"Nonsense, Father--what's the use of understanding. Our advantage is
plain, and John Taylor guarantees the thing."

"Who's John Taylor?" snorted the Colonel. "Why should we trust him?"

"Well," said Harry slowly, "he wants to marry Helen--"

His father grew apopletic.

"I'm not saying he will, Father; I'm only saying that he wants to,"
Harry made haste to placate the rising tide of wrath.

"No Southern gentleman--" began the Colonel. But Harry shrugged his
shoulders.

"Which is better, to be crushed by the trust or to escape at their
expense, even if that escape involves unwarranted assumptions on the
part of one of them? I tell you, Father, the code of the Southern
gentleman won't work in Wall Street."

"And I'll tell you why--there _are_ no Southern gentlemen," growled his
father.

The Silver Fleece was golden, for its prices were flying aloft. Mr.
Caldwell told Colonel Cresswell that he confidently expected twelve-cent
cotton.

"The crop is excellent and small, scarcely ten million bales," he
declared. "The price is bound to go up."

Colonel Cresswell was hesitant, even doubtful; the demand for cotton at
high prices usually fell off rapidly and he had heard rumors of
curtailed mill production. While, then, he hoped for high prices he
advised the Farmers' League to be on guard.

Mr. Caldwell seemed to be right, for cotton rose to ten cents a
pound--ten and a half--eleven--and then the South began to see visions
and to dream dreams.

"Yes, my dear," said Mr. Maxwell, whose lands lay next to the
Cresswells' on the northwest, "yes, if cotton goes to twelve or thirteen
cents as seems probable, I think we can begin the New House"--for Mrs.
Maxwell's cherished dream was a pillared mansion like the Cresswells'.

Mr. Tolliver looked at his house and barns. "Well, daughter, if this
crop sells at twelve cents, I'll be on my feet again, and I won't have
to sell that land to the nigger school after all. Once out of the
clutch of the Cresswells--well, I think we can have a coat of paint."
And he laughed as he had not laughed in ten years.

Down in the bottoms west of the swamp a man and woman were figuring
painfully on an old slate. He was light brown and she was yellow.

"Honey," he said tremblingly, "I b'lieve we can do it--if cotton goes to
twelve cents, we can pay the mortgage."

Two miles north of the school an old black woman was shouting and waving
her arms. "If cotton goes to twelve cents we can pay o