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had preferred this soldier with whom they had once personally grappled, to the capitalist they had never known during the struggle.

The train rolled slowly through the woods, so slowly that the fragrant pine smoke from the engine still hung round the windows of the cars. Gradually the "clearings" became larger; they saw the distant white wooden colonnades of

THE ARGUMENT IN THE TRAIN.

some planter's house, looking still opulent and pretentious, although the fence of its enclosure had broken gaps, and the gate sagged on its single hinge.

Mr. Drummond sniffed at this damning record of neglect and indifference. "Even if they were ruined, they might still have spent a few cents for nails and slates to enable them to look decent before folks, and not parade their poverty before their neighbours," he said.

"But that's just where you misunderstand them, Drummond," said Courtland,

smiling. "They have no reason to keep up an attitude towards their neighbours, who still know them as 'Squire' so and so, 'Colonel' this and that, and the 'Judge,'-owners of their vast but crippled estates. They are not ashamed of being poor, which is an accident."

"But they are of working, which is deliberation," interrupted Drummond. "They are ashamed to mend their fences themselves now that they have no slaves to do it for them."

"I doubt very much if some of them know how to drive a nail, for the matter of that," said Courtland, still good humouredly," but that's the fault of a system older than themselves, which the founders of the Republic retained. We cannot give them experience in their new condition in one day, and in fact, Drummond, I am very much afraid that for our purposes and I honestly believe for their good-we must help to keep them for the present as they are."

"Perhaps," said Drummond, sarcastically, "you would like to reinstate slavery?"

"No. But I should like to reinstate the master. And not for his sake alone, but for freedom's sake and ours. To be plain since I have taken up this matter for the company, I have satisfied myself from personal observation that

the negro -even more than his master-cannot handle his new condition. He is accustomed to his old traditional taskmaster, and I doubt if he will work fairly for any other-particularly for those who don't understand him. Don't mistake me-I don't propose to go back to the whip; to that brutal institution, the irresponsible overseer; to the buying and selling, and separation of the family, nor any of the old wrongs; but I propose to make the old master our overseer and responsible to us. He is not a fool, and has already learned that it is more profitable

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to pay wages to his old slaves and have the power of dismissal, like any other employer, than be obliged under the old system of enforced labour and life servitude, to undergo the cost of maintaining incompetence and idleness. The old sentiment of slave-owning has disappeared before natural common sense and selfishness. I am satis

fied that by some such process as this utilising of the old master and the new freedom, we will be better able to cultivate our lands than by buying up their estates, and setting the old owners adrift with a little money in their pockets as an idle, discontented class to revive old political dogmas, and foment new issues, or perhaps set up a dangerous opposition to us."

"You don't mean to say that those infernal niggers would give the preference to their old oppressors?".

"Dollar for dollar in wages-yes! And why shouldn't they? Their old masters understand them better and treat them generally better. They know our interest in them is only an abstract sentiment, not a real liking. We show it at every turn. But

we are nearing Redlands, and Major

Reed will, I have no

never tires of talking of it to me so I suppose I am."

A few moments later the train glided beside the Redland platform. As the two travellers descended a hand was laid on Courtland's shoulder, and a stout figure in the blackest and shiniest of alpaca jackets, and the whitest and broadest of

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"GLAD TO SEE YO', CUN'NEL."

He

doubt, corroborate my impressions. insists upon our staying at his house, although the poor old fellow, I imagine, can ill afford to entertain company. But he will be offended if we refuse."

"He is a friend of yours, then?" asked Drummond.

"I fought against his division at Stony Creek," said Courtland, grimly.

"He

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tating, he knew not why, and angry at his own embarrassment.

"Mr. Drummond, the vice-president of the company," interposed Courtland cheerfully, "was engaged in furnishing to us the sinews of war."

Major Reed bowed a little more formally. "Most of us heah, sir, were in the wah some time or other, and if you gentlemen will honah me by joining in a social glass at the hotel across the way, I'll introduce you to Captain Prendergast, who left a leg at Fair Oaks." Drummond would have

declined, but a significant pressure on his arm from Courtland changed his determination. He followed them to the hotel and into the presence of the one-legged warrior (who turned out to be the landlord and bar-keeper), to whom Courtland was hilariously introduced by Major Reed as "the man, sir, who had pounded my division for three hours at Stony Creek!"

Major Reed's house was but a few minutes' walk down the dusty lane, and was presently heralded by the baying of three or four foxhounds, and foreshadowed by a dilapidated condition of picket-fence and stuccoed gate front. Beyond it stretched the wooden Doric columns of the usual southern mansion, dimly seen through the broad leaves of the horse chestnut-trees that shaded it. There were the usual listless black shadows haunting the verandah and outer offices-former slaves and still attached house-servants, arrested like lizards in breathless attitudes at the approach of strange footsteps, and still holding the brush, broom, duster or home implement they had been lazily using, in their fixed hands. From the doorway of the detached kitchen, connected by a gallery to the wing of the mansion, "Aunt Martha," the cook, gazed also with a saucepan clasped to her bosom, and her revolving hand with the scrubbing cloth in it apparently stopped on a dead

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centre.

Drummond, whose gorge had risen at these evidences of hopeless incapacity and utter shiftlessness, was not relieved by the presence of Mrs. Reed-a soured, disappointed woman of forty, who still carried in her small dark eyes and thin handsome lips something of the bitterness and antagonism of the typical "southern rights" woman; nor of her two daughters, Octavia and Augusta, whose languid atrabiliousness seemed a part of the mourning they still wore. The optimistic gallantry and good fellowship of the major appeared the more remarkable by contrast with his cypress shadowed family, and their venomous possibilities. Perhaps there might have been a light vein of southern insincerity in his good humour. "Paw," said Miss Octavia, with gloomy confidence to Courtland, but with a pretty curl of the hereditary lip, "is about the only reconstructed' one of the entire family. We don't make 'em much about yer. But I'd advise yo' friend, Mr. Drummond, if he's coming here carpet-begging, not to trust too much to paw's reconstruction.' It won't wash." But when Courtland hast

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what if he reckoned to pay those niggers for working for your father and him?"

"If paw is going into trading business with him; if Major Reed-a so'th'n gentleman-is going to keep shop, he ain't such a fool as to believe niggers will work when they ain't obliged to. That's been tried over at Mirandy Dows's, not five miles from here, and the niggers are half the time hangin' round here takin' holiday. She put up new quarters for 'em, and tried to make 'em eat together at a long table like those low-down folks up north,

tricks and dodges, and swearin' by them; and yet, for all that the thing won't work."

"But isn't that partly the reason? Isn't her failure a great deal due to this lack of sympathy from her neighbours? Discontent is easily sown, and the negro is still weighted down by superstition; the Fifteenth Amendment did not quite knock off all his chains."

"Yes, but that is nothing to her. For if there ever was a person in this world who reckoned she was just born to manage

D

everything and everybody, it is Sally Dows!"

"Sally Dows!" repeated Courtland, with a slight start.

"Yes, Sally Dows, of Pineville."

"You say she was half Union, but did she have any relations or-or-friendsin the war-on your side? Any-whowere killed in battle?"

"They were all killed, I reckon," returned Miss Reed darkly. "There was

her cousin, Jule Jeffcourt, shot in the cemetery with her beau, who they say was Sally's too; there was Chet Brooks and Joyce Masterton, who were both gone on her and both killed too; and there was old Captain Dows himself, who never lifted his head again after Richmond was taken, and drank himself to death. It wasn't considered healthy to be Miss Sally's relation in those times, or to be even wantin' to be one."

Colonel Courtland did not reply. The face of the dead young officer coming towards him out of the blue smoke rose as vividly as on that memorable day. The picture and letter he had taken from the dead man's breast, which he had retained ever since; the romantic and fruitless

quest he had made for the fair original in after days; and the strange and fateful interest in her which had grown up in his heart since then, he now knew had only been lulled to sleep in the busy preoccupation of the last six months, for it all came back to him with redoubled force. His present mission and its practical object, his honest zeal in its pursuit, and the cautious skill and experience he had brought to it, all seemed to be suddenly displaced by this romantic and unreal fantasy. Oddly enough it appeared now to be the only reality in his life, the rest was an incoherent, purposeless dream.

"Is-is-Miss Sally married?" he asked, collecting himself with an effort.

"Married? Yes, to that farm of her aunt's! I reckon that's the only thing she cares for."

Courtland looked up, recovering his usual cheerful calm. "Well, I think that after luncheon I'll pay my respects to her family! From what you have just told me the farm is certainly an experiment worth seeing. I suppose your father will have no objection to give me a letter to Miss Dows?"

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