white folks, white trash an' all: then yer's sho' ter be right."

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'