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 to pack yer terbaccer thirty miles in the dead o' winter to git to a market! Nobody but us growers'd stand fer sech a thing a minit. An' if yuh send it on the cars, the freight charges is so high yuh might jes as well give it away. The railroad an' them lousy buyers has got us by the throat."

"You damn betcha," growled Bob Crupper. "An' the dirty haounds pays us jes what they've a mind to. They let on they're biddin' agin each other; an' the hull lot of 'em is all in together buyin' fer the American Terbaccer Company. Any o' them furrin buyers comes in an' offers to give a little more, they freeze 'em out. The hull pack of 'em hid out yestiddy tryin' to let on the market was glutted. Any dirty dodge to git out o' payin' us a decent price. An' Gawd, when a man goes to buy terbaccer he pays more for one o' them little bags or tins holdin' three-four ounces than they give us for that many paounds. Then come spring, jes afore the market closes, the price'll go away up agin, so's us poor fools'll sweat over raisin' terbaccer agin' nex' year. You damn betcha they got us by the throat."

He paced up and down the barnyard moodily, thinking about the three and a half cents a pound that he had got for his crop the day before.

As the morning grew and the news traveled on the swift pinions with which bad news is winged, the neighbors and relatives came driving into the barnyard. As if in mockery, the cold had abated. The wind had gone down and the winter sunshine began to melt the scant covering of snow that had fallen the day before. The men stood about in the barnyard talking over the accident and the drop in the tobacco market. The women hurried into the house and tried to comfort Lizzie May.

She was wild and hysterical in her grief. Her face swollen and distorted with weeping, she flung herself upon one or another of her sisters, aunts, and cousins, sobbing out to them again and again her anguish and desolation.

"Oh, Judy, Judy, what's a-goin' to become o' these poor little young uns 'ithout no daddy? He was allus that sorry