“So I did; but you refused to let me. Didn’t you tell me you must have an answer right off?”
“Y-yas, sah; but may be, if you’d tink ’bout it, it’d be better for us.”
“Didn’t you say though that you must have an answer right off?”
“Y-yas, but”——
“Stop! Didn’t you get your answer right off?”
“Yas, but”——
“Stop! You got it. Well, I always keep my word. If you had waited, I might have given a different answer; but you wouldn’t wait so you got your answer; and it is all the answer your going to get.”
Meantime the crowd was chuckling at the discomfiture of Berry. It didn’t seem to concern them so much that they were losing their case, as it amused them to see how Berry had entrapped himself. Every time he attempted to renew the discussion, the lessee stopped him with the reminder that he had demanded an answer in Natchez, and had got it; and each time the laughter of the crowd at their own champion grew more uproarious.
While this was going on in the street between the quarters, I stepped into one of the cabins. Stretched out on a bench lay the corpse of an old man; for many years the head driver on this very plantation. His head was partially covered; the body was rudely wrapped in cotton cloth; and over his stomach was placed a delf saucer, full of coarse salt.