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of companion who would talk with me and hear me talk. The other planters come to the house and drink my wine, but when they leave I think they laugh at me and laugh at my books———my lovely books. And so you will sit with me in the evenings, perhaps, and we will talk of the things in books. Your father was a gentleman, I think. You have the look.

“Now, to-day,” James Flower went on mildly, “we have a hanging, and you and I must hurry to be there. I don’t just know what the fellow did, but it was enough. And what says———oh! what's his name? I have read it, anyway———'The chief value of violent punishment lies with those on whom the same might fall.” Yes, I think it is well to have some one hanged every now and then. It is expensive, but very conducive to good behavior among the rest. But my overseer attends to all that. Do you know, I think he really enjoys it.”

He led the boy to a square of thatched mud huts, built close together, each with its door opening out into a kind of plaza. And in the center of the square, like a horrible fetish, rose a tall gallows made of black wood and polished with oil until it shone dully in the sunlight. It was so placed that no slave could look out of his hovel without seeing the black horror that might be his end. This was the overseer’s work. With his own hands he had rubbed the dark wood until it glowed. He was accustomed to stand and gaze at it, head cocked to one side, as an artist might look at his new finished work.