hat had been used for packing. Charred rubbish-
piles lay in front of every store, which the clerks had swept out and
attempted to burn. Hogs roamed the thoroughfare, picking up decaying
fruit and parings, and nosing tin cans that had been thrown out by the
merchants. The stores that Peter had once looked upon as show-places
were poor two-story brick or frame buildings, defiled by time and wear
and weather. The white merchants were coatless, listless men who sat in
chairs on the brick pavements before their stores and who moved slowly
when a customer entered their doors.

And, strange to say, it was this fall of his white townsmen that moved
Peter Siner with a sense of the greatest loss. It seemed fantastic to
him, this sudden land-slide of the mighty.

As Peter and his mother came over the brow of the river bank, they saw a
crowd collecting at the other end of the street. The main street of
Hooker's Bend is only a block long, and the two negroes could easily
hear the loud laughter of men hurrying to the focus of interest and the
blurry expostulations of negro voices. The laughter spread like a
contagion. Merchants as far up as the river corner became infected, and
moved toward the crowd, looking back over their shoulders at every tenth
or twelfth step to see that no one entered their doors.

Presently, a little short man, fairly yipping with laughter, stumbled
back up the street to his store with tears of mirth in his eyes. A
belated merchant stopped him by clapping both hands on his shoulders and
shaking some composure into him.

"What is it? What's so funny? Damn it! I miss ever'thing!"

"I-i-it's that f-fool Tum-Tump Pack. Bobbs's arrested him!"

The inquirer was astounded.

"How the hell can he arrest him when he hit town this minute?"

"Wh-why, Bobbs had an old warrant for crap-shoot--three years old--
before the war. Just as Tump was a-coming down the street at the head of
the coons, out steps Bobbs--" Here the little man was overcome.

The merchant from the corner opened his eyes.

"Arrested him on an old crap charge?"

The little man nodded. They gazed at each other. Then they exploded
simultaneously.

Peter left his obese mother and hurried to the corner, Dawson Bobbs, the
constable, had handcuffs on Tump's wrists, and stood with his prisoner
amid a crowd of arguing negroes.

Bobbs was a big, fleshy, red-faced man, with chilly blue eyes and a
little straight slit of a mouth in his wide face. He