ocer leaned back in his squeaking chair and looked out through the
glass partition, over the brightly colored packages that lined his
shelves from floor to ceiling. All that prosperity had come about
through a policy of honesty and distrust. It was something to be proud
of.

"Now, let me see," he proceeded, recurring pleasantly to what he
recalled of Peter's original proposition: "Aunt Becky sent you here to
tell me if I'd raise her pay, she'd stop stealin' and--and raise some
honest children." Mr. Killibrew threw back his head broke into loud,
jelly-like laughter. "Why, don't you know, Peter, she's an old liar. If
I gave her a hundred a week, she'd steal. And children! Why, the old
humbug! She's too old; she's had her crop. And, besides all that, I
don't mind what the old woman takes. It isn't much. She's a good old
darky, faithful as a dog." He arose from his swivel-chair briskly and
floated Peter out before him. "Tell her, if she wants a raise," he
concluded heartily, "and can't pinch enough out of my kitchen and the
two dollars I pay her--tell her to come to me, straight out, and I'll
give her more, and she can pinch more."

Mr. Killibrew moved down the aisle of his store between fragrant barrels
and boxes, laughing mellowly at old Aunt Becky's ruse, as he saw it. As
he turned Peter out, he invited him to come again when he needed
anything in the grocery line.

And he was so pleasant, hearty, and sincere in his friendliness toward
both Peter and old Aunt Becky that Peter, even amid the complete side-
tracking and derailing of his mission, decided that it ever he did have
occasion to purchase any groceries, he would do his trading at this
market ruled by an absolute honesty with, and a complete distrust in,
his race.

At the conclusion of the Killibrew interview Peter instinctively felt
that he had just about touched the norm of Hooker's Bend. The village
might contain men who would dive a little deeper into the race question
with Peter; assuredly, there would be hundreds who would not dive so
deep. Mr. Killibrew's attitude on the race question turned on how to
hold the negro patronage of the village to his grocery. It was not an
abstract question at all, but a concrete fact, which he had worked out
to his own satisfaction. With Mr. Killibrew, with all Hooker's Bend,
there was no negro question.

CHAPTER XVII

When Peter Siner started on his indefinite errand among the vil