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ain’t got a penny.”
    “No, sir, Mr. Ty Ty, I wouldn’t do nothing like that. I wouldn’t eat up your mule, boss. I never thought of anything like that. But, please, sir, white captain, don’t bring no conjur-man around here.”
    Black Sam backed away from Ty Ty. His eyes were abnormally large and extraordinarily white.
    When Ty Ty had turned and gone back to the front yard, Shaw went up to the colored man.
    “After we leave,” he said, “come around to the back door and Miss Griselda will give you something out of the kitchen. Tell Uncle Felix to come and get something, too.”
    Black Sam thanked him, but he did not remember hearing a word Shaw had said. He turned and ran towards the barn, moaning to himself.

CHAPTER IV
    B UCK WALKED BACK and forth between the porch and the car impatiently.
    “Let’s get started, Pa,” he said. “We’ll be tramping around in the swamp all night if we don’t get an early start. I don’t like the swamps much after dark, anyway.”
    “I thought you were going to send for Rosamond and Will,” Griselda broke in, looking at her father-in-law. “You’d better write the letter now and mail it when you go through town.”
    “I didn’t aim to mail a letter,” Ty Ty said. “A letter would take too long to get there. I figured on sending after them. I reckon Darling Jill could go over there to Scottsville and bring them back all right. I’ll send her on the bus to Augusta, and she’ll get there early tonight. They could all start back tomorrow morning on the bus and maybe get here in time to start digging in the afternoon just as soon as dinner was over.”
    “Darling Jill isn’t here,” Buck said. “There’s no way of knowing when she’ll be back, either. If we have to wait for her, we’ll never get started to the swamp.”
    Pluto sat up erectly and looked down the road. He would never get around to make a personal call on the voters at the rate he was going.
    “She’ll be back any minute now,” Ty Ty said assuredly. “We’ll wait and take her to Marion with us. When we get to town, we’ll leave her at the bus station and go on to the swamp after that albino. That’s the thing to do. Darling Jill will be home any minute now. Wouldn’t be any sense in going off and leaving when she’ll be here before long.”
    Buck shrugged his shoulders and walked up and down in the yard disgustedly. Two hours had already been wasted, and nothing had been accomplished by the delay.
    “I would—” Pluto said, and then he hesitated.
    “You’d do what?” Ty Ty asked him.
    “Well, I was going to say—”
    “Say what? Go on, Pluto. Speak your mind. We’re all of a family here.”
    “If she wouldn’t object, I thought—”
    “What in the pluperfect hell has got into you, Pluto?” Ty Ty asked angrily. “You start out to say something, and then you get all red in the face and neck, and you carry on like you’re scared to say it and scared not to. Go on and tell me what it is.”
    Pluto’s face got red again. He looked from person to person, at last taking out his handkerchief and holding it over his face while he pretended to wipe it. When his face became less inflamed, he put it back into his pocket.
    “I was going to say that I’d be pleased to drive Darling Jill over to Horse Creek Valley this evening, if she would bring my car back. I mean, I’d be pleased to take her over there if she’d let me.”
    “Why, that’s real neighborly of you, Pluto,” Ty Ty said enthusiastically. “Now I know you can count on our votes. If you’ll take her over there, it’ll save me some money in the end. I’ll tell her to go with you. She won’t mind it at all. What do you mean by saying if she’ll let you? I’ll tell her to, Pluto. Much obliged for the offer. I’ll save a lot of money in the end by that deal.”
    “Do you reckon she’ll go with me—I mean, do you reckon she’ll consent to letting me drive her over there in my car if she brings it back?”
    “I