"There's another man down here. He's set his worm-eaten heart on
something--perfect right to do it. I've no right to say he sha'n't. But
I do. I'm just _honing_ to see him to tell him that if he values his
health he'll drop that scheme at the close of the year, which closes
to-day."

"O John, is that what yo' father--I don't evm say yo' pious
mother--taught you to be?"

"No, sir; my father begged me to be like my mother. And I tried, sir, I
tried hard! No use; I had to quit. Strange part is I've got along better
ever since. But now, s'pose I should repent these things. 'Twouldn't do
any good, sir. For, let me tell you, Mr. Tombs, underneath them all
there's another matter--you can't guess it--please don't try or ask
anybody else--a matter that I can't repent, and wouldn't if I could!
Well, good-day, sir, I'm sure I reciprocate your----"

"Come to the meeting, my brotheh. You love yo' motheh. Do it to please
her."

"I don't know; I'll see," replied John, with no intention of seeing, but
reflecting with amused self-censure that if anything he did should
visibly please his mother, such a result would be, at any rate, unique.

XXXIX.

SAME AFTERNOON

Suez had never seen so busy a winter. Never before in the same number of
weeks had so much cotton been hauled into town or shipped from it. Goods
had never been so cheap, gross sales so large, or Blackland darkeys and
Sandstone crackers so flush.

And naturally the prosperity that worked downward had worked upward all
the more. Rosemont had a few more students than in any earlier year;
Montrose gave her young ladies better molasses; the white professors in
the colored "university," and their wives, looked less starved; and
General Halliday, in spite of the fact that he was part owner of a
steamboat, had at last dropped the title of "Agent." Even John March had
somehow made something.

Barbara, in black, was shopping for Fannie. Johanna was at her side. The
day was brisk. Ox-wagons from Clearwater, mule-teams from Blackland,
bull-carts from Sandstone, were everywhere. Cotton bales were being
tumbled, torn, sampled, and weighed; products of the truck-patch and
door-yard, and spoils of the forest, were changing hands. Flakes of
cotton blew about under the wheels and among the reclining oxen. In the
cold upper blue the buzzards circled, breasted the wind, or turned and
scudded down it. From chimney tops the smoke darted hither and yon, and
went to shreds in th