urned 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,