"You can bet your life on that, old pard," said the spokesman of the pair.
"We go two and two, just as the apostles did in the olden times. We have
only a few left. The boys are hurrying to get their homes. All you've got
to do is to drive one of these red, white, and blue stakes down at each
corner of the forty acres of land you want, and every rebel in the
infernal regions can't pull it up."

"Hear dat now!"

"Just like I tell you. When this stake goes into the ground, it's like
planting a thousand cannon at each corner."

"En will the Lawd's messengers come wid me right now to de bend er de
creek whar I done pick out my forty acres?"

"We will, if you have the needful for the ceremony. The fee for the
surveyor is small--only two dollars for each stake. We have no time to
linger with foolish virgins who have no oil in their lamps. The bridegroom
has come. They who have no oil must remain in outer darkness." The speaker
had evidently been a preacher in the North, and his sacred accent sealed
his authority with the old negro, who had been an exhorter himself.

Aleck felt in his pocket the jingle of twenty gold dollars, the initiation
fees of the week's harvest of the League. He drew them, counted out eight,
and took his four stakes. The surveyors kindly showed him how to drive
them down firmly to the first stripe of blue. When they had stepped off a
square of about forty acres of the Lenoir farm, including the richest
piece of bottom land on the creek, which Aleck's children under his wife's
direction were working for Mrs. Lenoir, and the four stakes were planted,
old Aleck shouted:

"Glory ter God!"

"Now," said the foremost surveyor, "you want a deed--a deed in fee simple
with the big seal of the Government on it, and you're fixed for life. The
deed you can take to the courthouse and make the clerk record it."

The man drew from his pocket an official-looking paper, with a red
circular seal pasted on its face.

Uncle Aleck's eyes danced.

"Is dat de deed?"

"It will be if I write your name on it and describe the land."

"En what's de fee fer dat?"

"Only twelve dollars; you can take it now or wait until we come again.
There's no particular hurry about this. The wise man, though, leaves
nothing for to-morrow that he can carry with him to-day."

"I takes de deed right now, gemmen," said Aleck, eagerly counting out the
remaining twelve dollars. "Fix 'im up for me."

The surveyor squatted in the field