Colonel Cresswell reddened a little, and John Taylor looked away.
"Well, if you don't want to undertake it, all right."
Zora looked thoughtfully across the field-"Mr. Maxwell has a bit of land," she began meditatively.
"Worked out, and not worth five dollars an acre!" snapped the Colonel. But he did not propose to hand Maxwell a thousand dollars. "Now, see here, I'll treat you as well as anybody, and you know it."
"I believe so, sir," acknowledged Zora in a tone that brought a sudden keen glance from Taylor; but her face was a mask. "I reckon I'll make the bargain."
"All right. Bring the money and we'll fix the thing up."
"The money is here," said Zora, taking an envelope out of her bosom.
"Well, leave it here, and I'll see to it."
"But you see, sir, Miss Smith is so methodical; she expects some papers or receipts."
"Well, it's too late tonight."
"Possibly you could sign a sort of receipt and later--"
Cresswell laughed. "Well, write one," he indulgently assented. And Zora wrote.
When Zora left Colonel Cresswell's about noon that Sunday she knew her work had just begun, and she walked swiftly along the country roads, calling here and there. Would Uncle Isaac help her build a log home? Would the boys help her some time to clear some swamp land? Would Rob become a tenant when she asked? For this was the idle time of the year. Crops were laid by and planting had not yet begun.
This too was the time of big church meetings. She knew that in her part of the country on that day the black population, man, woman, and child, were gathered in great groups; all day they had been gathering, streaming in snake-like lines along the country roads, in well-brushed, brilliant attire, half fantastic, half crude. Down where the Toomsville-Montgomery highway dipped to the stream that fed the Cresswell swamp squatted a square barn that slept through day and weeks in dull indifference. But on the First Sunday it woke to sudden mighty life. The voices of men and children mingled with the snorting of animals and the cracking of whips. Then came the long drone and sing-song of the preacher with its sharp wilder climaxes and the answering "amens" and screams of the worshippers. This was the shrine of the Baptists--shrine and oracle, centre and source of inspiration--and hither Zora hurried.
The preacher was Jones, a big man, fat, black, and greasy, with little eyes, unctuous voice, and three manners: his white folks manner, soft, humble, wheedling; his black folks manner, voluble, important, condescending; and above all, his pulpit manner, loud, wild, and strong. He was about to don this latter cloak when Zora approached with a request briefly to address the congregation. Remembering some former snubs, his manner was lordly.