lf wuckin'. Now see ter it yer come ter taw arter this:
hunderd an' fou's yer notch."

It was a moment of supreme relief to Alston. He drew a long breath, and
returned some smiles of congratulation from the negroes. Then he sighed: he
felt hopeless of repeating the weight day after day. He had hardly stopped
to breathe from day-dawn till moon-rise: he would not always have the
friendly moonlight to help him. But now Little Lizay's basket was swinging.
He listened to hear its weight with interest, but how unlike this was to
the absorbed anxiety which she had felt for him!

"Two hunderd an' 'leven--thutty-six poun's behin'!" said Mr. Buck, smacking
his lips as over some good thing. Now he should have vent for his spite
against the girl. "Thutty-six lashes on yer bar' back by yer sweet'art."
Mr. Buck said this with a dreadful snicker in Little Lizay's face.

The word ran like wildfire from mouth to mouth that Little Lizay, the
famous picker, had fallen behind, and was to be flogged--by the overseer,
some said--by Big Sam, others declared. But Edny Ann reckoned the cowhiding
was to be done by Alston.

"An' her dersarves it, kase her's a big fool," said Edny Ann, "hangin'
roun' him, an' patchin' his cloze like her wus morred ter 'im--an' washin'
his shut an' britches ev'ry Saddy night."

All the hands were required to stop after the weighing and witness the
floggings, as a warning to themselves and an enhancement of punishment to
the convicts. There was but little shrinking from the sight. Human nature
is everywhere much the same: cruel spectacles brutalize, whether in Spain
or on a negro-plantation. But to-night there was a new sensation: the
slaves were on the _qui vive_ to see Little Lizay flogged, and to find out
whose hand was to wield the whip.

"Now hurry up yere, yer lazy raskels! an' git yer floggin'," Mr. Buck said
when the weighing was over.

From right and left and front and rear negroes came forward and stood, a
motley group, before the one white man. It was a weird spectacle that did
not seem to belong to our earth. Black faces, heads above heads, crowded at
the doorway--some solemn and sympathetic, others grinning in anticipation
of the show. Negroes were perched on the gin and in the corners of the loft
where the cotton was heaped. Others lay at full length close to the field
of action. In every direction the dusky figures dotted the cotton lying on
every hand about the little cleared space where the fl