"Never mind about your gracious. I tell you not to seed that field. And another thing: You planted seven hundred thousand hills of tobacco last year. I want you to write it up in your hat that four hundred thousand is Wanalah's limit. I want you to understand that this plantation is not run for money. If it supports itself, giving a decent living to the whites and blacks on it, I shall be satisfied. If it doesn't quite do that, I'll find a way in which to make up the deficiency. Now I want you to give all the negroes on the plantation a whole holiday to-morrow. I understand there's to be a big picnic with all-day preaching over at Mount Moriah church, and I want everybody on the plantation to attend it. By the way, Bob!" calling to a passing negro, "go at once and tell old Joe I want him to kill two sheep--good fat ones--three shoats and four turkeys this morning; tell him to hang 'em in the ice house as soon as they're dressed, and send them over to Mount Moriah early to-morrow morning. Do you hear?" "Yassir!" responded Bob, his mouth already watering for the share he expected to eat of the good things thus promised. "And, Bob, tell Uncle Joe to take them over there himself and say that Mas' Boyd Westover hopes the folks will have a good time and get as much religion as they need." "But, Boyd," said Jack Towns, who had sleepily strolled into the porch, "don't you think--" "No, decidedly not, Jack. You see Wanalah is the plantation nearest to Mount Moriah, and it's the natural base of supplies for a meeting there. If I don't furnish the provender they'll steal it out of my pasture, my pig pen and my turkey yard. I very much prefer that they should get the things honestly, and it costs me no more." Then, returning to business, he said to the overseer: "You understand the general spirit of my instructions, Mr. Wilkinson, and I beg you to bear it in mind. I'll give more specific orders from time to time, as they are needed." "But what about me?" answered the overseer. "I've got a reputation for makin' more tobacco to the hand an' more wheat to the acre an' more corn on top o' that than any other man as oversees a plantation anywheres for forty mile around here." "Well, what of it?" "Well, it's this a ways. I ain't a-goin' to lose a reputation I prides myself on. Ef you don't want your niggers worked fer all they's worth, perhaps you'd better look out fer another overseer." Westover flushed angrily, more at the tone than at the words, and answered instantly: "Perhaps I had. At any rate I will. I shall not renew my contract with you for another year." The Virginians were very tolerant of insolence on the part of a negro. Usually they treated it as badinage, quite harmlessly and humorously meant. But insolence on the part of an overseer was always taken seriously and instantly resented. The overseers constituted a pariah class, for whom there was tolerance only so long as they "minded their manners."