reas it is
old--the only gray-haired corner our country holds.

Mark Deal worked hard. Perspiration beaded his forehead and cheeks, and
rolled from his short, thick, red-brown hair. He worked in this way
every day from daylight until dusk, and was probably the only white man
in the State who did. When his task was finished, he made a circuit
around the belt of thicket through which the six paths ran to his
orange-grove on the opposite side. On the way he skirted an edge of the
sugar-plantation, now a wide, empty waste, with the old elevated
causeway still running across it. On its far edge loomed the great
cypresses of South Devil, a swamp forty miles long; there was a sister,
West Devil, not far away, equally beautiful, dark, and deadly. Beyond
the sugar waste were the indigo-fields, still fenced by their old
ditches. Then came the orange-grove; luxuriant, shady word--the
orange-grove!

It was a space of level white sand, sixty feet square, fertilized a
century before with pounded oyster-shells, in the Spanish fashion.
Planted in even rows across it, tied to stakes, were slips of green
stem, each with three leaves--forlorn little plants, five or six inches
in height. But the stakes were new and square and strong, and rose to
Deal's shoulder; they were excellent stakes, and made quite a grove of
themselves, firm, if somewhat bare.

Deal worked in his grove until sunset; then he shouldered his tools and
went homeward through one of the arched aisles to the little plaza
within, where stood his two-roomed house with its red cotton door. His
brother was still sleeping on the sand, at least, his eyes were closed.
Deal put his tools in a rack behind the house, and then crossed to where
he lay.

"You should not sleep here after sunset, Carl," he said, somewhat
roughly. "You know better; why do you do it?"

"I'm not asleep," answered the other, sitting up, and then slowly
getting on his feet. "Heigh-ho! What are you going to have for dinner?"

"You are tired, Carl; and I see the reason. You have been in the swamp."
Deal's eyes as he spoke were fixed upon the younger man's shoes, where
traces of the ink-black soil of South Devil were plainly visible.

Carl laughed. "Can't keep anything from your Yankee eyes, can I, Mark?"
he said. "But I only went a little way."

"It isn't the distance, it's the folly," said Mark, shortly, going
toward the house.

"I never pretended to be wise," answered Carl, slouching along behind