacent perhaps in her frankness, was sincere in her purpose.

"I think, Miss Smith, you are making a very grave mistake. I regard Zora as a very undesirable person from every point of view. I look upon Mr. Cresswell's visit today as almost providential. He came offering an olive branch from the white aristocracy to this work; to bespeak his appreciation and safeguard the future. Moreover," and Miss Taylor's voice gathered firmness despite Miss Smith's inscrutable eye, "moreover, I have reason to know that the disposition—indeed, the plan—in certain quarters to help this work materially depends very largely on your willingness to meet the advances of the Southern whites half way."

She paused for a reply or a question. Receiving neither, she walked with dignity up the stairs. From her window she could see Cresswell's straight shoulders, as he rode toward town, and beyond him a black speck in the road. But she could not see the smile on Mr. Cresswell's lips, nor did she hear him remark twice, with seeming irrelevance, "The devil!"

The rider, being closer to it, recognized in Mary Taylor's "black speck" Bles Alwyn walking toward him rapidly with axe and hoe on shoulder, whistling merrily. They saw each other almost at the same moment and whistle and smile faded. Mr. Cresswell knew the Negro by sight and disliked him. He belonged in his mind to that younger class of half-educated blacks who were impudent and disrespectful toward their superiors, not even touching his hat when he met a white man. Moreover, he was sure that it was Miss Taylor with whom this boy had been talking so long and familiarly in the cotton-field last Spring—an offence doubly heinous now that he had seen Miss Taylor.

His first impulse was to halt the Negro then and there and tell him a few plain truths. But he did not feel quarrelsome at the moment, and there was, after all, nothing very tangible to justify a berating. The fellow's impudence was sure to increase, and then! So he merely reined his horse to the better part of the foot-path and rode on.

Bles, too, was thinking. He knew the well-dressed man with his milk-white face and overbearing way. He would expect to be greeted with raised hat but Bles bit his lips and pulled down his cap firmly. The axe, too, in some indistinct way felt good in his hand. He saw the horse coming in his pathway and stepping aside in the dust continued on his way, neither looking nor speaking.

So they passed each other by, Mr. Cresswell to town, Bles to the swamp, apparently ignorant of each other's very existence. Yet, as the space widened between them, each felt a more vindictive anger for the other.

How dares the black puppy to ignore a Cresswell on the highway? If this went on, the day would surely come when Negroes felt no respect or fear whatever for whites? And then—my God! Mr. Cresswell struck his mare a vicious blow and dashed toward town.

The black boy, too, went his way in silent, burning rage. Why should he be elbowed into the roadside dust by an insolent bully? Why had he not stood his ground? Pshaw! All this fine frenzy was useless, and he knew it. The sweat oozed on his forehead. It wasn't man against man, or he would have dragged the pale puppy from his horse and rubbed his face in the earth. It wasn't even one against many, else how willingly, swinging his axe, would have stood his ground before a mob.

No, it was one against a world, a world of power, opinion, wealth, opportunity; and he, the one, must cringe and bear in silence lest the world crash about the ears of his people. He slowly plodded on in bitter silence toward the swamp. But the day was balmy, the way was beautiful; contempt slowly succeeded anger, and hope soon triumphed over all. For yonder was Zora, poised, waiting. And behind her lay the Field of Dreams.

Nine

THE PLANTING

Zora looked down upon Bles, where he stood to his knees in mud. The toil was beyond exhilaration—it was sickening weariness and panting despair. The great roots, twined in one unbroken snarl, clung frantically to the black soil. The vines and bushes fought back with thorn and bramble. Zora stood wiping the blood from her hands and staring at Bles. She saw the long gnarled fingers of the tough little trees and they looked like the fingers of Elspeth down there beneath the earth pulling against the boy. Slowly Zora forgot her blood and pain. Who would win—the witch, or Jason?

Bles looked up and saw the bleeding hands. With a bound he was beside her.

"Zora!" The cry seemed wrung from his heart by contrition. Why had he not known—not seen before! "Zora, come right out of this! Sit down here and rest."

She looked at him unwaveringly; there was no flinching of her spirit.

"I sha'n't do it," she said. "You'se working, and I'se going to work."

"But—Zora—you're not used to such work, and I am. You're tired out."

"So is you," was her reply.

He looked himself over ruefully, and dropping his axe, sat down beside her on a great log. Silently they contemplated the land; it seemed indeed a hopeless task. Then they looked at each other in sudden, unspoken fear of failure.

"If we only had a mule!" he sighed. Immediately her face lighted and her lips parted, but she said nothing. He presently bounded to his feet.

"Never mind, Zora. To-morrow is Saturday, and I'll work all day. We just will get it done—sometime." His mouth closed with determination.

"We won't work any more today, then?" cried Zora, her eagerness betraying itself despite her efforts to hide it.

"You won't," affirmed Bles. "But I've got to do just a little—"

But Zora was adamant: he was tired; she was tired; they would rest. To-morrow with the rising sun they would begin again.

"There'll be a bright moon tonight," ventured Bles.

"Then I'll come too," Zora announced positively, and he had to promise for her sake to rest.

They went up the path together and parted diffidently, he watching her flit away with sorrowful eyes, a little disturbed and puzzled at the burden he had voluntarily assumed, but never dreaming of drawing back.

Zora did not go far. No sooner did she know herself well out of his sight than she dropped lightly down beside the path, listening intently until the last echo of his footsteps had died away. Then, leaving the cabin on her right, and the scene of their toil on her left, she cut straight through the swamp, skirted the big road, and in a half-hour was in the lower meadows of the Cresswell plantations, where the tired stock was being turned out to graze for the night. Here, in the shadow of the wood, she lingered. Slowly, but with infinite patience, she broke one strand after another of the barbed-wire fencing, watching, the while, the sun grow great and crimson, and die at last in mighty splendor behind the dimmer westward forests.

The voices of the hands and hostlers grew fainter and thinner in the distance of purple twilight until the last of them disappeared. Silence fell, deep and soft; the silence of a day sinking to sleep. Not until then did Zora steal forth from her hiding-place.

She had chosen her mule long before—a big, black beast, snorting over his pile of corn,—and gliding up to him, she gathered his supper into her skirt, found a stout halter, and fed him sparingly as he followed her. Quickly she unfastened the pieces of the fence, led the animal through, and spliced them again; and then, with fox-like caution, she guided her prize through the labyrinthine windings of the swamp. It was dark and haunting, and ever and again rose lonely night cries. The girl trembled a little, but plodded resolutely on until the dim silver disk of the half-moon began to glimmer through the trees. Then she pressed on more swiftly, and fed more scantily, until finally, with the moonlight pouring over them at the black lagoon, Zora attempted to drive the animal into the still waters; but he gave a loud protesting snort and balked. By subtle temptings she gave him to understand that plenty lay beyond the dark waters, and quickly swinging herself to his back she started to ride him up and down along the edge of the lagoon, petting and whispering to him of good things beyond. Slowly her eyes grew wide; she seemed to be riding out of dreamland on some hobgoblin beast.

Deeper and deeper they penetrated into the dark waters. Now they entered the slime; now they stumbled on hidden roots; but deeper and deeper they waded until at last, turning the animal's head with a jerk, and giving him a sharp stroke of the whip, she headed straight for the island. A moment the beast snorted and plunged; higher and higher the black still waters rose round the girl. They crept up her little limbs, swirled round her breasts and gleamed green and slimy along her shoulders. A wild terror gripped her. Maybe she was riding the devil's horse, and these were the yawning gates of hell, black and sombre beneath the cold, dead radiance of the moon. She saw again the gnarled and black and claw-like fingers of Elspeth gripping and dragging her down.

A scream struggled in her breast, her fingers relaxed, and the big beast, stretching his cramped neck, rose in one mighty plunge and planted his feet on the sand of the island.

Bles, hurrying down in the morning with new tools and new determination, stopped and stared in blank amazement. Zora was perched in a tree singing softly and beneath a fat black mule was finishing his breakfast.

"Zora—" he gasped, "how—how did you do it?"

She only smiled and sang a happier measure, pausing only to whisper:

"Dreams—dreams—it's all dreams here, I tells you."

Bles frowned and stood irresolute. The song proceeded with less assurance, slower and lower, till it stopped, and the singer dropped to the ground, watching him with wide eyes. He looked down at her, slight, tired, scratched, but undaunted, striving blindly toward the light with stanch, unfaltering faith. A pity surged in his heart. He put his arm about her shoulders and murmured:

"You poor, brave child."

And she shivered with joy.

All day Saturday and part of Sunday they worked feverishly. The trees crashed and the stumps groaned and crept up into the air, the brambles blazed and smoked; little frightened animals fled for shelter; and a wide black patch of rich loam broadened and broadened till it kissed, on every side but the sheltered east, the black waters of the lagoon. Late Sunday night the mule again swam the slimy lagoon, and disappeared toward the Cresswell fields. Then Bles sat down beside Zora, facing the fields, and gravely took her hand. She looked at him in quick, breathless fear.

"Zora," he said, "sometimes you tell lies, don't you?"

"Yes," she said slowly; "sometimes."

"And, Zora, sometimes you steal—you stole the pin from Miss Taylor, and we stole Mr. Cresswell's mule for two days."

"Yes," she said faintly, with a perplexed wrinkle in her brows, "I stole it."

"Well, Zora, I don't want you ever to tell another lie, or ever to take anything that doesn't belong to you."

She looked at him silently with the shadow of something like terror far back in the depths of her deep eyes.

"Always—tell—the truth?" she repeated slowly.

"Yes."

Her fingers worked nervously.

"All the truth?" she asked.

He thought a while.

"No," said he finally, "it is not necessary always to tell all the truth; but never tell anything that isn't the truth."

"Never?"

"Never."

"Even if it hurts me?"

"Even if it hurts. God is good, He will not let it hurt much."

"He's a fair God, ain't He?" she mused, scanning the evening sky.

"Yes—He's fair, He wouldn't take advantage of a little girl that did wrong, when she didn't know it was wrong."

Her face lightened and she held his hands in both hers, and said solemnly as though saying a prayer:

"I won't lie any more, and I won't steal—and—" she looked at him in startled wistfulness—he remembered it in after years; but he felt he had preached enough.

"And now for the seed!" he interrupted joyously. "And then—the Silver Fleece!"

That night, for the first time, Bles entered Zora's home. It was a single low, black room, smoke-shadowed and dirty, with two dingy beds and a gaping fire-place. On one side of the fire-place sat the yellow woman, young, with traces of beauty, holding the white child in her arms; on the other, hugging the blaze, huddled a formless heap, wreathed in coils of tobacco smoke—Elspeth, Zora's mother.

Zora said nothing, but glided in and stood in the shadows.

"Good-evening," said Bles cheerily. The woman with the baby alone responded.

"I came for the seed you promised us—the cotton-seed."

The hag wheeled and approached him swiftly, grasping his shoulders and twisting her face into his. She was a horrible thing—filthy of breath, dirty, with dribbling mouth and red eyes. Her few long black teeth hung loosely like tusks and the folds of fat on her chin curled down on her great neck. Bles shuddered and stepped back.

"Is you afeared, honey?" she whispered.

"No," he said sturdily.

She chuckled drily. "Yes, you is—everybody's 'feared of old Elspeth; but she won't hurt you—you's got the spell;" and wheeling again, she was back at the fire.

"But the seed?" he ventured.

She pointed impressively roofward. "The dark of the moon, boy, the dark of the moon—the first dark—at midnight." Bles could not wring another word from her; nor did the ancient witch, by word or look, again give the slightest indication that she was aware of his presence.

With reluctant farewell, Bles turned home. For a space Zora watched him, and once she started after him, but came slowly back, and sat by the fire-place.

Out of the night came voices and laughter, and the sound of wheels and galloping horses. It was not the soft, rollicking laughter of black men, but the keener, more metallic sound of white men's cries, and Bles Alwyn paused at the edge of the wood, looked back and hesitated, but decided after a moment to go home and to bed.

Zora, however, leapt to her feet and fled into the night, while the hag screamed after her and cursed. There was tramping of feet on the cabin floor, and loud voices and singing and cursing.

"Where's Zora?" some one yelled, with an oath. "Damn it! where is she? I haven't seen her for a year, you old devil."

The hag whimpered and snarled. Far down in the field of the Fleece, Zora lay curled beneath a tall dark tree asleep. All night there was coming and going in the cabin; the talk and laughter grew loud and boisterous, and the red fire glared in the night.

The days flew by and the moon darkened. In the swamp, the hidden island lay spaded and bedded, and Bles was throwing up a dyke around the edge; Zora helped him until he came to the black oak at the western edge. It was a large twisted thing with one low flying limb that curled out across another tree and made a mighty seat above the waters.

"Don't throw the dirt too high there," she begged; "it'll bring my seat too near the earth."

He looked up.

"Why, it's a throne," he laughed.

"It needs a roof," he whimsically told her when his day's work was done. Deftly twisting and intertwining the branches of tree and bush, he wove a canopy of living green that shadowed the curious nest and warded it snugly from wind and water.

Early next morning Bles slipped down and improved the nest; adding foot-rests to make the climbing easy, peep-holes east and west, a bit of carpet over the bark, and on the rough main trunk, a little picture in blue and gold of Bougereau's Madonna. Zora sat hidden and alone in silent ecstasy. Bles peeped in—there was not room to enter: the girl was staring silently at the Madonna. She seemed to feel rather than hear his presence, and she inquired softly:

"Who's it, Bles?"

"The mother of God," he answered reverently.

"And why does she hold a lily?"

"It stands for purity—she was a good woman."

"With a baby," Zora added slowly.

"Yes—" said Bles, and then more quickly—"It is the Christ Child—God's baby."

"God is the father of all the little babies, ain't He, Bles?"

"Why, yes—yes, of course; only this little baby didn't have any other father."

"Yes, I know one like that," she said,—and then she added softly: "Poor little Christ-baby."

Bles hesitated, and before he found words Zora was saying:

"How white she is; she's as white as the lily, Bles; but—I'm sorry she's white—Bles, what's purity—just whiteness?"

Bles glanced at her awkwardly but she was still staring wide-eyed at the picture, and her voice was earnest. She was now so old and again so much a child, an eager questioning child, that there seemed about her innocence something holy.

"It means," he stammered, groping for meanings—"it means being good—just as good as a woman knows how."

She wheeled quickly toward him and asked him eagerly:

"Not better—not better than she knows, but just as good, in—lying and stealing and—and everything?"

Bles smiled.

"No—not better than she knows, but just as good."

She trembled happily.

"I'm—pure," she said, with a strange little breaking voice and gesture. A sob struggled in his throat.

"Of course you are," he whispered tenderly, hiding her little hands in his.

"I—I was so afraid—sometimes—that I wasn't," she whispered, lifting up to him her eyes streaming with tears. Silently he kissed her lips.

From that day on they walked together in a new world. No revealing word was spoken; no vows were given, none asked for; but a new bond held them. She grew older, quieter, taller, he humbler, more tender and reverent, as they toiled together.

So the days passed. The sun burned in the heavens; but the silvered glory of the moon grew fainter and fainter and each night it rose later than the night before. Then one day Zora whispered:

"Tonight!"

Bles came to the cabin, and he and Zora and Elspeth sat silently around the fire-place with its meagre embers. The night was balmy and still; only occasionally a wandering breeze searching the hidden places of the swamp, or the call and song of night birds, jarred the stillness. Long they sat, until the silence crept into Bles's flesh, and stretching out his hand, he touched Zora's, clasping it.

After a time the old woman rose and hobbled to a big black chest. Out of it she brought an old bag of cotton seed—not the white-green seed which Bles had always known, but small, smooth black seeds, which she handled carefully, dipping her hands deep down and letting them drop through her gnarled fingers. And so again they sat and waited and waited, saying no word.

Not until the stars of midnight had swung to the zenith did they start down through the swamp. Bles sought to guide the old woman, but he found she knew the way better than he did. Her shadowy figure darting in and out among the trunks till they crossed the tree bridge, moved ever noiselessly ahead.

She motioned the boy and girl away to the thicket at the edge, and stood still and black in the midst of the cleared island. Bles slipped his arm protectingly around Zora, glancing fearfully about in the darkness. Slowly a great cry rose and swept the island. It struck madly and sharply, and then died away to uneasy murmuring. From afar there seemed to come the echo or the answer to the call. The form of Elspeth blurred the night dimly far off, almost disappearing, and then growing blacker and larger. They heard the whispering "swish-swish" of falling seed; they felt the heavy tread of a great coming body. The form of the old woman suddenly loomed black above them, hovering a moment formless and vast then fading again away, and the "swish-swish" of the falling seed alone rose in the silence of the night.

At last all was still. A long silence. Then again the air seemed suddenly filled with that great and awful cry; its echoing answer screamed afar and they heard the raucous voice of Elspeth beating in their ears:

"De seed done sowed! De seed done sowed!"

Ten

MR. TAYLOR CALLS

"Thinking the matter over," said Harry Cresswell to his father, "I'm inclined to advise drawing this Taylor out a little further."

The Colonel puffed his cigar and one eye twinkled, the lid of the other being at the moment suggestively lowered.

"Was she pretty?" he asked; but his son ignored the remark, and the father continued:

"I had a telegram from Taylor this morning, after you left. He'll be passing through Montgomery the first of next month, and proposes calling."

"I'll wire him to come," said Harry, promptly.

At this juncture the door opened and a young lady entered. Helen Cresswell was twenty, small and pretty, with a slightly languid air. Outside herself there was little in which she took very great interest, and her interest in herself was not absorbing. Yet she had a curiously sweet way. Her servants liked her and the tenants could count on her spasmodic attentions in time of sickness and trouble.

"Good-morning," she said, with a soft drawl. She sauntered over to her father, kissed him, and hung over the back of his chair.

"Did you get that novel for me, Harry?"—expectantly regarding her brother.

"I forgot it, Sis. But I'll be going to town again soon."

The young lady showed that she was annoyed.

"By the bye, Sis, there's a young lady over at the Negro school whom I think you'd like."

"Black or white?"

"A young lady, I said. Don't be sarcastic."

"I heard you. I did not know whether you were using our language or others'."

"She's really unusual, and seems to understand things. She's planning to call some day—shall you be at home?"

"Certainly not, Harry; you're crazy." And she strolled out to the porch, exchanged some remarks with a passing servant, and then nestled comfortably into a hammock. She helped herself to a chocolate and called out musically:

"Pa, are you going to town today?"

"Yes, honey."

"Can I go?"

"I'm going in an hour or so, and business at the bank will keep me until after lunch."

"I don't care, I just must go. I'm clean out of anything to read. And I want to shop and call on Dolly's friend—she's going soon."

"All right. Can you be ready by eleven?"

She considered.

"Yes—I reckon," she drawled, prettily swinging her foot and watching the tree-tops above the distant swamp.

Harry Cresswell, left alone, rang the bell for the butler.

"Still thinking of going, are you, Sam?" asked Cresswell, carelessly, when the servant appeared. He was a young, light-brown boy, his manner obsequious.

"Why, yes, sir—if you can spare me."

"Spare you, you black rascal! You're going anyhow. Well, you'll repent it; the North is no place for niggers. See here, I want lunch for two at one o'clock." The directions that followed were explicit and given with a particularity that made Sam wonder. "Order my trap," he finally directed.

Cresswell went out on the high-pillared porch until the trap appeared.

"Oh, Harry! I wanted to go in the trap—take me?" coaxed his sister.

"Sorry, Sis, but I'm going the other way."

"I don't believe it," said Miss Cresswell, easily, as she settled down to another chocolate. Cresswell did not take the trouble to reply.

Miss Taylor was on her morning walk when she saw him spinning down the road, and both expressed surprise and pleasure at the meeting.

"What a delightful morning!" said the school-teacher, and the glow on her face said even more.

"I'm driving round through the old plantation," he explained; "won't you join me?"

"The invitation is tempting," she hesitated; "but I've got just oodles of work."

"What! on Saturday?"

"Saturday is my really busy day, don't you know. I guess I could get off; really, though, I suspect I ought to tell Miss Smith."

He looked a little perplexed; but the direction in which her inclinations lay was quite clear to him.

"It—it would be decidedly the proper thing," he murmured, "and we could, of course, invite Miss—"

She saw the difficulty and interrupted him:

"It's quite unnecessary; she'll think I have simply gone for a long walk." And soon they were speeding down the silent road, breathing the perfume of the pines.

Now a ride of an early spring morning, in Alabama, over a leisurely old plantation road and behind a spirited horse, is an event to be enjoyed. Add to this a man bred to be agreeable and outdoing his training, and a pretty girl gay with new-found companionship—all this is apt to make a morning worth remembering.

They turned off the highway and passed through long stretches of ploughed and tumbled fields, and other fields brown with the dead ghosts of past years' cotton standing straggling and weather-worn. Long, straight, or curling rows of ploughers passed by with steaming, struggling mules, with whips snapping and the yodle of workers or the sharp guttural growl of overseers as a constant accompaniment.

"They're beginning to plough up the land for the cotton-crop," he explained.

"What a wonderful crop it is!" Mary had fallen pensive.

"Yes, indeed—if only we could get decent returns for it."

"Why, I thought it was a most valuable crop." She turned to him inquiringly.

"It is—to Negroes and manufacturers, but not to planters."

"But why don't the planters do something?"

"What can be done with Negroes?" His tone was bitter. "We tried to combine against manufacturers in the Farmers' League of last winter. My father was president. The pastime cost him fifty thousand dollars."

Miss Taylor was perplexed, but eager. "You must correspond with my brother, Mr. Cresswell," she gravely observed. "I'm sure he—" Before she could finish, an overseer rode up. He began talking abruptly, with a quick side-glance at Mary, in which she might have caught a gleam of surprised curiosity.

"That old nigger, Jim Sykes, over on the lower place, sir, ain't showed up again this morning."

Cresswell nodded. "I'll drive by and see," he said carelessly.

The old man was discovered sitting before his cabin with his head in his hands. He was tall, black, and gaunt, partly bald, with tufted hair. One leg was swathed in rags, and his eyes, as he raised them, wore a cowed and furtive look.

"Well, Uncle Jim, why aren't you at work?" called Cresswell from the roadside. The old man rose painfully to his feet, swayed against the cabin, and clutched off his cap.

"It's my leg again, Master Harry—the leg what I hurt in the gin last fall," he answered, uneasily.

Cresswell frowned. "It's probably whiskey," he assured his companion, in an undertone; then to the man:

"You must get to the field to-morrow,"—his habitually calm, unfeeling positiveness left no ground for objection; "I cannot support you in idleness, you know."

"Yes, Master Harry," the other returned, with conciliatory eagerness; "I knows that—I knows it and I ain't shirking. But, Master Harry, they ain't doing me right 'bout my cabin—I just wants to show you." He got out some dirty papers, and started to hobble forward, wincing with pain. Mary Taylor stirred in her seat under an involuntary impulse to help, but Cresswell touched the horse.

"All right, Uncle Jim," he said; "we'll look it over to-morrow."

They turned presently to where they could see the Cresswell oaks waving lazily in the sunlight and the white gleam of the pillared "Big House."

A pause at the Cresswell store, where Mr. Cresswell entered, afforded Mary Taylor an opportunity further to extend her fund of information.

"Do you go to school?" she inquired of the black boy who held the horse, her mien sympathetic and interested.

"No, ma'am," he mumbled.

"What's your name?"

"Buddy—I'se one of Aunt Rachel's chilluns."

"And where do you live, Buddy?"

"I lives with granny, on de upper place."

"Well, I'll see Aunt Rachel and ask her to send you to school."

"Won't do no good—she done ast, and Mr. Cresswell, he say he ain't going to have no more of his niggers—"

But Mr. Cresswell came out just then, and with him a big, fat, and greasy black man, with little eyes and soft wheedling voice. He was following Cresswell at the side but just a little behind, hat in hand, head aslant, and talking deferentially. Cresswell strode carelessly on, answering him with good-natured tolerance.

The black man stopped with humility before the trap and swept a profound obeisance. Cresswell glanced up quizzically at Miss Taylor.

"This," he announced, "is Jones, the Baptist preacher—begging."

"Ah, lady,"—in mellow, unctuous tones—"I don't know what we poor black folks would do without Mr. Cresswell—the Lord bless him," said the minister, shoving his hand far down into his pocket.

Shortly afterward they were approaching the Cresswell Mansion, when the young man reined in the horse.

"If you wouldn't mind," he suggested, "I could introduce my sister to you."

"I should be delighted," answered Miss Taylor, readily.

When they rolled up to the homestead under its famous oaks the hour was past one. The house was a white oblong building of two stories. In front was the high pillared porch, semi-circular, extending to the roof with a balcony in the second story. On the right was a broad verandah looking toward a wide lawn, with the main road and the red swamp in the distance.

The butler met them, all obeisance.

"Ask Miss Helen to come down," said Mr. Cresswell.

Sam glanced at him.

"Miss Helen will be dreadful sorry, but she and the Colonel have just gone to town—I believe her Aunty ain't well."

Mr. Cresswell looked annoyed.

"Well, well! that's too bad," he said. "But at any rate, have a seat a moment out here on the verandah, Miss Taylor. And, Sam, can't you find us a sandwich and something cool? I could not be so inhospitable as to send you away hungry at this time of day."

Miss Taylor sat down in a comfortable low chair facing the refreshing breeze, and feasted her eyes on the scene. Oh, this was life: a smooth green lawn, and beds of flowers, a vista of brown fields, and the dark line of wood beyond. The deft, quiet butler brought out a little table, spread with the whitest of cloths and laid with the brightest of silver, and "found" a dainty lunch. There was a bit of fried chicken breast, some crisp bacon, browned potatoes, little round beaten biscuit, and rose-colored sherbet with a whiff of wine in it. Miss Taylor wondered a little at the bounty of Southern hospitality; but she was hungry, and she ate heartily, then leaned back dreamily and listened to Mr. Cresswell's smooth Southern r's, adding a word here and there that kept the conversation going and brought a grave smile to his pale lips. At last with a sigh she arose to her feet.

"I must go! What shall I tell Miss Smith! No, no—no carriage; I must walk." Of course, however, she could not refuse to let him go at least half-way, ostensibly to tell her of the coming of her brother. He expressed again his disappointment at his sister's absence.

Somewhat to Miss Taylor's surprise Miss Smith said nothing until they were parting for the night, then she asked:

"Was Miss Cresswell at home?"

Mary reddened.

"She had been called suddenly to town."

"Well, my dear, I wouldn't do it again."

The girl was angry.

"I'm not a school-girl, but a grown woman, and capable of caring for myself. Moreover, in matter of propriety I do not think you have usually found my ideas too lax—rather the opposite."

"There, there, dear; don't be angry. Only I think if your brother knew—"

"He will know in a very few weeks; he is coming to visit the Cresswells." And Miss Taylor sailed triumphantly up the stairs.

But John Taylor was not the man to wait weeks when a purpose could be accomplished in days or hours. No sooner was Harry Cresswell's telegram at hand than he hastened back from Savannah, struck across country, and the week after his sister's ride found him striding up the carriage-way of the Cresswell home.

John Taylor had prospered since summer. The cotton manufacturers' combine was all but a fact; Mr. Easterly had discovered that his chief clerk's sense and executive ability were invaluable, and John Taylor was slated for a salary in five figures when things should be finally settled, not to mention a generous slice of stock—watery at present, but warranted to ripen early.

While Mr. Easterly still regarded Taylor's larger trust as chimerical, some occurrences of the fall made him take a respectful attitude toward it. Just as the final clauses of the combine agreement were to be signed, there appeared a shortage in the cotton-crop, and prices began to soar. The cause was obviously the unexpected success of the new Farmers' League among the cotton-growers. Mr. Easterly found it comparatively easy to overthrow the corner, but the flurry made some of the manufacturers timid, and the trust agreement was postponed until a year later. This experience and the persistence of Mr. Taylor induced Mr. Easterly to take a step toward the larger project: he let in some eager outside capital to the safer manufacturing scheme, and withdrew a corresponding amount of Mrs. Grey's money. This he put into John Taylor's hands to invest in the South in bank stock and industries with the idea of playing a part in the financial situation there.

"It's a risk, Taylor, of course, and we'll let the old lady take the risk. At the worst it's safer than the damned foolishness she has in mind."

So it happened that John Taylor went South to look after large investments and, as Mr. Easterly expressed it, "to bring back facts, not dreams." His investment matters went quickly and well, and now he turned to his wider and bigger scheme. He wrote the Cresswells tentatively, expecting no reply, or an evasive one; planning to circle around them, drawing his nets closer, and trying them again later. To his surprise they responded quickly.

"Humph! Hard pressed," he decided, and hurried to them.

So it was the week after Mary Taylor's ride that found him at Cresswell's front door, thin, eagle-eyed, fairly well dressed and radiating confidence.

"John Taylor," he announced to Sam, jerkily, thrusting out a card. "Want to see Mr. Cresswell; soon as possible."

Sam made him wait a half-hour, for the sake of discipline, and then brought father and son.

"Good-morning, Mr. Cresswell, and Mr. Cresswell again," said Mr. Taylor, helping himself to a straight-backed chair. "Hope you'll pardon this unexpected visit. Found myself called through Montgomery, just after I got your wire; thought I'd better drop over."

At Harry's suggestion they moved to the verandah and sat down over whiskey and soda, which Taylor refused, and plunged into the subject without preliminaries.

"I'm assuming that you gentlemen are in the cotton business for making money. So am I. I see a way in which you and your friends can help me and mine, and clear up more millions than all of us can spend; for this reason I've hunted you up. This is my scheme.

"See here; there are a thousand cotton-mills in this country, half of them in the South, one-fourth in New England, and one-fourth in the Middle States. They are capitalized at six hundred million dollars. Now let me tell you: we control three hundred and fifty millions of that capitalization. The trust is going through capitalization at a billion. The only thing that threatens it is child-labor legislation in the South, the tariff, and the control of the supply of cotton. Pretty big hindrances, you say. That's so, but look here: we've got the stock so placed that nothing short of a popular upheaval can send any Child Labor bill through Congress in six years. See? After that we don't care. Same thing applies to the tariff. The last bill ran ten years. The present bill will last longer, or I lose my guess—'specially if Smith is in the Senate.

"Well, then, there remains raw cotton. The connection of cotton-raising and its raw material is too close to risk a manufacturing trust that does not include practical control of the raw material. For that reason we're planning a trust to include the raising and manufacturing of cotton in America. Then, too, cornering the cotton market here means the whip-hand of the industrial world. Gentlemen, it's the biggest idea of the century. It beats steel."

Colonel Cresswell chuckled.

"How do you spell that?" he asked.

But John Taylor was not to be diverted; his thin face was pale, but his gray eyes burned with the fire of a zealot. Harry Cresswell only smiled dimly and looked interested.

"Now, again," continued John Taylor. "There are a million cotton farms in the South, half run by colored people and half by whites. Leave the colored out of account as long as they are disfranchised. The half million white farms are owned or controlled by five thousand wholesale merchants and three thousand big landowners, of whom you, Colonel Cresswell, are among the biggest with your fifty thousand acres. Ten banks control these eight thousand people—one of these is the Jefferson National of Montgomery, of which you are a silent director."

Colonel Cresswell started; this man evidently had inside information. Did he know of the mortgage, too?

"Don't be alarmed. I'm safe," Taylor assured him. "Now, then, if we can get the banks, wholesale merchants, and biggest planters into line we can control the cotton crop."

"But," objected Harry Cresswell, "while the banks and the large merchants may be possibilities, do you know what it means to try to get planters into line?"

"Yes, I do. And what I don't know you and your father do. Colonel Cresswell is president of the Farmers' League. That's the reason I'm here. Your success last year made you indispensable to our plans."

"Our success?" laughed Colonel Cresswell, ruefully, thinking of the fifty thousand dollars lost and the mortgage to cover it.

"Yes, sir—success! You didn't know it; we were too careful to allow that; and I say frankly you wouldn't know it now if we weren't convinced you were too far involved and the League too discouraged to repeat the dose."

"Now, look here, sir," began Colonel Cresswell, flushing and drawing himself erect.

"There, there, Colonel Cresswell, don't misunderstand me. I'm a plain man. I'm playing a big game—a tremendous one. I need you, and I know you need me. I find out about you, and my sources of knowledge are wide and unerring. But the knowledge is safe, sir; it's buried. Last year when you people curtailed cotton acreage and warehoused a big chunk of the crop you gave the mill men the scare of their lives. We had a hasty conference and the result was that the bottom fell out of your credit."

Colonel Cresswell grew pale. There was a disquieting, relentless element in this unimpassioned man's tone.

"You failed," pursued John Taylor, "because you couldn't get the banks and the big merchants behind you. We've got 'em behind us—with big chunks of stock and a signed iron-clad agreement. You can wheel the planters into line—will you do it?" John Taylor bent forward tense but cool and steel-like. Harry Cresswell laid his hand on his father's arm and said quietly:

"And where do we come in?"

"That's business," affirmed John Taylor. "You and two hundred and fifty of the biggest planters come in on the ground-floor of the two-billion-dollar All-Cotton combine. It can easily mean two million to you in five years."

"And the other planters?"

"They come in for high-priced cotton until we get our grip."

"And then?"

The quiet question seemed to invoke a vision for John Taylor; the gray eyes took on the faraway look of a seer; the thin, bloodless lips formed a smile in which there was nothing pleasant.

"They keep their mouths shut or we squeeze 'em and buy the land. We propose to own the cotton belt of the South."

Colonel Cresswell started indignantly from his seat.

"Do you think—by God, sir!—that I'd betray Southern gentlemen to—"

But Harry's hand and impassive manner restrained him; he cooled as suddenly as he had flared up.

"Thank you very much, Mr. Taylor," he concluded; "we'll consider this matter carefully. You'll spend the night, of course."

"Can't possibly—must catch that next train back."

"But we must talk further," the Colonel insisted. "And then, there's your sister."

"By Jove! Forgot all about Mary." John Taylor after a little desultory talk, followed his host up-stairs.

The next afternoon John Taylor was sitting beside Helen Cresswell on the porch which overlooked the terrace, and was, on the whole, thinking less of cotton than he had for several years. To be sure, he was talking cotton; but he was doing it mechanically and from long habit, and was really thinking how charming a girl Helen Cresswell was. She fascinated him. For his sister Taylor had a feeling of superiority that was almost contempt. The idea of a woman trying to understand and argue about things men knew! He admired the dashing and handsome Miss Easterly, but she scared him and made him angrily awkward. This girl, on the other hand, just lounged and listened with an amused smile, or asked the most child-like questions. She required him to wait on her quite as a matter of course—to adjust her pillows, hand her the bon-bons, and hunt for her lost fan. Mr. Taylor, who had not waited on anybody since his mother died, and not much before, found a quite inexplicable pleasure in these little domesticities. Several times he took out his watch and frowned; yet he managed to stay with her quite happily.

On her part Miss Cresswell was vastly amused. Her acquaintance with men was not wide, but it was thorough so far as her own class was concerned. They were all well-dressed and leisurely, fairly good looking, and they said the same words and did the same things in the same way. They paid her compliments which she did not believe, and they did not expect her to believe. They were charmingly deferential in the matter of dropped handkerchiefs, but tyrannical of opinion. They were thoughtful about candy and flowers, but thoughtless about feelings and income. Altogether they were delightful, but cloying. This man was startlingly different; ungainly and always in a desperate, unaccountable hurry. He knew no pretty speeches, he certainly did not measure up to her standard of breeding, and yet somehow he was a gentleman. All this was new to Helen Cresswell, and she liked it.

Meanwhile the men above-stairs lingered in the Colonel's office—the older one perturbed and sputtering, the younger insistent and imperturbable.

"The fact is, father," he was saying, "as you yourself have said, one bad crop of cotton would almost ruin us."

"But the prospects are good."

"What are prospects in March? No, father, this is the situation—three good crops in succession will wipe off our indebtedness and leave us facing only low prices and a scarcity of niggers; on the other hand—" The father interrupted impatiently.

"Yes, on the other hand, if we plunge deeper in debt and betray our friends we may come out millionaires or—paupers."

"Precisely," said Harry Cresswell, calmly. "Now, our plan is to take no chances; I propose going North and looking into this matter thoroughly. If he represents money and has money, and if the trust has really got the grip he says it has, why, it's a case of crush or get crushed, and we'll have to join them on their own terms. If he's bluffing, or the thing looks weak, we'll wait."

It all ended as matters usually did end, in Harry's having his way. He came downstairs, expecting, indeed, rather hoping, to find Taylor impatiently striding to and fro, watch in hand; but here he was, ungainly, it might be, but quite docile, drawing the picture of a power-loom for Miss Cresswell, who seemed really interested. Harry silently surveyed them from the door, and his face lighted with a new thought.

Taylor, espying him, leapt to his feet and hauled out his watch.

"Well—I—" he began lamely.

"No, you weren't either," interrupted Harry, with a laugh that was unmistakably cordial and friendly. "You had quite forgotten what you were waiting for—isn't that so, Sis?"

Helen regarded her brother through her veiling lashes: what meant this sudden assumption of warmth and amiability?

"No, indeed; he was raging with impatience," she returned.

"Why, Miss Cresswell, I—I—" John Taylor forsook social amenities and pulled himself together. "Well," shortly, "now for that talk—ready?" And quite forgetting Miss Cresswell, he bolted into the parlor.

"The decision we have come to is this," said Harry Cresswell. "We are in debt, as you know."

"Forty-nine thousand, seven hundred and forty-two dollars and twelve cents," responded Taylor; "in three notes, due in twelve, twenty-four, and thirty-six months, interest at eight per cent, held by—"

The Colonel snorted his amazement, and Harry Cresswell cut in:

"Yes," he calmly admitted; "and with good crops for three years we'd be all right; good crops even for two years would leave us fairly well off."

"You mean it would relieve you of the present stringency and put you face to face with the falling price of cotton and rising wages," was John Taylor's dry addendum.

"Rising price of cotton, you mean," Harry corrected.

"Oh, temporarily," John Taylor admitted.

"Precisely, and thus postpone the decision."

"No, Mr. Cresswell. I'm offering to let you in on the ground floor—now—not next year, or year after."

"Mr. Taylor, have you any money in this?"

"Everything I've got."

"Well, the thing is this way: if you can prove to us that conditions are as you say, we're in for it."

"Good! Meet me in New York, say—let's see, this is March tenth—well, May third."

Young Cresswell was thinking rapidly. This man without doubt represented money. He was anxious for an alliance. Why? Was it all straight, or did the whole move conceal a trick?

His eyes strayed to the porch where his pretty sister sat languidly, and then toward the school where the other sister lived. John Taylor looked out on the porch, too. They glanced quickly at each other, and each wondered if the other had shared his thought. Harry Cresswell did not voice his mind for he was not wholly disposed to welcome what was there; but he could not refrain from saying in tones almost confidential:

"You could recommend this deal, then, could you—to your own friends?"

"To my own family," asserted John Taylor, looking at Harry Cresswell with sudden interest. But Mr. Cresswell was staring at the end of his cigar.