preparatory to its ginning. When he had pushed
his way through the crowd of negroes hanging about the door of the
ginhouse-loft he heard the overseer call, "Whar's that yaller whelp,
Als'on?"

"Here, sah," Alston answered, hurrying forward to put his basket on the
steelyard.

"Give me any mo' yer jaw an' I'll lay yer out with the butt-en' er this
whip," said Mr. Buck. Alston was wondering what he had said that was
disrespectful, when the man added, "Won't have none yer sahrin' uv me. I's
yer moster, an' that's what yer's got ter call me, I let yer know."

Alston's blood was up, but the slaves were used to self-repression. All
that was endurable in their lives depended on patience and submission.

"Beg poddon, moster," Alston said with well-assumed meekness. "In Ol'
Virginny we use ter say moster to jist our sho'-'nuff owners; but," he
added quickly, by way of mollifying the overseer, who could not fail to be
stung by the covert jeer, "it's a heap better ter say moster ter all the
white folks, white trash an' all: then yer's sho' ter be right."

At this speech there was in Mr. Buck's rear much grinning and eye-rolling.

But Mr. Buck was engaged with Alston's basket, which was now on the scales.
"Sixty-seven poun's," the overseer called.

The slave's heart sank: only four pounds' gain after all his toil early and
late! He was bitterly disappointed. He believed the overseer lied. Then his
heart burned. Couldn't he leave his basket unemptied, and weigh it himself
when the others were gone? No: the order of routine was peremptory. The
baskets must be emptied and stacked on the scaffold outside the
cotton-loft, so that there would be no chance the next morning for the
negroes to take away cotton in their baskets to the fields. And what if he
could reweigh his cotton, and prove Mr. Buck a liar? He would not dare
breathe the discovery.

So Alston emptied out the cotton he had worked so hard to gather, listening
moodily to the overseer's harsh threats: "Yer reckon I's goin' to stan'
sich figgers? Sixty-seven poun's! fou' poun's 'head uv yistiddy. Yer ought
ter be fawty ahead. I won't look at nothin' under a hunderd. Ef yer don't
get it ter-morrer I'll tie yer up, sho's yer bawn, yer great merlatto dog!
Yer's 'hin' the poo'es' gal in the fiel'."

"I never pick no cotton 'fo' yistiddy, an' its tolerbul unhandy. Rickon I
kin do better when I gits my han' in. I use ter could wuck fus'-rate in
tobaccy."

"Tobaccy won't sav