ike it."

The two negroes stared at each other through the dust.

"Fuh Gawd's sake! Cissie 'rested!" Tump began to cough. Then he wheezed:

"Mine an' yo' little deal's off, Peter. You gotta he'p git her out."
Here he fell into a violent fit of coughing, and started groping his way
to the edge of the dust-cloud.

In the rush of the moment the swift change in Peter's situation appeared
only natural. He followed Tump, so distressed by the dust and disturbed
over Cissie that he hardly thought of his peculiar position. The dust
pinched the upper part of his throat, stung his nose. Tears trickled
from his eyes, and he pressed his finger against his upper lip, trying
not to sneeze. He was still struggling against the sneeze when Tump
recovered his speech.

"Wh-whut you reckon she done, Peter? She don' shoot craps, nor boot-
laig, nor--" He fell to coughing.

Peter got out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

"Let's go--to the Dildine house," he said.

The two moved hurriedly through the thinning cloud, and presently came
to breathable air, where they could see the houses around them.

"I know she done somp'n; I know she done somp'n," chanted Tump, with the
melancholy cadence of his race. He shook his dusty head. "You ain't
never been in jail, is you, black man?"

Peter said he had not.

"Lawd! it ain't no place fuh a woman," declared Tump. "You dunno nothin'
'bout it, black man. It sho ain't no place fuh a woman."

A notion of an iron cage floated before Peter's mind. The two negroes
trudged on through the crescent side by side, their steps raising a
little trail of dust in the air behind them. Their faces and clothes
were of a uniform dust color. Streaks of mud marked the runnels of their
tears down their cheeks.

The shrubbery and weeds that grew alongside the negro thoroughfare were
quite dead. Even the little avenue of dwarf box was withered that led
from the gate to the door of the Dildine home. The two colored men
walked up the little path to the door, knocked, and waited on the steps
for the little skirmish of observation from behind the blinds. None
came. The worst had befallen the house; there was nothing to guard. The
door opened as soon as an inmate could reach it, and Vannie Dildine
stood before them.

The quadroon's eyes were red, and her face had the moist, slightly
swollen appearance that comes of protracted weeping. She looked so frail
and miserable that Peter instinctively stepped inside and to