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"How much are yams worth a bushel?” asked Laurie, more apropos of the general subject than Osceola seemed to think.

"Yams? Why, they are worth-how much are they, ma?"

"From eighty cents to a dollar and a half, honey," answered that genie of the caldron, stirring briskly, "according to the season."

Mrs. Carter was one of those highly uneducated people who, fortunately for the educated, know everything not to be found in an encyclopedia.

Laurie then outlined the object of her present visit, getting immediate consent from Osceola and practical information besides. The sacks could be ordered by mail and would come by boat. The yams would have to be washed to secure a price.

"And I'll wash 'em for nex' to nawthin', if you'll let me," threw in Tallahassie, sparklingly.

"Me too, jes' so long's I can fish off your dock 'tween whiles," observed Lee, swallowing a yawn.

"And you-all keep 'em covered with some sacking, fast as they's dug, so the blue jays won't peck 'em to a sponge," advised Mrs. Carter, speaking strongly, as all speak who know the jay.

"I'll be around at sun-up tomorrow," promised Osceola, when preliminaries were ended. "We'll start right in. Thank you for giving me the some money, and to visit your place ferent!"

chance to earn where it's dif

With her mind as full of affairs as her hands were full of Mrs. Carter's slips and cuttings, Laurie got halfway home, and more, before she knew it. Then came a point when she became conscious of hearing astonishing sounds-men yelling profanely one to the

other, snatches of roaring songs, axes crashing into trees.

What could it be, and where could it be, this ribald disturbance of the piney silences?

:

T

CHAPTER VII

HE answer to her mental question soon came, and came with a force that stunned. For after she

had left the highway and taken the wagon-trail leading through the pine forest, she found, upon coming to her own wood, that that sacred place was the one that was filled with the roisterers. It seemed to be alive with ruffians who were each putting a beautiful tree to the knife. The turpentine gang! So this was what the cracker girl had anticipated when she had warned Laurie in regard to the probability of meeting Calhoun Tandy where he was not expected!

Momentarily bereft of speech, angered to the point where a man "sees red," the girl who owned and loved the trees stood ragingly contemplating the marauders.

They were as rough a set of men as ever formed a turpentine camp, which even at its best is seldom composed of the pick of male citizens, but generally consists of the law-hating wanderers of all climes. The turpentine industry needs strong and hardy menmen able to get along without the comforts and refinements of civilization. That sort is nearly always content to get along without the restraints of civilization, too. This particular set of them was neither better nor worse than it was expected to be. Some of them had decent homes to go back to when the season was over, some of them were deserters from home, some

of them were recently discharged from stone and iron homes placed over them by the State.

But all of them could work. The testimony to this fact was the injury they had already inflicted upon Laurie's long-leaf pines. Upon the smaller trees the nail and cup system was being used. men" were scoring open deep veins driving a spike into the bottom of the vein to guide the drippings into the little pail that was hung to the spike.

Skillful “gutterin the bark and

The larger trees, though, were being treated to awful butchery. Each trunk had two workmen, a left-handed one and a right-handed one, who wielded their "hackers" with appalling results. The hacker is a knife with a curved blade whose murderous power is strengthened by a sort of cannon-ball attachment to the handle. The V-shaped double gash which these knives "scarved" went perilously near to the heart of the tree. At the base of this gash, which began as high up as the men could reach and ended but a few inches from the ground, the guttermen were cutting troughs in the tree itself—not only arranging for it to bleed to death, but making it collect its own lifeblood in readiness for the still.

And since a fire is the last thing that a turpentine company wants, they guard against it by having one at the first, destroying all undergrowth. Laurie's wild violets, due to carpet the forest with blue in February, were writhing in several of these fires.

"Stop!" she cried ringingly.

The silence and obedience which immediately followed were merely the temporary result of curiosity. A turpentine man is always ready to take a rest and have some fun. These glanced amusedly at their leader. He was leaning against a tree fitting a disabled knife

back into its handle. He was a raw-boned but symmetrical young giant of tremendous strength and uncurbed passions. Such was his rather dignified air of being sure of himself, of his competence and potency, that he wore his blue-jean overalls and open-necked, loose shirt like a uniform. He had piercing dark eyes and hair so black that it looked "wet," as Osceola had said.

"I know you," challenged Laurie, going up to him, face to face. "You are Cal Tandy."

"I know you," he responded, smiling across the knife. "You're Laurie McAllister."

The flash of this smile, insolent of intention though it was, made him strikingly good-looking.

"How dare you come here?" she went on, her anger turned to quiet fury. Never before had she heard the "Laurie" mentioned in just that way. It made her realize that she was woman and he was man. "How dare you bring your gang here?"

His annoyingly handsome face hardened at the repetition of dare, but he continued to smile and to mend the knife. However, he answered:

"If you-uns is going to make me discuss all I dare do we mought as well sit down to it. It 'ull take some time."

The men broke into appreciative laughter that had the merit of being an impartial tribute to mirth. True, their leader had scored. But the girl was pretty. Allegiance belonged to each, without disloyalty to either.

"Send those men away, and you go with them," she insisted. "These trees are mine. I won't have them touched again. Do you hear me?"

"Sure I hear," he answered enjoyingly. "Aren't I

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