worked here; negro men, mostly wearing red undershirts. They sat in long
rows, with quick fingers stripping the stems from the not unfragrant
leaves. These were stemmers, it was learned. Piles of the brown tobacco
stood beside each stemmer, bales of it were stacked, ceiling-high, at
the farther end of the room, awaiting their attentions. The negroes eyed
the visitors respectfully. They were heard to laugh and joke over their
labors. If they knew of anything homicidal in their lot, certainly they
bore it with a fine humorous courage.

Down the aisle between the black rows, Cally picked her way after Hugo
and Mr. MacQueen. Considering that all this was her father's, she felt
abashingly out of place, most intrusive; when she caught a dusky face
turned upon her she hastily looked another way. Still, she felt within
her an increasing sense of cheerfulness. Washington Street sensibilities
were offended, naturally. The busy colored stemmers were scarcely
inviting to the eye; the odor of the tobacco soon grew a little
overpowering; there were dirt and dust and an excess of
steam-heat--"Tobacco likes to be warm," said MacQueen. And yet the
dainty visitor's chief impression, somehow, was of system and usefulness
and order, of efficient and on the whole well-managed enterprise.

"If there's anything the matter here," thought she, "men will have to
quarrel and decide about it ... Just as I said."

The inspecting party went upward, and these heartening impressions were
strengthened. On the second floor was another stemming-room, long and
hot like the other; only here the stemming was done by machines--"for
the fancy goods"--and the machines were operated by negro women. They
were middle-aged women, many of them, industrious and quite
placid-looking. Perhaps a quarter of the whole length of the room was
prosaically filled with piled tobacco stored ready for the two floors
of stemmers. The inspection here was brief, and to tell the truth,
rather tame, like an anti-climax. Not a trace or a vestige of homicide
was descried, not a blood-spot high or low....

Cally had been observing Hugo, who looked so resplendent against this
workaday background, and felt herself at a disadvantage with him. He had
not wanted to come at all, but now that they were here, he exhibited a
far more intelligent interest in what he saw than she did or could.
Oddly enough, he appeared to know a good deal about the making of
cigars, and his pointed comments gr