they are!"

"Don't you, though!" agreed the constable, with the weight of the white
man's burden on his shoulders. For this is a part of the Southern
credo,--that all negroes are gay, care-free, and happy, and that if one
could only be like the negroes, gay, care-free, and happy--Ah, if one
could only be like the negroes!

None of this gossip reached Peter directly, but a sort of back-wash did
catch him keenly through young Sam Arkwright and serve as a conundrum
for several days.

One morning Peter was bringing an armful of groceries up the street to
the old manor, and he met the boy coming in the opposite direction. The
negro's mind was centered on a peculiar problem he had found in the
Renfrew library, so, according to a habit he had acquired in Boston, he
took the right-hand side of the pavement, which chanced to be the inner
side. This violated a Hooker's-Bend convention, which decrees that when
a white and a black meet on the sidewalk, the black man invariably shall
take the outer side.

For this _faux pas_ the gangling youth stopped Peter, fell to
abusing and cursing him for his impudence, his egotism, his attempt at
social equality,--all of which charges, no doubt, were echoes from the
round table. Such wrath over such an offense was unusual. Ordinarily, a
white villager would have thought several uncomplimentary things about
Peter, but would have said nothing.

Peter stopped with a shock of surprise, then listened to the whole
diatribe with a rising sense of irritation and irony. Finally, without a
word, he corrected his mistake by retracing his steps and passing Sam
again, this time on the outside.

Peter walked on up the street, outwardly calm, but his ears burned, and
the queer indignity stuck in his mind. As he went along he invented all
sorts of ironical remarks he might have made to Arkwright, which would
have been unwise; then he thought of sober reasoning he could have used,
which would perhaps have been just as ill-advised. Still later he
wondered why Arkwright had fallen into such a rage over such a trifle.
Peter felt sure there was some contributing rancor in the youth's mind.
Perhaps he had received a scolding at home or a whipping at school, or
perhaps he was in the midst of one of those queer attacks of megalomania
from which adolescents are chronic sufferers. Peter fancied this and
that, but he never came within hail of the actual reason.

When the brown man reached the old manor, the qui