to the Montgomery paper, yet the prices in Toomsville were fifty to a
hundred and fifty per cent higher. The merchant to whom he went last,
laughed.

"Don't you know we're not going to interfere with Colonel Cresswell's
tenants?" He stated the dealers' attitude, and Alwyn saw light. He went
home and told Zora, and she listened without surprise.

"Now to business," she said briskly. "Miss Smith," turning to the
teacher, "as I told you, they're combined against us in town and we must
buy in Montgomery. I was sure it was coming, but I wanted to give
Colonel Cresswell every chance. Bles starts for Montgomery--"

Alwyn looked up. "Does he?" he asked, smiling.

"Yes," said Zora, smiling in turn. "We must lose no further time."

"But there's no train from Toomsville tonight."

"But there's one from Barton in the morning and Barton is only twenty
miles away."

"It is a long walk." Alwyn thought a while, silently. Then he rose. "I'm
going," he said. "Good-bye."

In less than a week the storehouse was full, and tenants were at work.
The twenty acres of cleared swamp land, attended to by the voluntary
labor of all the tenants, was soon bearing a magnificent crop. Colonel
Cresswell inspected all the crops daily with a proprietary air that
would have been natural had these folk been simply tenants, and as such
he persisted in regarding them.

The cotton now growing was perhaps not so uniformly fine as the first
acre of Silver Fleece, but it was of unusual height and thickness.

"At least a bale to the acre," Alwyn estimated, and the Colonel mentally
determined to take two-thirds of the crop. After that he decided that he
would evict Zora immediately; since sufficient land was cleared already
for his purposes and moreover, he had seen with consternation a herd of
cattle grazing in one field on some early green stuff, and heard a drove
of hogs in the swamp. Such an example before the tenants of the Black
Belt would be fatal. He must wait a few weeks for them to pick the
cotton--then, the end. He was fighting the battle of his color and
caste.

The children sang merrily in the brown-white field. The wide baskets,
poised aloft, foamed on the erect and swaying bodies of the dark
carriers. The crop throughout the land was short that year, for prices
had ruled low last season in accordance with the policy of the Combine.
This year they started high again. Would they fall? Many thought so and
hastened to sell.

Zora and Alwy