what each hand did each day. There was to be no falling behind these
figures: indeed, they must be beaten, for the heavier bolling made the
picking easier. Any one falling behind was to be cowhided. As for the new
hands, they ought to lead the field, for they were all young, stout
fellows.

As has been said, Alston was tall, strong, well-made. Working in tobacco,
to whose culture he had been used, he could hold his hand with the best:
how would it be in this new business of cotton-picking? He had a strong
element of cheerful fidelity in his nature. The first day he worked
steadily and as rapidly as he was able at the unfamiliar employment. When
night came he reckoned he had done well. With a complacent feeling he stood
waiting his turn as the great baskets, one after another, were swung on the
steelyard and the weights announced. He found himself pitying some of the
pickers as light weights were called, wondering if they had fallen behind
last year's figures. When his basket was brought forward, it was by Big
Sam, who with one hand swung it lightly to the scales; yet Alston's thought
was, "How strong Big Sam is!" and never, "How light the basket!"

The weight was announced: Alston was almost stunned. He had strained every
nerve, yet here he was behind the children-pickers, behind the gray old
women stiff with rheumatism and broken with childbearing and with doing
men's work.

"Sixty-three pounds!" the overseer said with a threatening tone. "Min' yer
git a heap higher'n that ter-morrer, yer yaller raskel! Ef yer can't pick
cotton, yer'll be sol' down in Louzany to a sugar-plantation, whar' niggers
don't git nothin' ter eat 'cept cotton-seeds an' a few dreggy lasses."

Next to being sent to "the bad place" itself, the most terrible fate, to