git a day?" asked the black man.

The farmer scowled.

"Now see here," said he. "If you'll sign a contract for the season, I'll
give you ten dollars a month."

"I won't sign no contract," said the black man doggedly.

"Yes, you will," said the farmer, threateningly, "or I'll call the
convict guard." And he grinned.

The convict shrank and slouched to the barn. As night fell he looked out
and saw the farmer leave the place. Slowly he crept out and sneaked
toward the house. He looked through the kitchen door. No one was there,
but the supper was spread as if the mistress had laid it and gone out.
He ate ravenously. Then he looked into the front room and listened. He
could hear low voices on the porch. On the table lay a gold watch. He
gazed at it, and in a moment he was beside it,--his hands were on it!
Quickly he slipped out of the house and slouched toward the field. He
saw his employer coming along the highway. He fled back in tenor and
around to the front of the house, when suddenly he stopped. He felt the
great, dark eyes of the stranger and saw the same dark, cloak-like coat
where the stranger sat on the doorstep talking with the mistress of the
house. Slowly, guiltily, he turned back, entered the kitchen, and laid
the watch stealthily where he had found it; then he rushed wildly back
toward the stranger, with arms outstretched.

The woman had laid supper for her husband, and going down from the house
had walked out toward a neighbor's. She was gone but a little while, and
when she came back she started to see a dark figure on the doorsteps
under the tall, red oak. She thought it was the new Negro until he said
in a soft voice:

"Will you give me bread?"

Reassured at the voice of a white man, she answered quickly in her soft,
Southern tones:

"Why, certainly."

She was a little woman, and once had been pretty; but now her face was
drawn with work and care. She was nervous and always thinking, wishing,
wanting for something. She went in and got him some cornbread and a
glass of cool, rich buttermilk; then she came out and sat down beside
him. She began, quite unconsciously, to tell him about herself,--the
things she had done and had not done and the things she had wished for.
She told him of her husband and this new farm they were trying to buy.
She said it was hard to get niggers to work. She said they ought all to
be in the chain-gang and made to work. Even then some ran away. Only
yesterday one had