"I's willin', Marse John," the negro laughed, cutting a caper on the grass.
"All right!" the sheriff said as he stooped and picked up a pair of handcuffs. "Now listen: I intend to cut the little chain on these two manacles and attach each cuff to a ten-foot chain. When you and Pearline are married, I am going to put one of these manacles around her wrist and one around your wrist"—the negro showed the whites of his eyes—"and bind you two honey-loves together with a ten-foot chain." The negro looked behind him toward the gate and the public highway, took a tighter grip upon his hat, and made a furtive step backward. "You are to remain bound together for three days." The negro smiled and stepped forward. "At the end of that time you are to come here and report, and if you agree to spend the remainder of your life together, the cabin is yours!"
"Make it a two-feets chain, Marse John, so us kin git clost to each yuther," Plaster pleaded.
"What I have spoken I have spoken," Flournoy proclaimed autocratically. "Now, go tell your sweetheart all about it."
II.
The Big Four of Tickfall sat around a much bewhittled pine table in the Hen-Scratch saloon. The room was hazy with their tobacco smoke. Conversation languished. The session was about to adjourn until to-morrow at the same hour. Figger Bush laid his cigarette upon the edge of the table, lifted his head like a dog baying the moon, and chanted:
"O you muss be a lover of de landlady's daughter
Or you cain't git a secont piece of pie!"
Before the other could catch the tune, the green-baize doors of the saloon were thrown open and a white man entered. Every negro looked up into that granite face with its deep-set eyes, iron jaw, and rugged lines of strength and purpose, and smiled a joyful welcome:
"Mawnin', Marse John. 'Tain't no use to come sheriffin' down dis way. No niggers ain't done nothin'."