leece of its fold.

Child of the air and the sky and sun; therefore, cotton--and not
corn, which draws its life from the clay and mud and decay which
comes from below.

She had seen the first cream-white bloom come.

She had found it one sweet day in July, early in the morning, on the
tip end of the eldest branch of the cotton stalk nearest the ground.
It hung like the flower of the cream-white, pendulous abutilon, with
pollen of yellow stars beaded in dew and throwing off a rich,
delicate, aromatic odor, smelt nowhere on earth save in a
cottonfield, damp with early dew and warmed by the rays of the rising
sun. Cream-white it was in the morning, but when she had visited it
again at nightfall, it hung purple in the twilight.

Then had she plucked it.

Through the hot month of July she had watched the boll grow and
expand, until in August the lowest and oldest one next to the ground
burst, and shone through the pale green leaves like the image of a
star reflected in waters of green. And every morning new cream-white
blooms formed to the very top, only to turn purple by twilight, while
beneath, climbing higher and higher as the days went by and the cool
nights came, star above star of cotton arose and stood twinkling in
its sky of green and purple, above the dank manger where, in early
spring, the little child-seed had lain.

To-day, touched by the great frost, the last purple bloom in the very
tip-top seemed to look up yearningly and plead with the sun for one
more day of life; that it, too, might add in time its snowy tribute
to the bank of white which rolled entirely across the field, one big
billow of cotton.

And in the midst of it the girl stood dreaming and wondering.

She plucked a purple blossom and pinned it to her breast. Then, with
a deep sigh of saddened longing--that this should be the last--she
walked on, daintily lifting her gown to avoid the damp stars of
cotton, now fast gathering the night dew.

Across the field, a vine of wild grape ran over the top of two small
hackberry trees, forming a natural umbrella-shaped arbor above two
big moss-covered boulders which cropped out of the ground beneath,
making two natural rustic seats. On one of these she sat down. Above
her head glowed the impenetrable leaves of the grape-vine and the
hackberry, and through them all hung the small purple bunches of wild
grapes, waiting for the frost of affliction to convert into sugar the
acid of their souls.

She