their backs, but remained near.

"Yes--yes," he said, with uncomfortable haste. "Any--er--information--of
course--" Miss Taylor got out her notes.

"The leading land-owners," she began, sorting the notes searchingly, "I
should like to know something about them."

"Well, Colonel Cresswell is, of course, our greatest landlord--a
high-bred gentleman of the old school. He and his son--a worthy
successor to the name--hold some fifty thousand acres. They may be
considered representative types. Then, Mr. Maxwell has ten thousand
acres and Mr. Tolliver a thousand."

Miss Taylor wrote rapidly. "And cotton?" she asked.

"We raise considerable cotton, but not nearly what we ought to; nigger
labor is too worthless."

"Oh! The Negroes are not, then, very efficient?"

"Efficient!" snorted Mr. Caldwell; at last she had broached a phase of
the problem upon which he could dilate with fervor. "They're the
lowest-down, ornriest--begging your pardon--good-for-nothing loafers you
ever heard of. Why, we just have to carry them and care for them like
children. Look yonder," he pointed across the square to the court-house.
It was an old square brick-and-stucco building, sombre and stilted and
very dirty. Out of it filed a stream of men--some black and shackled;
some white and swaggering and liberal with tobacco-juice; some white and
shaven and stiff. "Court's just out," pursued Mr. Caldwell, "and them