Montgomery. A system of warehouses and
warehouse certificates was proposed.

"But that will cost money," responded each of the dozen big landlords
who composed the committee; whereupon Harry Cresswell introduced John
Taylor, who represented thirty millions of Southern bank stock.

"I promise you credit to any reasonable amount," said Mr. Taylor, "I
believe in cotton--the present price is abnormal." And Mr. Taylor knew
whereof he spoke, for when he sent a cipher despatch North, cotton
dropped to eight and a half. The Farmers' League leased three warehouses
at Savannah, Montgomery, and New Orleans.

Then silently the South gripped itself and prepared for battle. Men
stopped spending, business grew dull, and millions of eyes were glued
to the blackboards of the cotton-exchange. Tighter and tighter the
reins grew on the backs of the black tenants.

"Miss Smith, is yo' got just a drap of coffee to lend me? Mr. Cresswell
won't give me none at the store and I'se just starving for some," said
Aunt Rachel from over the hill. "We won't git free this year, Miss
Smith, not this year," she concluded plaintively.

Cotton fell to seven and a half cents and the muttered protest became
angry denunciation. Why was it? Who was doing it?

Harry Cresswell went to Montgomery. He was getting nervous. The thing
was too vast. He could not grasp it. It set his head in a whirl. Harry
Cresswell was not a bad man--are there any bad men? He was a man who
from the day he first wheedled his black mammy into submission, down to
his thirty-sixth year, had seldom known what it was voluntarily to deny
himself or curb a desire. To rise when he would, eat what he craved, and
do what the passing fancy suggested had long been his day's programme.
Such emptiness of life and aim had to be filled, and it was filled; he
helped his father sometimes with the plantations, but he helped
spasmodically and played at work.

The unregulated fire of energy and delicacy of nervous poise within him
continually hounded him to the verge of excess and sometimes beyond.
Cool, quiet, and gentlemanly as he was by rule of his clan, the ice was
thin and underneath raged unappeased fires. He craved the madness of
alcohol in his veins till his delicate hands trembled of mornings. The
women whom he bent above in languid, veiled-eyed homage, feared lest
they love him, and what work was to others gambling was to him.

The Cotton Combine, then, appealed to him overpoweringly--to