'"
"Get to your story, boy," said the Colonel, "I haven't time to waste."
"Ah was brought up in Atlanta, Georgia, an' times was always hard. Six
years ago Ah hired out to a lumber man in Florida. Thar were sixty of us
hired together. The pay was good. The day we come, we were put into a
group o' huts with a stockade 'roun', an' men with rifles guarded us
night an' day. Ah reckon thirty men was shot tryin' to escape durin' the
years I was thar."
"Thirty?"
"Yas, sah, leastways I know of five, an' heard o' the rest."
"Talk about what you know, not what you've heard," admonished the old
soldier. "Go on."
"It was killin' work. We had to be in the woods by daylight an' stay
thar until it was too dark to see. Thar was trouble enough at first but
the worst come later. About three years ago a lot mo' huts was put up
an' the stockade was made bigger. We thought things would be easier as
the new men would get all the knockin' about. Nex' week the new crowd
came,--they were convic's hired for the job."
"Excuse my interrupting, Colonel Egerius," asked the lad, "but can that
be true? Does any State hire out its convicts to forced labor?"
"Some do," was the reply, "and Florida is one of them.
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