aused for a reply or a question. Receiving neither, she walked with
dignity up the stairs. From her window she could see Cresswell's
straight shoulders, as he rode toward town, and beyond him a black speck
in the road. But she could not see the smile on Mr. Cresswell's lips,
nor did she hear him remark twice, with seeming irrelevance, "The
devil!"

The rider, being closer to it, recognized in Mary Taylor's "black speck"
Bles Alwyn walking toward him rapidly with axe and hoe on shoulder,
whistling merrily. They saw each other almost at the same moment and
whistle and smile faded. Mr. Cresswell knew the Negro by sight and
disliked him. He belonged in his mind to that younger class of
half-educated blacks who were impudent and disrespectful toward their
superiors, not even touching his hat when he met a white man. Moreover,
he was sure that it was Miss Taylor with whom this boy had been talking
so long and familiarly in the cotton-field last Spring--an offence
doubly heinous now that he had seen Miss Taylor.

His first impulse was to halt the Negro then and there and tell him a
few plain truths. But he did not feel quarrelsome at the moment, and
there was, after all, nothing very tangible to justify a berating. The
fellow's impudence was sure to increase, and then! So he merely reined
his horse to the better part of the foot-path and rode on.

Bles, too, was thinking. He knew the well-dressed man with his
milk-white face and overbearing way. He would expect to be greeted with
raised hat but Bles bit his lips and pulled down his cap firmly. The
axe, too, in some indistinct way felt good in his hand. He saw the horse
coming in his pathway and stepping aside in the dust continued on his
way, neither looking nor speaking.

So they passed each other by, Mr. Cresswell to town, Bles to the swamp,
apparently ignorant of each other's very existence. Yet, as the space
widened between them, each felt a more vindictive anger for the other.

How dares the black puppy to ignore a Cresswell on the highway? If this
went on, the day would surely come when Negroes felt no respect or fear
whatever for whites? And then--my God! Mr. Cresswell struck his mare a
vicious blow and dashed toward town.

The black boy, too, went his way in silent, burning rage. Why should he
be elbowed into the roadside dust by an insolent bully? Why had he not
stood his ground? Pshaw! All this fine frenzy was useless, and he knew
it. The sweat oozed on his for