September had just risen and it was already hot as he bent to work.
Cotton picking looked easy from a distance. When you got at it, things
somehow were different. A task of everlasting monotony, this bending
from boll to boll along the endless rows! He never realized before how
long the cotton rows were. There was a little stop at the end before
turning and selecting the next, but these rows seemed to stretch away
into eternity.

Three hours at it, and he was mortally tired. His back ached in a dull
hopeless pain. He lifted his head and gazed longingly toward the school
he had scorned.

"What a fool!" he sighed. "But I'll stick to it. I can do what any
nigger can."

He looked curiously at the slaves who worked without apparent effort.
Not one of them seemed the least bit tired. He could get used to it,
too. After all, this breath of the open world was better than being
cooped up in a stuffy old schoolhouse with a fool to set impossible
tasks.

"Pooh! I'll show my father!" he exclaimed.

The negroes broke into a plantation song. Jim Pemberton, the leader,
sang each stanza in a clear fine tenor that rang over the field and
echoed through the deep woods. The others joined in the chorus and after
the last verse repeated in low sweet notes that died away so softly it
was impossible to tell the moment the song had ceased.

The music was beautiful, but it was impossible for him to join in their
singing. He couldn't lower himself to an equality with black slaves.
This cotton picking seemed part of their scheme of life. Their strong
black bodies swayed in a sort of rhythmic movement even when they were
not singing. Somehow his body didn't fit into the scheme. His back ached
and ached. No matter. He had chosen, and he would show them he had a
man's spirit inside a boy's breast.

At noon the ache had worn away and he felt a sense of joy in conquering
the pain.

He ate his dinner in silence and wondered what Polly was thinking about
at school. Girl-like, she had cried and begged him to go back.

With a cheerful wave of his hand to his mother, he returned to the field
before the negroes, strapped the bag on his shoulder and bent again to
his task. The afternoon was long. It seemed at three o'clock there could
be no end to it and still those long, long rows of white fleece
stretched on and on into eternity--all alike in dull, tiresome monotony.

He whistled to keep up his courage.

The negroes whispered to one another a