three sides of
the square ran stores; big stores and small wide-windowed, narrow
stores. Some had old steps above the worn clay side-walks, and some were
flush with the ground. All had a general sense of dilapidation--save
one, the largest and most imposing, a three-story brick. This was
Caldwell's "Emporium"; and here Bles stopped and Miss Taylor entered.

Mr. Caldwell himself hurried forward; and the whole store, clerks and
customers, stood at attention, for Miss Taylor was yet new to the
county.

She bought a few trifles and then approached her main business.

"My brother wants some information about the county, Mr. Caldwell, and I
am only a teacher, and do not know much about conditions here."

"Ah! where do you teach?" asked Mr. Caldwell. He was certain he knew the
teachers of all the white schools in the county. Miss Taylor told him.
He stiffened slightly but perceptibly, like a man clicking the buckles
of his ready armor, and two townswomen who listened gradually turned
their backs, but remained near.

"Yes--yes," he said, with uncomfortable haste. "Any--er--information--of
course--" Miss Taylor got out her notes.

"The leading land-owners," she began, sorting the notes searchingly, "I
should like to know something about them."

"Well, Colonel Cresswell is, of course, our greatest landlord--a
high-bred gentleman of the old school. He and his son--a worthy
successor to the name--hold some fifty thousand acres. They may be
considered representative types. Then, Mr. Maxwell has ten thousand
acres and Mr. Tolliver a thousand."

Miss Taylor wrote rapidly. "And cotton?" she asked.

"We raise considerable cotton, but not nearly what we ought to; nigger
labor is too worthless."

"Oh! The Negroes are not, then, very efficient?"

"Efficient!" snorted Mr. Caldwell; at last she had broached a phase of
the problem upon which he could dilate with fervor. "They're the
lowest-down, ornriest--begging your pardon--good-for-nothing loafers you
ever heard of. Why, we just have to carry them and care for them like
children. Look yonder," he pointed across the square to the court-house.
It was an old square brick-and-stucco building, sombre and stilted and
very dirty. Out of it filed a stream of men--some black and shackled;
some white and swaggering and liberal with tobacco-juice; some white and
shaven and stiff. "Court's just out," pursued Mr. Caldwell, "and them
niggers have just been sent to the gang--young ones, too