The Law of the Land | Page 5

and graceful deer, the soft-footed panther, the shambling black
bear, the wild hog, the wolf, all manner of furred creatures, great store
of noble wild fowl--all these thriving after the fecund fashion of this
brooding land. It was a kingdom, this wild world, a realm in the
wilderness; a kingdom fit for a bold man to govern, a man such as
might have ruled in days long gone by. And indeed the Big House and
its scarcely measured acres kept well their master as they had for many
years. The table of this Delta baron was almost exclusively fed from
these acres; scarce any item needful in his life required to be imported
from the outer world. The government of America might have fallen;
anarchy might have prevailed; a dozen states might have been taken
over by a foreign foe; a score of states might have been overwhelmed
by national calamity, and it all had scarce made a ripple here in this
land, apart, rich, self-supporting and content. It had always been thus
here.
But if this were a kingdom apart and self-sufficient, what meant this
thing which, crossed the head of the plantation--this double line,
tenacious and continuous, which shone upon the one hand dark, and
upon the other, where the sun touched it, a cold gray in color? What
meant this squat little building at the side of these rails which reached
out straight as the flight of a bird across the clearing and vanished
keenly in the forest wall? This was the road of the iron rails, the white
man's perpetual path across the land. It clung close to the ground, at
times almost sinking into the embankment now grown scarcely
discernible among the concealing grass and weeds, although the track
itself had been built but recently. This railroad sought to efface itself,
even as the land sought to aid in its effacement, as though neither
believed that this was lawful spot for the path of the iron rails. None the
less, here was the railroad, ineradicable, epochal, bringing change; and,
one might say, it made a blot upon this picture of the morning.
An observer standing upon the broad gallery, looking toward the
eastward and the southward, might have seen two figures just emerging

from the rim of the forest something like a mile away; and might then
have seen them growing slowly more distinct as they plodded up the
railway track toward the Big House. Presently these might have been
discovered to be a man and a woman; the former tall, thin, dark and
stooped; his companion, tall as himself, quite as thin, and almost as
bent. The garb of the man was nondescript, neutral, loose; his hat dark
and flapping. The woman wore a shapeless calico gown, and on her
head was a long, telescopic sunbonnet of faded pink, from which she
must perforce peer forward, looking neither to the right nor to the left.
The travelers, indeed, needed not to look to the right or the left, for the
path of the iron rails led them directly on. Now and again clods of
new-broken earth caused them to stumble as they hobbled loosely
along. If the foot of either struck against the rail, its owner sprang aside,
as though in fear, toward the middle of the track. Slowly and unevenly,
with all the zigzags permissible within the confining inches of the irons,
they came on up toward the squat little station-house. Thence they
turned aside into the plantation path and, still stumbling and zigzagging,
ambled up toward the house. They did not step to the gallery, did not
knock at the door, or, indeed, give any evidences of their intentions, but
seated themselves deliberately upon a pile of boards that lay near in the
broad expanse of the front yard. Here they remained, silent and at rest,
fitting well enough into the sleepy scene. No one in the house noticed
them for a time, and they, tired by the walk, seemed content to rest
under the shade of the evergreens before making known their errand.
They sat speechless and content for some moments, until finally a
mulatto house-servant, passing from one building to another, cast a
look in their direction, and paused uncertainly in curiosity. The man on
the board-pile saw her.
"Here, Jinny! Jinny!" he called, just loud enough to be heard, and not
turning toward her more than half-way. "Come heah."
"Yassah," said the girl, and slowly approached.
"Get us a little melk, Jinny," said the speaker.
"We're plumb out o' melk down home."

"Yassah," said Jinny; and disappeared leisurely, to be gone perhaps half
an hour.
There remained little sign of life on the board-pile, the bonnet tube
pointing fixedly toward the railway station, the man now and then
slowly shifting one