As a matter of course, Mart got out his traps, cleaned them up and set them at the far edge of the hammock grove near the lake edge. The Yankee’s cow stepped in one and lamed herself a little. The Yankee recognized Mart. He raged just short of firing him. He would not have him trapping on his land and on his time. Mart pointed out that he was up at his traps before dawn. That made no difference.

But the fur money, sheer profit, was too tempting. Mart slipped closer to the lake and set his traps where the Yankee would not find them. Cap’n smelled the hides drying in the tenant house. He railed constantly. Mart’s revolt was no more than held in leash.

“Florry, I swear me an’ some Yankee’s goin’ to git mixed up some day,” he confided to her. “I jest got no use for one.”

“I know how you feels,” she said. “I git the same feelin’, times.”

“After the young un gits borned,” he said hopefully, “mebbe we kin git out.”

They decided against having a doctor. The last experience had been too financially disastrous. Nigger Will told them his old woman had helped birth many a child. She was better at bringing children than any white doctor. It seemed reasonable. It did not occur to them even to mention the matter to Cap’n or his wife. Old black Martha slipped in to stay with Florry when she began to have spells of faintness. She stayed in the house and no one knew she was there. Cap’n would perhaps not have permitted it. The old negress nursed Florry with a kindness that was like warm sun.

“You sho’ is po’ly, chile,” she said, disturbed, “po’ly as a snake. You wants to eat good and flesh up. You time ’bout come.”

“Hit shore don’t seem long enough,” Florry puzzled.

“Mebbe you’s to be took a little soon. Chile,” she asked suspiciously, “you isn’t done anything to git rid of it?”

She shook her head, wondering.

“Tha’s right.” The old woman sighed, relieved. “These days so many ladies don’ want they chillen. I’s raised all my gal chillens to live right and mind they manners wid de men. But I’se often tole ’em, ’Iffen one o’ you does do wrong, now mind, iffen you does, and gits you’se’f in a way you hadn’t oughta—why, you be lady enough to bring the chile into the worl’!’ ”

The child was born on a chill evening in January. The temperature had hung just above freezing all the dank and cloudy day. The Yankee kept Mart hauling wood, to fire the grove at night if necessary. At dusk a changing wind brought that rare phenomenon, a Florida snow. It hissed on the cypress shingles like a shower of pine needles. It blew in under the eaves of the flimsy tenant house and lay in scattered white flakes on the cold floor. Martha had a roaring fire on the hearth in the bedroom, but the other room was bleak and cold. Mart came in after dark. The temperature was still just thirty-two. They would not need to fire. He noticed the light fluff at his feet.