Third, I want you to leave this place,
and never come back so long as God leaves breath in your dirty body. If
you do this, I will save you--you are not worth the saving--from the pen
or worse. If you don't, I will make this place so hot for you that hell
will seem like an icebox beside it."

The little yellow man was cowering in his cell before the attorney's
indignation. His lips were drawn back over his teeth in something that
was neither a snarl nor a smile. His eyes were bulging and
fear-stricken, and his hands clasped and unclasped themselves nervously.

"I--I----" he faltered, "do you want to send me out without a cent?"

"Without a cent, without a cent," said Fairfax tensely.

"I won't do it," the rat in him again showed fight. "I won't do it. I'll
stay hyeah an' fight you. You can't prove anything on me."

"All right, all right," and the attorney turned toward the door.

"Wait, wait," called the man, "I will do it, my God! I will do it. Jest
let me out o' hyeah, don't keep me caged up. I'll go away from hyeah."

Fairfax turned back to him coldly, "You will keep your word?"

"Yes."

"I will return at once and take the confession."

And so the thing was done. Jason Buford, stripped of his ill-gotten
gains, left the neighbourhood of Little Africa forever. And Aunt Dicey,
no longer a wealthy woman and a capitalist, is baking golden brown
biscuits for a certain young attorney and his wife, who has the bad
habit of rousing her anger by references to her business name and her
investments with a promoter.

_Ten_

THE WISDOM OF SILENCE

Jeremiah Anderson was free. He had been free for ten years, and he was
proud of it. He had been proud of it from the beginning, and that was
the reason that he was one of the first to cast off the bonds of his old
relations, and move from the plantation and take up land for himself. He
was anxious to cut himself off from all that bound him to his former
life. So strong was this feeling in him that he would not consent to
stay on and work for his one-time owner even for a full wage.

To the proposition of the planter and the gibes of some of his more
dependent fellows he answered, "No, suh, I's free, an' I sholy is able
to tek keer o' myse'f. I done been fattenin' frogs fu' othah people's
snakes too long now."

"But, Jerry," said Samuel Brabant, "I don't mean you any harm. The
thing's done. You don't belong to me any more, but naturally, I take an
interest in you