"No," said Courtland, smiling; "but what if he reckoned to pay those
niggers for working for your father and him?"

"If paw is going into trading business with him; if Major Reed--a
So'th'n gentleman--is going to keep shop, he ain't such a fool as to
believe niggers will work when they ain't obliged to. THAT'S been tried
over at Mirandy Dows's, not five miles from here, and the niggers are
half the time hangin' round here takin' holiday. She put up new quarters
for 'em, and tried to make 'em eat together at a long table like those
low-down folks up North, and did away with their cabins and their melon
patches, and allowed it would get 'em out of lying round too much, and
wanted 'em to work over-time and get mo' pay. And the result was that
she and her niece, and a lot of poor whites, Irish and Scotch, that she
had to pick up ''long the river,' do all the work. And her niece Sally
was mo' than half Union woman during the wah, and up to all No'th'n
tricks and dodges, and swearin' by them; and yet, for all that--the
thing won't work."

"But isn't that partly the reason? Isn't her failure a great deal due to
this lack of sympathy from her neighbors? Discontent is easily sown,
and the negro is still weighted down by superstition; the Fifteenth
Amendment did not quite knock off ALL his chains."

"Yes, but that is nothing to HER. For if there ever was a person in this
world who reckoned she was just born to manage everything and everybody,
it is Sally Dows!"

"Sally Dows!" repeated Courtland, with a slight start.