ion
that Bud might do something rash, she seemed serenely confident of the
colonel's ultimate success. In her simple creed, God might sometimes
seem to neglect his black children, but no harm could come to a Negro
who had a rich white gentleman for friend and protector.

_Twenty-five_

It was not yet sunrise when the colonel set out next day, after an
early breakfast, upon his visit to Fetters. There was a crisp
freshness in the air, the dew was thick upon the grass, the clear blue
sky gave promise of a bright day and a pleasant journey.

The plantation conducted by Fetters lay about twenty miles to the
south of Clarendon, and remote from any railroad, a convenient
location for such an establishment, for railroads, while they bring in
supplies and take out produce, also bring in light and take out
information, both of which are fatal to certain fungus growths, social
as well as vegetable, which flourish best in the dark.

The road led by Mink Run, and the colonel looked over toward the house
as they passed it. Old and weather-beaten it seemed, even in the
distance, which lent it no enchantment in the bright morning light.
When the colonel had travelled that road in his boyhood, great
forests of primeval pine had stretched for miles on either hand,
broken at intervals by thriving plantations. Now all was changed. The
tall and stately growth of the long-leaf pine had well nigh
disappeared; fifteen years before, the turpentine industry, moving
southward from Virginia, along the upland counties of the Appalachian
slope, had swept through Clarendon County, leaving behind it a trail
of blasted trunks and abandoned stills. Ere these had yielded to
decay, the sawmill had followed, and after the sawmill the tar kiln,
so that the dark green forest was now only a waste of blackened stumps
and undergrowth, topped by the vulgar short-leaved pine and an
occasional oak or juniper. Here and there they passed an expanse of
cultivated land, and there were many smaller clearings in which could
be seen, plowing with gaunt mules or stunted steers, some heavy-footed
Negro or listless "po' white man;" or women and children, black or
white. In reply to a question, the coachman said that Mr. Fetters had
worked all that country for turpentine years before, and had only
taken up cotton raising after the turpentine had been exhausted from
the sand hills.

He had left his mark, thought the colonel. Like the plague of locusts,
he had