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The Cresswells, father and son, were at breakfast The daughter was taking her coffee and rolls up stairs in bed

"P'sh! I don't like it!" declared Harry Cresswell, tossing the letter back to his father "I tell you, it is a damned Yankee trick"

He was a ht, well-bred and masterful His father, St John Cresswell, was sixty, white-haired, oateed; a stately, kindly old man with a temper and much family pride

"Well, well," he said, his air half preoccupied, half unconcerned, "I suppose so--and yet"--he read the letter again, aloud: "'Approaching you as one of the most influential landowners of Alabama, on a confidential matter'--h'm--h'm--'a combination of capital and power, such as this nation has never seen'--'cotton rowers'Well, well! Of course, I suppose there's nothing in it And yet, Harry,in a pretty tight pinch Unless relief comes somehoell, we'll just have to quit We siure with niggers getting scarcer and dearer Every year I have to pinch 'em closer and closer I had to pay Maxwell two hundred and fifty to get that old darky and his boys turned over toones has run away already"

Harry lighted a cigarette

"We must drive them more You're too easy, father; they understand that By the hat did that letter say about a 'sister'?"

"Says he's got a sister over at the nigger school whom perhaps we know I suppose he thinks we dine there occasionally" The old irl there"

"What's that?" An angry gleaer man's eye

"Yes She announced this , pert as you please, that she couldn't tote clothes anytoo far We can't keep a h-boy on the place because of this devilish school It's going to ruin the whole labor syste to put irl out of school if I have to horse-whip her, and I'll warn the school against further interference with our tenants Here, in less than a week, go two plough-hands--and now this girl"

The old man smiled

"You'll hardly miss any work Zora does," he said

"I'llherself too ertalking to the white woman in the field the other day"