At this speech there was in Mr. Buck’s rear much grinning and eye-rolling.

But Mr. Buck was engaged with Alston’s basket, which was now on the scales.  “Sixty-seven poun’s,” the overseer called.

The slave’s heart sank:  only four pounds’ gain after all his toil early and late!  He was bitterly disappointed.  He believed the overseer lied.  Then his heart burned.  Couldn’t he leave his basket unemptied, and weigh it himself when the others were gone?  No:  the order of routine was peremptory.  The baskets must be emptied and stacked on the scaffold outside the cotton-loft, so that there would be no chance the next morning for the negroes to take away cotton in their baskets to the fields.  And what if he could reweigh his cotton, and prove Mr. Buck a liar?  He would not dare breathe the discovery.

So Alston emptied out the cotton he had worked so hard to gather, listening moodily to the overseer’s harsh threats:  “Yer reckon I’s goin’ to stan’ sich figgers?  Sixty-seven poun’s! fou’ poun’s ’head uv yistiddy.  Yer ought ter be fawty ahead.  I won’t look at nothin’ under a hunderd.  Ef yer don’t get it ter-morrer I’ll tie yer up, sho’s yer bawn, yer great merlatto dog!  Yer’s ‘hin’ the poo’es’ gal in the fiel’.”

“I never pick no cotton ‘fo’ yistiddy, an’ its tolerbul unhandy.  Rickon I kin do better when I gits my han’ in.  I use ter could wuck fus’-rate in tobaccy.”

“Tobaccy won’t save yer.  We hain’t got no use for niggers ef they can’t come up ter the scratch on cotton.  I’s made a big crop, an’ I ain’t goin’ ter let it rot in the fiel’.  Yer ought ter pick three hunderd ev’ry day.  I know’d a nigger onct, a heap littler than Little Lizay, that picked five hunderd ev’ry lick; an’ I hearn tell uv a feller that went up ter seven hunderd.  I ain’t goin’ ter take no mo’ sixties from yer:  a good hunderd or the cowhide.  That’s the talk!”

“I’ll pick all I kin,” said Alston:  “I wuckt haud’s I could ter-day.”

“Ef yer don’t hush yer lyin’ mouth I’ll cut yer heart out.”

Alston went from the gin-loft, his blood tingling.  On the sunning-scaffold he encountered Little Lizay.  She had been listening—­had heard all that had passed between the two men.  She went down the scaffold-steps, and Alston came soon after.  She waited for him, and they walked to the “quarter” together.  “It’s mighty haud, ain’t it?” she said.

“I believe he tol’ a lie ’bout my baskit.  Anyhow, I wuckt haud’s I could ter-day.  I can’t pick no hunderd poun’s uv the flimpsy stuff.  He’ll have ter cowhide me:  I don’t kere.”

But Alston did care keenly—­not so much for the pain; he could bear worse misery than the brutal arm could inflict, though the rawhide cut like a dull knife; but it was the shame, the disgrace, of the thing.  He was a stranger on the place—­only a few weeks there—­and to be tied up and flogged in the midst of strange, unsympathizing negroes! it was such degradation to his manhood.  Since he was a child he had not been struck.  He had been rather a favorite with his master in Virginia, but this master had died in debt, leaving numerous heirs, and in the changes incident to a partition of the estate Alston was sold.