Alston had been in Virginia something of a house-servant, doing occasional duty as coachman when the regular official was ill or was wanted elsewhere.  He was also a good table-waiter, and had served in the dining-room when there were guests.  So it came that though properly a field-hand, yet in manner and speech he showed to advantage beside the slaves who were exclusively field-hands.  Little Lizay too occupied a halfway place between these and the better-spoken, gentler-mannered house-servants.  In the winters, after Christmas, which usually terminated the picking-season, Lizay was called to the place of head assistant of the plantation seamstress.  Indeed, she did little field-service except in times of special pressure and during the quarter of cotton-picking.  She was so nimble-fingered and swift that she could not be spared from the field in picking-season, especially if, as was the case this year, there was a heavy crop.  And occasionally in the winter, when there was unusual company at the Hortons’ in the city, Little Lizay was sent for and had the advantage of a season in town.  She felt her superiority to the average plantation-negro, and had not married, though not unsolicited.  When, therefore, Alston came she at once recognized in him a companion, and she was not long in making over her favor to the distinguished-looking stranger.  He was, as she, a half-breed, and Lizay liked her own color.  Had Alston courted her favor, she might have yielded it less readily, but he did not take easily to his new companions.  Some called him proud:  others reckoned he had left a sweetheart, a wife perhaps, in Virginia.  Little Lizay’s evident preference laid her open to the rude jokes and sneers of the other negroes—­in particular Big Sam, who was her suitor, and Edny Ann, who was fond of Alston.  But Edny Ann did not care for Alston as Little Lizay did—­could not, indeed.  She was incapable of the devotion that Lizay felt.  She would not have left her sleep and gone to the dew-wet field before daybreak for the sake of helping Alston:  she would not have taken the risk of falling behind in her picking, and thus incurring a flogging, by dividing her gatherings with him.  And if she had helped him at all, it would not have been delicately, as Lizay’s help had been given.  Edny Ann would have wanted Alston to know that she had helped him:  Little Lizay wished to hide it from him, both because she feared he would decline her help, and because she wanted to spare him the humiliation.

When night came not only Alston lingered, picking by moonlight, but Little Lizay; and this gave rise to much laughing among the other pickers, and to many coarse jokes.  But to one who knew her secret it would have seemed piteous—­the girl’s anxious face as the weighing proceeded, drawing on and on to Alston’s basket and hers at the very end of the line.  Would he have a hundred? would she fall behind?  Would he be saved the flogging? would she have to suffer in his stead?  She dreaded