planter’s account himself, usually charged double in self-protection. But on Ann’s place it was different. At the end of each day, hard, jingling cash was laid into their ready palms, and it was symbolic of the freedom which years before had been talked about so much, but which somehow had appeared in name only. Yes, Ann Boyd was different. Coming in closer contact with her than the whites, they knew her better and felt her inherent worth. They always addressed her as "Miss Ann," and as "Miss Ann" she was known among them far and near—a queer, powerful individuality about whose private life—having naught to lose or gain by it—they never gossiped. On the present day, when the sun dipped below the mountain-top, Ann raised the cow’s horn, which she always wore at her belt, and blew a resounding blast upon it. This was the signal that the day’s toil was ended, and yet so faithful were her black allies that each tried to complete the row he happened to be on before he brought in his bag. The crop for the year was good over all that portion of the state, and the newspapers, which Ann read carefully by candle-light at night, were saying that, owing to the little cotton being produced in other parts of the South, the price was going to be high. And that meant that Ann Boyd would be a "holder" in the market—not needing ready money, her bales would remain in a warehouse in Darley till the highest price had been reached in the long-headed woman’s judgment, which in this, too, was always good—so good, in fact, that the Darley cotton speculators were often guided by it to their advantage. The gathering-bags all in the cotton-house, Ann locked the rusty padlock, paid the toilers from her leather bag, and trudged home to her well-earned supper. When that was prepared and eaten, she moved her chair to the front porch and sat down; but the air was cool to unpleasantness, and she moved back into the gracious warmth of the big, open fire. All the afternoon her heart had thrilled over a report that Jane Hemingway’s small cotton crop was being hastily and carelessly gathered and sold at the present low price by the man who held a mortgage on it. It pleased Ann to think that Jane would later hear of her own high receipts and be stung by it. Then, too, she had heard that Jane was more and more concerned about her bodily affliction and the inability to receive proper treatment. Yes, Jane was getting payment for what she had done in such an underhanded way, and Ann was glad of it.