The last scattered cotton, that which had come to fullness after the first picking, was at last gathered, and the crop was finished for the year. A wagon train regularly made its way between Beulah Land and Savannah with the cotton to be ginned and baled and sold.

Arnold Kendrick and Benjamin Davis used to go together to the port city, but in recent years had taken turns, each acting as the other’s agent on alternate years. That summer of 1820 Arnold went for both of them.

When the first wagons left from Oaks and Beulah Land, Arnold traveled with them, camping on the way when night fell, and sleeping under the wagons alongside the drivers who were always his most trustworthy men. The wagons went back and forth until the entire crops of Oaks and Beulah Land had been freighted, ginned, and sold, some of the bales to be shipped to northern ports, others to England.

According to the plan they had earlier agreed upon, Deborah traveled by carriage just ahead of the last wagon train and met Arnold in Savannah. He kept on at the inn where he boarded whenever he traveled alone to the city. Deborah had accepted an invitation to stay with a spinster who was an old friend, the two having been at school together. Miss Penelope Pennington had a small income from various properties she had inherited from her father—she was an only child—and she had recently assumed the guardianship of her Cousin Beufort’s two orphaned daughters, Lauretta and Sarah. Cousin Beufort had died of the fever in June.

Lauretta Pennington was eleven years old and her sister Sarah was nine. They were pretty little girls with nice manners, Lauretta lively, Sarah somewhat subdued. Used to Selma, whom she considered eccentric, Deborah found them charming and in her mind compared them to their advantage to Selma. She spent the greater part of each day inspecting and ordering the supplies that were the main object of her journey to Savannah. These included such items of wear as the plantation did not provide for her family as well as the slaves. She also ordered nuts and raisins and other Christmas treats for everybody—and chewing tobacco, snuff, and certain medicines Ezra would need for his patients during the winter.

Usually, Arnold dined with them at Miss Pennington’s house, while keeping residence at the inn; and Deborah frequently commented on the expense and inconvenience of the arrangement and declared how much simpler life would be for them all when there was a cotton gin in Highboro. Arnold, who rather enjoyed the adventure of being away from home, seldom bothered to answer her.