my table. How can I beat the slave at a trade? Tain't no use to
try. Ef you want to build a house, your own carpenters can do it. And if
you haven't enough slave carpenters of your own, your neighbors have.
They can hire 'em to you cheaper than I can work and live. They're goin'
to _live_ anyhow. That's settled because they're slaves. They're worth
twelve hundred dollars apiece. Their life is precious. Mine don't count.
I got to look after that myself and I got to look after my wife and
children, too. Hit ain't right, Colonel, this Slavery business. You know
that as well as I do. I've heard you say it, too--"

"I agree with you, Mr. Doyle. But if we set them all free to-morrow, and
you had to compete with their labor, you couldn't live down to their
standard of wages, could you?"

"No, I couldn't. They would kill me at that game, too. That's why I hate
a free nigger worse than a slave--"

He paused and his face knotted with fury.

"Damn 'em all--why are they here anyhow?"

"Come, come, my friend," Lee protested. "It doesn't help to swear about
it. They _are_ here. Not by any wish of mine or of yours. We inherited
this curse from the past. We have clung to old delusions while our smart
Yankee friends have shifted the responsibilities on others."

"What _can_ I do, Colonel?" Doyle asked desperately. "I don't know how
to do anything but farm. I can't go into the fields and work with slaves
as a field hand. And I couldn't get such work to do if I'd do it. I'll
die before I'll come down to it. I might rent a little farm alongside of
a free nigger. But he can beat me at that game. He can live on less and
work longer hours than I do. He'll underbid me as a cropper. He can live
and pay the owner four-fifths of the crop. I'd starve. What am I goin'
to do?"

"Had you thought of moving West into one of the new Territories just
opening?"

"Yessir. I'd thought of it. But how am I goin' to get there with a wife
and five children?"

Lee rose and looked about the place thoughtfully.

"How much could you realize from the sale of your things?"

Doyle scratched his head doubtfully.

"I ain't got no idee, sir. I'm afraid not much. Ye see it's just home
stuff. The old 'oman's awful smart. She raises enough chickens and
turkeys and ducks and guineas to eat, and she sells a few eggs and young
chickens and turkeys when they brings anything in the market. I got six
sheep, a cow, a calf, a mule, a couple o' pigs in the pen. But the