rubbed his delicate wrinkled hands
together in a pleased fashion and sat down in a big porch chair to await
Peter's assembling of the lamp. The brown man started down the long
piazza, in search of a hand-light.

He found a lamp in the first room he entered, returned to the piazza,
sat down on the edge of it, and began his tinkering. The old Captain
apparently watched him with profound satisfaction. Presently, after the
fashion of the senile, he began endless and minute instructions as to
how the lamp should be cleaned.

"Take the wire in your left hand, Peter,--that's right,--now hold the
tip a little closer to the light--no, place the mantels on the right
side--that's the way I do it. System...." the old man's monologue ran on
and on, and became a murmur in Peter's ears. It was rather soothing than
otherwise. Now and then it held tremulous vibrations that might have
been from age or that might have been from some deep satisfaction
mounting even to joy. But to Peter that seemed hardly probable. No doubt
it was senility. The Captain was a tottery old man, past the age for any
fundamental joy.

Night had fallen now, and a darkness, musky with autumn weeds, hemmed in
the sphere of yellow light on the old piazza. A black-and-white cat
materialized out of the gloom, purring, and arching against a pillar.
The whole place was filled with a sense of endless leisure. The old man,
the cat, the perfume of the weeds, soothed in Peter even the rawness of
his hurt at Cissie.

Indeed, in a way, the old manor became a sort of apology for the
octoroon girl. The height and the reach of the piazza, exaggerated by
the darkness, suggested a time when retinues of negroes passed through
its dignified colonnades. Those black folk were a part of the place.
They came and went, picked up and used what they could, and that was all
life held for them. They were without wage, without rights, even to the
possession of their own bodies; so by necessity they took what they
could. That was only fifty-odd years ago. Thus, in a way, Peter's
surroundings began a subtle explanation of and apology for Cissie, the
whole racial training of black folk in petty thievery. And that this
should have touched Cissie--the meanness, the pathos of her fate moved
Peter.

The negro was aroused from his reverie by the old Captain's getting out
of his chair and saying, "Very good," and then Peter saw that he had
finished the lamp. The two men rose and carried it into