182 A COTTON: PLAN TATION: 
plenty of blackbirds, I took the road again 
and went further, and an hour or two after- 
ward, on getting back to the same place, was 
overtaken again by the horseman. He 
pulled up his horse and bade me good-after- 
noon. Would I lend him my opera-glass, 
which happened to be in my hand at the 
moment? “I should like to see how my 
house looks from here,’ he said; and he 
pointed across the field to a house on the 
hill some distance beyond. ‘“ Ah,” said I, 
glad to set myself right by a piece of frank- 
ness that under the circumstances could 
hardly work to my disadvantage ; “then it 
is your land on which I have been tres- 
passing.” “ How so?” he asked, with a 
smile; and I explained that I had been 
across his cotton-field a little while before. 
“That is no trespass,” he answered (so the 
reader will perceive that I had been quite 
correct in my understanding of the law) ; 
and when I went on to explain my object in 
visiting his cane-swamp (for such it was, he 
said, but an unexpected freshet had ruined 
the crop when it was barely out of the 
ground), he assured me that I was weleome 
to visit it as often as I wished. He himself 
