another crop, I reckon, between here and the Hall?"

Sol Peterkin was busily cutting a fresh quid of tobacco from the
plug he carried in his pocket, and there was a brief pause before
he answered. Then, as he carefully wiped the blade of his knife
on the leg of his blue jean overalls, he looked up with a curious
facial contortion.

"Oh, you'll find a corn field or two somewhar along," he replied,
"but it's a lanky, slipshod kind of crop at best, for tobaccy's
king down here, an' no mistake. We've a sayin' that the man that
ain't partial to the weed can't sleep sound even in the
churchyard, an' thar's some as 'ill swar to this day that Willie
Moreen never rested in his grave because he didn't chaw, an' the
soil smelt jest like a plug. Oh, it's a great plant, I tell you,
suh. Look over thar at them fields; they've all been set out
sence the spell o' rain."

The road they followed crawled like a leisurely river between the
freshly ploughed ridges, where the earth was slowly settling
around the transplanted crop. In the distance, labourers were
still at work, passing in dull-blue blotches between the rows of
bright-green leaves that hung limply on their slender stalks.

"You've lived at the Hall, I hear," said Carraway, suddenly
turning to look at his companion over his lowered glasses.

"When it was the Hall, suh," replied Sol, with a tinge of
bitterness in his chuckle. "Why, in my day, an' that was up to
the very close of the war, you might stand at the big gate an'