never stole yer cotton, Als'on," Little Lizay said with a certain
dignity, but with an unsteady voice.

"I see'd yer do it," Edny Ann interrupted.

"I emptied my sack in yer baskit when I didn't go ter do it," Little Lizay
continued. "It wus my own cotton I wus takin' out yer baskit."

"Ef yer deny it, Lizay, yer'll make it wusser." Then Alston went up close
to her, so that Edny Ann might not hear, and said something in a low tone.

Lizay gave him a swift look of surprise: then her lip began to quiver; the
quick tears came to her eyes; she put both hands to her face and cried
hard, so that she could not have found voice if she had wished to tell
Alston her story. He went back to his row, and left her there crying beside
the pick-baskets. He returned almost immediately, shouldered his basket,
and went away from her to another part of the field, leaving his row
unfinished. He wondered how much cotton Lizay had taken from his basket--if
its weight would be brought down below a hundred; and meditated what he
should do in case he was called up to be flogged by the brutal overseer.
Should he stand and take the lashing, trusting to Heaven to make it up to
him some day? or should he knock the overseer senseless and make a strike
for freedom? Where was freedom? Which was the way to the free North? In
Virginia he would have known in what direction to set his face for Ohio,
but here everything was new and strange.

However, he had no occasion for a desperate movement that night. His basket
weighed one hundred and seven, while Little Lizay's had fallen lower than
ever before. Alston thought it was because she had missed her chance of
transferring the usual quantity of cotton from his basket.

The striking of Lizay had never seemed so abhorrent to him as on this
night, now that there was estrangement between them. She was already
humiliated in his sight, and to raise his hand against her was like
striking a fallen foe. She would think that he was no longer sorry--that he
was glad to repay the wrong she had done him.

In the mean time, Edny Ann had told the story of the theft to one and
another, and Lizay found at night the "quarter" humming with it. Taunts and
jeers met her on every hand. Stealing from white folks the negroes regarded
as a very trifling matter, since they, the slaves, had earned everything
there was: but to steal from "a po' nigger" was the meanest thing in their
decalogue.

"Stealin' from her beau!" sneered