Mr. Pelham grunted and laughed in disdain. “I ’ll bet he was the hardest you ever tackled,” ventured Cobb. “Anybody can manage him,” the planter replied--“anybody that has got enough determination. You see Henry knows me.” “But do you think he ’ll obey my orders after you go back?” Cobb had followed Mr. Pelham into the sitting-room, and he anxiously waited for the reply to his question. The planter stooped to spit into a corner of the chimney, and then slowly and thoughtfully stroked his chin with his hand. “That’s the only trouble, Brother Cobb,” he said, thrusting his fat hands into the pockets of his trousers and turning his back to the fire-place; “that’s the only drawback. To be plain with you, Brother Cobb, I’m afeard you don’t inspire respect; men that don’t own niggers seldom do. I believe on my soul that nigger would die fightin’ before he’d obey yore orders. To tell the truth, I had to arrange a plan, an’ that is one reason--one reason--why I was down thar so long. After what happened today” (Mr. Pelham spoke significantly and stroked his chin again) “he ’ll mind me jest as well at a distance as if I was here on the spot. He’d have a mortal dread of havin’ me come so fur ag’in.” “I hope you wasn’t cruel, Mr. Pelham,” said Mrs. Pelham, who had just come in. “Henry’s so good-hearted--” “Oh, he ’ll git over it,” replied the planter, ambiguously. “But, as I was goin’ on to say, I had to fix another plan. I have set him a sort o’ task to do while I’m away, an’ I believe he ’ll do it, Brother Cobb. So all you ’ll have to do will be to look after the other niggers.” The plan suited Cobb exactly; but when Mr. Pelham came home the following summer it was hard to hear him say that Uncle Henry had accomplished more than any three of the other negroes. A FILIAL IMPULSE “Yo’ ‘re purty well fixed, Jim; I wish I had yore business.” Big Jim Bradley glanced slowly around his store. The heaps of flour-sacks, coffee-bags, sugar-barrels, piles of bacon, crates of hams, kits of mackerel, and the long rows of well-filled shelves brought a flush of satisfaction into his rugged face. “Hain’t no reason to complain, Bob,” he said; “you’ve been in Georgia, an’ you know how blamed hard it is fer a feller to make his salt back thar.” “Now yo’ ‘re a-talkin’--yo’ ‘re a-sayin’ some ‘n’ now!” Bob Lash was sitting on the head of a potato-barrel, eating cheese and crackers, and his spirited words were interspersed with little snowy puffs from the corners of his mouth. “Jim,” he continued, in a muffled tone, as he eased his feet down to the floor, “I’m a-goin’ to wash this dry truck down with a glass o’ yore cider; I’m about to choke. Thar’s yore nickel. You needn’t rise; I can wait on myse’f.” “I’d keep my eye open while he was behind the counter, Jim,” put in Henry Webb, jestingly. “Bob’s got a swallow like a mill-race. He may take a notion to drink out of yore half-gallon measure.”