been
introduced into it under a sort of misrepresentation. He had taken up
his abode with the Captain, at least on the basis of belonging to the
human family, but this passionate outbreak, this puzzling explosion, cut
that ground from under his feet.

The more Peter thought about it, the stranger grew his sensation. Not
even to be classed as a human being by this old gentleman who in a weak,
helpless fashion had crept somewhat into Peter's affections,--not to be
considered a man! The mulatto drew a long, troubled breath, and by the
mere mechanics of his desire kept staring through the gloom for Cissie.

Peter Siner had known all along that the unread whites of Hooker's Bend
--and that included nearly every white person in the village--considered
black men as simple animals; but he had supposed that the more thoughtful
men, of whom Captain Renfrew was a type, at least admitted the Afro-
American to the common brotherhood of humanity. But they did not.

As Peter sat staring into the darkness the whole effect of the
dehumanizing of the black folk of the South began to unfold itself
before his imagination. It explained to him the tragedies of his race,
their sufferings at the hand of mob violence; the casualness, even the
levity with which black men were murdered: the chronic dishonesty with
which negroes were treated: the constant enactment of adverse
legislation against them; the cynical use of negro women. They were all
vermin, animals; they were one with the sheep and the swine; a little
nearer the human in form, perhaps, and, oddly enough, one that could be
bred to a human being, as testified a multitude of brown and yellow and
cream-colored folk, but all marching away, as the Captain had so
passionately said, marching away, their forms hidden from human
intercourse under a shroud of black, an endless procession marching
away, God knew whither! And yet they were the South's own flesh and
blood.

The horror of such a complex swelled in Peter's mind to monstrous
proportions. As night thickened at his window, the negro sat dazed and
wondering at the mightiness of his vision. His thoughts went groping,
trying to solve some obscure problem it posed. He thought of the
Arkwright boy; he thought of the white men smiling as his mother's
funeral went past the livery-stable; he thought of Captain Renfrew's
manuscript that he was transcribing. Through all the old man's memoirs
ran a certain lack of sincerity. Peter always fel