Cross Roads, where the heavy odor of black molasses battled with
the sprightly smell of salt fish. The merchant held the Scratch
Hiller in no small esteem. Their intimacy was of long standing,
for the Yancys going down and the Crenshaws coming up had for a
brief space flourished on the same social level. Mr. Crenshaw's
rise in life, however, had been uninterrupted, while Mr. Yancy,
wrapped in a philosophic calm and deeply averse to industry, had
permitted the momentum imparted by a remote ancestor to carry him
where it would, which was steadily away from that tempered
prosperity his family had once boasted as members of the
land-owning and slaveholding class.

"I mean there's money in the place fo' Ferris," Crenshaw
explained.

"I reckon yo're right, Mr. John; the old general used to spend a
heap on the Barony and we all know he never got a cent back, so I
reckon the money's there yet.

"Bladen's got an answer from them South Carolina Quintards, and
they don't know nothing about the boy," said Crenshaw, changing
the subject. "So you can rest easy, Bob; they ain't going to
want him."

"Well, sir, that surely is a passel of comfort to me. I find I
got all the instincts of a father without having had none of the
instincts of a husband."

A richer, deeper realization of his joy came to Yancy when he had
turned his back on Balaam's Cross Roads and set out for home