Marster. I didn't mean nuttin'," she protested
aloud.

"Then get into the house," retorted Cyrus harshly, "and don't stand
gaping there. Any more of your insolence and I'll never let you set foot
in this yard again."

"'Fo' de Lawd, I didn't mean nuttin'! Gawd a' moughty, I didn't mean
nuttin'! I jes lowed as you mought be willin' ter gun me fo' dollars a
mont' fur de washin'. My boy Jubal----"

"I'll not give you a red cent more. If you don't want it, you can leave
it. Get out of here!"

All the primitive antagonism of race--that instinct older than
civilization--was in the voice with which he ordered her out of his
sight. "It was downright blackmail. The fool was trying to blackmail
me," he thought. "If I'd yielded an inch I'd have been at her mercy.
It's a pretty pass things have come to when men have to protect
themselves from negro women." The more he reflected on her impudence,
the stronger grew his conviction that he had acted remarkably well.
"Nipped it in the root. If I hadn't----" he thought.

And behind him in the doorway the washerwoman continued to regard him,
over the lowered clothes basket, with her humble and deprecating look,
which said, like the look of a beaten animal: "I don't understand, but
I submit without understanding because you are stronger than I."

Taking down his hat, Cyrus turned away from her, and descended the
steps. "I'll look up Henry's son before supper," he was thinking. "Even
if the boy's a fool, I'm not one to let those of my own blood come to
want."

CHAPTER X

OLIVER SURRENDERS

When Cyrus's knock came at his door, Oliver crossed the room to let in
his visitor, and then fell back, startled, at the sight of his uncle. "I
wonder what has brought him here?" he thought inhospitably. But even if
he had put the question, it is doubtful if Cyrus could have enlightened
him--for the great man was so seldom visited by an impulse that when, as
now, one actually took possession of him, he obeyed the pressure almost
unconsciously. Like most men who pride themselves upon acting solely
from reason, he was the abject slave of the few instincts which had
managed to take root and thrive in the stony ground of his nature. The
feeling for family, which was so closely entwined with his supreme
feeling for property that the two had become inseparable, moved him
to-day as it had done on the historic occasion when he had redeemed the
mortgaged roof over the heads of his spinster rela