enough as inferiors though not dependents. In spite of the influence of Aunt Mehitable Green, they had not yet learned to think as a race, and the individual negro still attached himself instinctively to the superior powers. "I remember you well, Ebenezer," she said; "you have a sister, Mary Joe. I want her to help look after my henhouse." She laughed as she spoke because she knew that the negroes would work twice as well for an employer who laughed easily; but she wondered if they detected the hollowness of the sound. It occurred to her, as she looked at the doomed broomsedge across the road, that farming, like love, might prove presently to be no laughing matter. Turning back toward the house, she met her mother, who was coming out with a basin of cornmeal dough for the chickens. The sun had just risen, and there was a sparkling freshness over the earth and in the luminous globe of the sky. She had slept well, and with the morning weakness had vanished. The wild part of her had perished like burned grass; out of nothing, into nothing, that was the way of it. Now, armoured in reason, she was ready to meet life on its own terms. "Do you know where Rufus is?" she asked. "I want him to see the hands start work in the eighteen-acre field." Mrs. Oakley shook her head. "I don't know. I thought he was going to finish ploughing the tobacco field, but I saw him start off right after breakfast with Ike Pryde. It seems they found honey in a big oak over by Hoot Owl Woods, and they've set off with an axe to cut down the tree." "Oh, the fool, the fool!" Dorinda exclaimed, and determined that she would expect nothing more from Rufus. "Well, you know how men are," returned her mother, with unpolemical wisdom. "They'll seize any excuse to stop work and cut down a tree." "I do know. But to cut down a big oak, and for honey!" The old woman scattered dough on the ground with an impartial hand. "Rufus has got a mighty sweet tooth," she remarked. "So has Pa, but you never found him making an excuse to stop work." "I know. Your Pa always put his wishes aside. There ain't many men you can say that of." Though she sighed over the fact, she accepted it as one of the natural or acquired privileges of the male; and she felt that these were too numerous to justify a special grievance against a particular one. Even acquiescence with a sigh is easier than argument when one is worn out with neuralgia and worse things. A frost had blighted her impulse of opposition, and this seemed to Dorinda one of the surest signs that her mother was failing. There were moments when it would have been a relief to be contradicted. "Well, I'll have to do it myself. Because I am a woman the hands will expect me to shirk, and I must show them that I know what I am about." "I'll help you all I can, daughter."