oulder, as a sort
of complaint:

"How came you with the pistol, Tump? Thought it was against the law to
carry one."

"You kin ca'y 'em ef you don' keep 'em hid," explained the ex-soldier in
a wooden voice. "Mr. Bobbs tol' me dat when he guv my gun back."

The irony of the thing caught Peter, for the authorities to arrest Tump
not because he was trying to kill Peter, but because he went about his
first attempt in an illegal manner. For the first time in his life the
mulatto felt that contempt for a white man's technicalities that flavors
every negro's thoughts. Here for thirty days his life had been saved by
a technical law of the white man; at the end of the thirty days, by
another technical law, Tump was set at liberty and allowed to carry a
weapon, in a certain way, to murder him. It was grotesque; it was
absurd. It filled Peter with a sudden violent questioning of the whole
white regime. His thoughts danced along in peculiar excitement.

At the turn of the hill the trio came in sight of the squalid semicircle
of Niggertown. Here and there from a tumbledown chimney a feather of
pale wood smoke lifted into the chill sunshine. The sight of the houses
brought Peter a sharp realization that his life would end in the curving
street beneath him. A shock at the incomprehensible brevity of his life
rushed over him. Just to that street, just as far as the curve, and his
legs were swinging along, carrying him forward at an even gait.

All at once he began talking, arguing. He tried to speak at an ordinary
tempo, but his words kept edging on faster and faster:

"Tump, I'm not going to marry Cissie Dildine."

"I knows you ain't, Peter."

"I mean, if you let me alone, I didn't mean to."

"I ain't goin' to let you alone."

"Tump, we had already decided not to marry."

After a short pause Tump said in a slightly different tone:

"'Pears lak you don' haf to ma'y her--comin' to yo' room."

A queer sinking came over the mulatto. "Listen, Tump, I--we--in my room
--we simply talked, that's all. She came to tell me she was goin away.
I--I didn't harm her, Tump." Peter swallowed. He despaired of being
believed.

But his defense only infuriated the soldier. He suddenly broke into
violent profanity.

"Hot damn you! shut yo black mouf! Whut I keer whut-chu done! You weaned
her away fum me. She won't speak to me! She won't look at me!" A sudden
insanity of rage seized Tump. He poured on his victim every oath and
obscenity he