pickers, and to
many coarse jokes. But to one who knew her secret it would have seemed
piteous--the girl's anxious face as the weighing proceeded, drawing on and
on to Alston's basket and hers at the very end of the line. Would he have
a hundred? would she fall behind? Would he be saved the flogging? would she
have to suffer in his stead? She dreaded a flogging at the hands of that
brutal overseer, and all her womanliness shrunk from the degradation of
being stripped and flogged in Alston's presence, or even of having him know
that she was to be cowhided. She bethought her of making an appeal to the
overseer. She knew she had some power with him, for he had been enamored,
in his brutish way, of her physical charms--her neat figure, her glossy,
waving hair, and the small, shapely hand and foot.

Just before the weighing had reached Alston's basket and hers she stepped
beside the overseer. "Please, Mos' Buck," she said in a low tone, "ef I
falls 'hin' myse'f, an' don't git up to them fus' figgers, an' has to git
cowhided--please, sah, don't let the black folks an' Als'on know 'bout it."

Mr. Buck took a hint from this request. He perceived that Lizay was
interested in Alston, as he had already guessed from the jokes of the
negroes, and that she was specially desirous to conceal her shame from the
man to whom she had given her favor. Mr. Buck resented it that Lizay should
rebuff him and encourage Alston; so he hoped that for this once, at any
rate, she would fall behind: he had thought of a capital plan of revenging
himself on her.

The next moment after her whispered appeal Lizay saw with intense interest
Alston's basket brought forward for weighing. She glanced at him. His eyes
were wide open, staring with eagerness, his head advanced, his whole
attitude one of absorbed anxiety. By the position of the weight or pea on
the steelyard she knew that it was put somewhere near the sixty notch. Up
flew the end of the yard, and up flew Lizay's heart with it: out went the
pea some ten teeth, yet up again went the impatient steel. Click! click!
click! rattled the weight. Out and out another ten notches, then another
and another--one hundred, one hundred and one, one hundred and two, one
hundred and three--yet the yard still protested, still called for more.
Out one tooth farther, and the steel lay along the horizon. Everybody
listened.

"One hunderd an' fou'," Mr. Buck announced. "Thar' now, yer lazy dog! I
know'd yer wasn't ha