The kerosene lamps flared up sootily as a quick gust of air sucked from window to door. The palmettos rustled their fans a moment above the cypress shingles of the roof. The fiddler tilted back in his splint-bottomed chair and dozed between sets. The men spat in the empty fireplace. Old Jo Leddy passed around a pint, then the night’s closeness absorbed even his exuberance.

Suddenly the flickering voices of quarrelling females flashed like lightning in the thick atmosphere. Old Jo’s former sweetheart was threatening the widow Boone.

“Celie’s fixin’ to crawl onto her,” commented old lady Jacklin delightedly.

Jo jumped to the doorway, moistening his loose red lips. His eyes hardened. He snarled impartially at both angry women.

A thin girl in a ragged brown calico dress loosened herself from the confused group on the stoop and entered the one-room cabin for the first time. She flattened herself against the wall, as though, like a chameleon, she wished to fade from sight. She was conspicuous for the extreme poverty of her clothing and for her emaciation. Her body had the graceful ease of any thin wild animal. Her chipmunk-colored hair hung loosely about her neck. Her eyes were bright and quick. Above the pointed cheekbones and sharp chin and nose they gave her very much the look of a young squirrel. For all her gauntness, she was not unlovely.

Old Jo stopped to glare at her as he swaggered into the cabin again. He had pushed both Celie and the widow Boone off the steps in the perfect justice of his arbitration.

“Git on outen here, Florry!”

The girl was gone as quietly as she had come.

“Jo!”

Old lady Jacklin shrilled him to her across the twenty feet of cabin.

“Who’s that gal?”

“My gal young un. Hain’t never carried her nowheres before. Done carried her with me tonight, did I git the notion to git too drunk to go home alone.”

“Jo Leddy, you be the sorriest ol’ Cracker I know. Ain’t she a pore leetle puny thing!”

“Jest thin-like. She’s strong.”

“Unh-unh! Reckon it’s true, then, I heerd tell you works her loggin’ in the cypress swamps, like a man. Up to her shoulders in swamp water, times.”

“Shore I works her. Why not? Womenfolks is good for love or for work, one. My ol’ woman makes a die of it and don’t leave me nothin’ but a gal young un. No boys. You bet I’ve done worked her. Loggin’ ain’t hurt her none.”

The next set was forming. Old lady Jacklin threw insults at his indifferent back.

“ ’Stead o’ spendin’ what sorry leetle you makes on liquor an’ women, you’d orter buy that gal some store clothes and carry her to the dances decent-like.”

“She wouldn’t go noways,” he laughed. “She don’t favor me none. She’s rabbity!”