Lizay gave him a swift look of surprise:  then her lip began to quiver; the quick tears came to her eyes; she put both hands to her face and cried hard, so that she could not have found voice if she had wished to tell Alston her story.  He went back to his row, and left her there crying beside the pick-baskets.  He returned almost immediately, shouldered his basket, and went away from her to another part of the field, leaving his row unfinished.  He wondered how much cotton Lizay had taken from his basket—­if its weight would be brought down below a hundred; and meditated what he should do in case he was called up to be flogged by the brutal overseer.  Should he stand and take the lashing, trusting to Heaven to make it up to him some day? or should he knock the overseer senseless and make a strike for freedom?  Where was freedom?  Which was the way to the free North?  In Virginia he would have known in what direction to set his face for Ohio, but here everything was new and strange.

However, he had no occasion for a desperate movement that night.  His basket weighed one hundred and seven, while Little Lizay’s had fallen lower than ever before.  Alston thought it was because she had missed her chance of transferring the usual quantity of cotton from his basket.

The striking of Lizay had never seemed so abhorrent to him as on this night, now that there was estrangement between them.  She was already humiliated in his sight, and to raise his hand against her was like striking a fallen foe.  She would think that he was no longer sorry—­that he was glad to repay the wrong she had done him.

In the mean time, Edny Ann had told the story of the theft to one and another, and Lizay found at night the “quarter” humming with it.  Taunts and jeers met her on every hand.  Stealing from white folks the negroes regarded as a very trifling matter, since they, the slaves, had earned everything there was:  but to steal from “a po’ nigger” was the meanest thing in their decalogue.

“Stealin’ from her beau!” sneered one negro, commenting on Little Lizay’s offence.

“An’ her sweet’art!” said another.

“An’ her ‘tendin’ like her lubbed ’im!”

“An’ Als’on can’t pick cotton fas’, nohow, kase he ain’t use ter cotton—­neber see’d none till he come yere—­an’ her know’d he’d git a cowhidin’.  It’s meaner’n boneset tea,” said Edny Ann.

“A heap meaner,” assented Cat.  “Sich puffawmance’s wusser’n stealin’ acawns frum a blin’ hog.”

Over and over Little Lizay said, “I never stole Als’on’s cotton;” and then she would make her explanation, as she had made it to Edny Ann and Alston.  Often she was tempted to tell the whole story of how she had been all along helping Alston at her own cost, but many motives restrained her.  She dreaded the jeers and jests to which the story would subject her, and everything was to be feared from Mr. Buck’s retaliation should he learn that he had been tricked.  Besides, she