ced to go into the woods and there labor with his ax. But as he
pointed out to Hannibal, a poor man's capital was his health, and he
being a poor man it behooved him to have a jealous care of himself. He
made use of the dull days of mingled mist and drizzle for hunting, work
being clearly out of the question; one could get about over the brown
floor of the forest in silence then, and there was no sun to glint the
brass mountings of his rifle. The fine days he professed to regard with
keen suspicion as weather breeders, when it was imprudent to go far from
home, especially in the direction of the Crenshaw timber lands, which
for years had been the scene of all his gainful industry, and where he
seemed to think nature ready to assume her most sinister aspect.
Again in the early spring, when the young oak leaves were the size of
squirrel's ears and the whippoorwills began calling as the long shadows
struck through the pine woods, the needs of his corn ground battled with
his desire to fish. In all such crises of the soul Mr. Yancy was fairly
vanquished before the struggle began; but to the boy his activities were
perfectly ordered to yield the largest return in contentment.

The Barony had been offered for sale and bought in by Crenshaw for
eleven thousand dollars, this being the amount of his claim. Some six
months later he sold the plantation for fifteen thousand dollars to
Nathaniel Ferris, of Currituck County.

"There's money in the old place, Bob, at that figure," Crenshaw told
Yancy.

"There are so," agreed Yancy, who was thinking Crenshaw had lost no time
in getting it out.

They were seated on the counter in Crenshaw's store at Balaam's Cross
Roads, where the heavy odor of black molasses battled with the sprightly
smell of salt fish. The merchant held the Scratch Hiller in no small
esteem. Their intimacy was of long standing, for the Yancys going down
and the Crenshaws coming up had for a brief space flourished on the
same social level. Mr. Crenshaw's rise in life, however, had been
uninterrupted, while Mr. Yancy, wrapped in a philosophic calm and deeply
averse to industry, had permitted the momentum imparted by a remote
ancestor to carry him where it would, which was steadily away from
that tempered prosperity his family had once boasted as members of the
land-owning and slaveholding class.

"I mean there's money in the place fo' Ferris," Crenshaw explained.

"I reckon yo're right, Mr. John; the old general