any other hereabout. It is natural to expect that such a family
should wish to preserve its own name down a direct line. So it was a
source of great grief to old Fairfax that his first three children were
girls, pretty, healthy, plump enough little things, but girls for all
that, and consequently a disappointment to their father's pride of
family. When the fourth child came and it proved to be a boy, the
Fairfax plantation couldn't hold the Fairfax joy and it flowed out and
mellowed the whole county.

"They do say that Fairfax Fairfax was in one of his further tobacco
fields when the good news was brought to him, and that after giving
orders that all the darkies should knock off work and take a holiday, in
his haste and excitement he jumped down from his horse and ran all the
way to the house. I give the story only for what it is worth. But if it
is true, it is the first case of a man of that name and family
forgetting himself in an emergency.

"Well, of course, the advent of a young male Fairfax would under any
circumstances have proven a great event, although it was afterwards
duplicated, but there would have been no story to tell, there would have
been no 'Cahoots,' if by some fortuitous circumstance one of the slave
women had not happened to bring into the world that day and almost at
the same time that her mistress was introducing young Vaughan Fairfax to
the light, a little black pickaninny of her own. Well, if you're a
Southern man, and I take it that you are, you know that nothing ever
happens in the quarters that the big house doesn't know. So the news was
soon at the white father's ears and nothing would do him but that the
black baby must be brought to the house and be introduced to the white
one. The little black fellow came in all rolled in his bundle of shawls
and was laid for a few minutes beside his little lord and master. Side
by side they lay blinking at the light equally strange to both, and then
the master took the black child's hand and put it in that of the
white's. With the convulsive gesture common to babyhood the little hands
clutched in a feeble grasp.

"'Dah now,' old Doshy said--she was the nurse that had brought the
pickaninny up--'dey done tol' each othah howdy.'

"'Told each other howdy nothing,' said old Fairfax solemnly, 'they have
made a silent compact of eternal friendship, and I propose to ratify it
right here.'

"He was a religious man, and so there with all the darkies clustere