crops. You might as well try
to farm swamp lands without draining them."

"Why, General, my scheme doesn't include plantations at all."

"Yes, it does; Dixie's a plantation State, and you can't make your
little patch of it prosper till our planting prospers--can he,
Proudfit?"

The Colonel laughed. "No go, General; I'm not going to side with you.
Our prosperity, all around, hangs on the question whether you and the
darkey may tax us and spend the taxes as you please, or we shall tax
ourselves and spend the taxes as we please."

"Ah, Proudfit, you mean whether you may keep the taxes low enough to
hold the darky down or let them be raised high enough to lift him up.
Walk in, gentlemen. Proudfit, take the rocking-chair."

But the Colonel stood trying to return the General's last thrust, and
John was bored. "General, all I want to see you about is to say that I'm
going down into Blackland in a day or two to get as many darkies as I
can to settle on my lands, and if you'll tell me the ones that are in
your debt, I'll have nothing to do with them unless it is to tell them
they've got to stay where they are."

Proudfit whirled and stared. The General gave a low laugh.

"Why, John, that sounds mighty funny to come from you. Would you do such
a thing as that?--run off with another man's niggers?"

John bit his lip and looked at his cigar. "Are they yours, General?"

"By Jove! my son, they're not yours! O! of course, you've got the
legal--pshaw! I'm not going to dispute an abstraction with you. Go and
amuse yourself; you can't get 'em; the niggers that don't owe won't go;
that's the poetry of it. I'd rather you'd take the fellows that owe than
the one's that don't; but you won't get either kind."

"I can try, General." "No, sir, you can't!" exclaimed Proudfit. His
cigar went into the fireplace with a vicious spat, and his eyes snapped.
"Ow niggehs ah res'less an' discontented enough now, and whether you'll
succeed aw not you shan't come 'round amongst them tryin' to steal them
away! Damned if we don't run you out of the three counties! So long,
General!" He went by March to the door.

John stood straight, his jaws set, chin up, eyes down. Halliday, by
grimaces, was adjuring him to forbear. "But, Colonel Proudfit," he
said--Proudfit paused--"you'll not insist on the word 'steal?'"

"You can call it what you damn please, sir, but you mustn't do it." The
speaker passed out, leaving the door invitingly ajar.

The Gener