sorrier for Mr. Paul. Every time he came down the long furrows he looked and looked. The eyes of the two men met, held, until Henry turned his mule and plow around, and went back again.

When he came down the third row, Mr. Paul said: "Come and sit under the tree, Henry, and talk to me for a few minutes,-Guy won't mind. I'll tell him."

Henry looked up and down the wire fence. It was very high, two full widths of woven hog-wire. There was not a hole in it anywhere. It stretched out nearly half a mile, past the orchard, past the vegetable patch, clear to the edge of the flower garden of the big-house. Two years ago old Uncle Isaac, who lived in the cabin then, had been given the care of Mr. Guy's fine game chickens. Game chickens can fly high and are much too valuable to be stolen by niggers. The fence was to protect them. The chickens were gone now, gone like poor old Uncle Isaac, but the barrier remained.

Back of the cabin the long, empty chicken-runs stretched out almost to the river bank; at the end of these, the fence turned at a right angle and continued away from the cotton field a quarter of a mile or more until it joined the picket-fence around the stables and mule lot. To get to the cabin from the field you had to walk clear up to the big-house, where Mr. Guy sat in his "office." An explanation would be due for leaving your mule and plow. Mr. Paul couldn't get out into the field or to the river bank, and Henry couldn't get into the cabin-yard. Henry had to explain all this to Mr. Paul, because he didn't want the white man to think

him unthankful for his offer. He went off behind his mule again, trying to make up his mind to ask the white man to let him come over some evening instead. Mr. Paul could tell him things he wanted to know, about men in far-away places, and cities.

But there was that fence. It was so high, and you couldn't cross it without breaking it down. And you couldn't do that, of course. Henry found it hard to talk through the wire. It got into the way of what you were trying to say. Besides, it is mighty hard to say things to white folks so they can understand you.

There were two questions Henry wanted to ask. If anybody in this world could answer them, it was Mr. Paul. Why was it that Henry couldn't get on, couldn't better himself? Why was it that he had to work, just like his old mule, day after day until he died? Stuck, like a fly in molasses. Henry wanted to learn too bad. But everything hindered him. His wife laughed and shouted, or got mad and burned up his books. She taught her four black sons to laugh too. "Nigger is nigger," she said, mocking him, shaming him before people. But that wasn't true, and Henry knew it.

He sighed and bent his head over the plow: "Git up, mule,” he said. The beast strained forward under the weight of the heavy soil.

Up and down the field, slowly. Furrow after furrow.

another of those long, good-smoking cigarettes. This time they talked of the picture Mr. Paul was painting. Henry wanted to see what it was, so Mr. Paul turned it around. Henry could see it was a stretch of cotton field, with a plow and a nigger coming along-Mr. Paul had put him in a picture without Henry knowing a thing about it. That was a strange thing, too. Henry couldn't see the picture very well because it was some distance from him, but he could see what it was. He was pleased and proud. This was something to tell the black men on the store gallery to-night. But someway, when the time came, he couldn't do it, even when the conversation turned to the sick man again.

People had come all the way from town to see Mr. Paul, but he had refused to see them, according to kitchen gossip-just wouldn't be bothered: "An' he's sure one sp'iled white man," Uncle Chawlie concluded.

"Huh! It wuz swellin' up whut bust de poutin' pigeon!" came the comment from a shapeless black shadow at his elbow.

"'E ain't sp'iled! 'E ain't proud!" Henry startled them all with the passion of his reply: "'E's a sick man, dat's whut 'e is!"

But Uncle Chawlie said only: "Aie-yie!" a comment which can mean anything or nothing. There was a long silence broken by the whining of mosquitoes and the stamping of the sleepy horses tied to the railing. Henry rose, whistled to his cur-dog and started home.

Across the narrow river the lights in the cabins were winking out, one after another.

The next night Henry didn't go to the store to loaf and visit with the other men. Instead he sat by the smoky oil-lamp in his cabin and tried to read from a book he had. His wife and children, already in bed, called out impatiently for him to put out the lamp, but Henry paid no heed. He wanted to learn to read better. Things came so hard. It was harder to read than plow, and he was tired already from the day's plowing. But it was nice to look out along the furrows and see the light in Mr. Paul's cabin. Mr. Paul was reading too.

It was the next night that Henry went out alone for the first time. His wife's nagging voice worried him more than usual:

"Fo' Gawd's sake put out dat lamp, Henry! De room is full o' mosquitoes dis minute. T'row dat ole fool book away an' lemme git some res'!"

Henry rose, blew out the lamp and went outdoors. The yellow dog, lying in the dark by the side of the house, beat his tail upon the hardbaked ground. For awhile Henry sat on the steps watching the light that glimmered in the cabin across the field. There was a light in the parlor of the big-house too, to-night. Company there. He wondered if Mr. Paul had walked over to spend the evening for once he had seen him walking through the orchard late at night after leaving the big-house. But that was a month ago. Mr. Paul seldom walked nowadays.

Finally Henry began to walk down the rows that he had plowed that day. The light in Mr. Paul's house urged him on. Maybe the white man was sick and needed something.

When he came to the high fence he stopped and peered. Mr. Paul was nowhere in sight. Henry walked along the fence a little way and tried to look in at the open windows. From where he stood now he could see nearly all of the lighted room, but Mr. Paul was nowhere in sight. Maybe he had fallen to the floor and was lying there, too weak to get up.

And then, out of the darkness came a quiet voice: "Is it you, Henry?" "Yassuh! .. I jus❜

But there were no questions. Mr. Paul seemed to think it was the most natural thing in the world for Henry to be there at this time of night. He said: "If you'll go along the fence to the big-house, you'll find the gate unlocked, I expect. Come on in."

"No suh, not to-night . . . I jus' come . . Henry paused. He couldn't say why he had come.

Mr. Paul got out of the hammock under the Chinaball-tree and came close: "I'm going to get a pair of pliers from the store to-morrow," he said, "and make a hole in that fence." But the next day Mr. Paul was in bed. The doctor came all the way out from town to see him and he stayed a long time. Mr. Guy and his wife, looking worried, were at the cabin too. When Henry came close to the fence with his mule and plow at midday, Mr. Guy came out and called him, telling him to run quick to the store and bring something. Henry didn't know what he went for, as Mr. Guy had written it on a piece of paper, but the clerk in the store whistled when he read it and gave Henry a small package: "Looks bad," the clerk said.

cabin until after midnight, and when he went, Aunt Dicey was left to watch. It was nearly daylight before Henry slipped into bed beside his wife, his overalls covered with dirt from the furrows in which he had lain for hours, on guard. But it was not so serious after all for in a few days Mr. Paul was out in the hammock again. He hadn't forgotten either:

"I've ordered those pliers," he said, "I'm going to cut a hole in that fence."

Henry went back to the store gallery that night to loaf and visit with the men again. He was more silent than usual. He lay back against one of the posts, scratching the dog between the ears, and puffing on his pipe. It was cooler here than in his cabin. And the river smelled so nice.

When he left, he rode home in a roundabout way through the field in order to pass Mr. Paul's cabin and see in at the windows from his position on horseback. There was a light burning, but the white man was nowhere in sight. The hammock flopped empty in the breeze and the moonlight made all the cabin-yard visible. Henry ventured to call out softly: "Oh, Mister Paul!" but there was no reply.

He rode along a little way. His beast shied suddenly and stumbled. A piece of wire had tripped his old white horse. A hole had been cut in the fence and the wire bent outward, into the field.

Had Mr. Paul gone out, through the furrows, down to the bank of the river?

Henry rode out to see. The bank was full of cactus and flowering yucca.

incline which led down to the water in which the moon was mirrored. The air was heavy with the sweet breath of night-blooming jasmine. Silhouetted against the sky, Henry sat on his horse and looked out over the rippling river. Opposite, dark cabins dotted the bank. Nothing moved. And then, quietly, came a voice: "Henry Is that you?"

"Yassuh!" Henry slipped down from the saddle and went quickly to the river's edge.

"You'll have to help me-I'm not strong enough to climb back into the boat."

Of all things! Poor Mr. Paul had tried to swim. He was clinging now to a rowboat which swung clear of the bank just beyond the shadow of a clump of elderberry trees dripping with white flowers. Mr. Paul's head and one arm were visible, his arm clinging to the boat.

Henry tried, first to reach the boat from the bank, but it was too far out. He slipped off his shirt and overalls and plunged in, sinking to his knees, at first, in the soft mud of the river's bottom. He reached the boat after a few rapid strokes, steadied it, and climbed in. The boat shipped water as he lifted the limp body of Mr. Paul from the river. Mr. Paul was breathing fast and his eyes were big and black. He lay naked in the moonlight, shivering, clutching Henry's arm with both hands. Finally he spoke:

"I couldn't have lasted ... five minutes. . . longer, Henry. longer, Henry. It's lucky for me . . . you came. If you want to call it luck."

"Oh, Mister Paul, yo' is too sick to try to swim. You might a-drowned

yo'se'f . . . Gawd! Whut ud Mister Guy say den?"

Moonlight turned the wet body of the black man to bronze. He sat erect, one arm supporting the head and shoulders of the other man.

Two naked men, one white, one black, in a boat on a still river. Nobody else. Everybody asleep. And the world saturate with moonlight.

Henry felt as though he, too, were sleeping. "... Mister Paul... Yo' is goin' to catch col' lyin' heah . . .”

"... It doesn't matter... Don't move. Stay here quietly and let me rest for a while... Don't let me cough . . ."

The boat drifted slowly, came closer to the bank and rested finally in the deep shade of the trees. Beyond the shadow the moonlight turned the water into hundreds of shiny ripples. The scent of the jasmine hung in the air, sickeningly sweet. From fig-trees across the river came the clear crowing of a cock, repeated a moment later by distant challenges. Again. Again. Then silence.

The white man spoke: "Stars are pretty things, aren't they, Henry?”

Henry knew he must answer. It was bad for Mr. Paul to talk. He made a great effort:

"Yassuh. Sittin' in my do'way night-times I often watches stars. De ole folks say dat when de Big Dipper tips 'way up, like it is tonight, dat rain is comin'. De crops need rain, Mister Paul."

"Yes-rain." He was making an effort to breathe quietly. "What else do the stars tell you, Henry?"

"Well, suh, de ole folks say dat yo' can read yo' future in de stars. But me, I don't know. Is dat