t: we pay off the mortgage, we get enough to run the school as it has
been run. Then what? There will still be slavery and oppression all
around us. The children will be kept in the cotton fields; the men will
be cheated, and the women--" Zora paused and her eyes grew hard.

She began again rapidly: "We must have land--our own farm with our own
tenants--to be the beginning of a free community."

Miss Smith threw up her hands impatiently.

"But sakes alive! Where, Zora? Where can we get land, with Cresswell
owning every inch and bound to destroy us?"

Zora sat hugging her knees and staring out the window toward the sombre
ramparts of the swamp. In her eyes lay slumbering the madness of long
ago; in her brain danced all the dreams and visions of childhood.

"I'm thinking," she murmured, "of buying the swamp."

_Thirty-three_

THE BUYING OF THE SWAMP

"It's a shame," asserted John Taylor with something like real feeling.
He was spending Sunday with his father-in-law, and both, over their
after-dinner cigars, were gazing thoughtfully at the swamp.

"What's a shame?" asked Colonel Cresswell.

"To see all that timber and prime cotton-land going to waste. Don't you
remember those fine bales of cotton that came out of there several
seasons ago?"

The Colonel smoked placidly. "You can't get it cleared," he said.

"But couldn't you hire some good workers?"

"Niggers won't work. Now if we had Italians we might do it."

"Yes, and in a few years they'd own the country."

"That's right; so there we are. There's only one way to get that swamp
cleared."

"How?"

"Sell it to some fool darkey."

"Sell it? It's too valuable to sell."

"That's just it. You don't understand. The only way to get decent work
out of some niggers is to let them believe they're buying land. In nine
cases out of ten he works hard a while and then throws up the job. We
get back our land and he makes good wages for his work."

"But in the tenth case--suppose he should stick to it?"

"Oh,"--easily, "we could get rid of him when we want to. White people
rule here."

John Taylor frowned and looked a little puzzled. He was no moralist, but
he had his code and he did not understand Colonel Cresswell. As a matter
of fact, Colonel Cresswell was an honest man. In most matters of
commerce between men he was punctilious to a degree almost annoying to
Taylor. But there was one part of the world which his code of honor did
not cover, and he