and do well. They lacked the steel-like edge that the white man
achieves. By virtue of his hardness, a white man makes his very laws and
virtues instruments to crush and mulct his fellow-man; but negroes are
so softened by untoward streaks of sympathy that they lose the very uses
of their crimes.

The depression of the whole day settled upon Peter with the deepening
night. He held his poor light above his head and picked his way to his
own room. After the magnificence of the Renfrew manor, it had contracted
to a grimy little box lined with yellowed papers. His books were still
intact, but Henry Hooker would get them as part payment on the Dillihay
place, which Henry owned. On his little table still lay the pile of old
examination papers, lists of incoherent questions which somebody
somewhere imagined formed a test of human ability to meet and answer the
mysterious searchings of life.

Peter was familiar with the books; many of the questions he had learned
by rote, but the night and the crescent, and the thought of a pregnant
girl caged in the blackness of a jail filled his soul with a great
melancholy query to which he could find no answer.

CHAPTER XIX

Two voices talking, interrupting each other with ejaculations, after the
fashion of negroes under excitement, aroused Peter Siner from his sleep.
He caught the words: "He did! Tump did! The jailer did! 'Fo' God! black
man, whut's Cissie doin'?"

Overtones of shock, even of horror, in the two voices brought Peter wide
awake the moment he opened his eyes. He sat up suddenly in his bed,
remained perfectly still, listening with his mouth open. The voices,
however, were passing. The words became indistinct, then relapsed into
that bubbling monotone of human voices at a distance, and presently
ceased.

These fragmentary phrases, however, feathered with consternation, filled
Peter with vague premonitions. He whirled his legs out of bed and began
drawing on his clothes. When he was up and into the crescent, however,
nobody was in sight. He stood breathing the chill, damp air, blinking
his eyes. Lack of his cold bath made him feel chilly and lethargic. He
wriggled his shoulders and considered going back, after all, and having
his splash. Just then he saw the Persimmon coming around the crescent.
Peter called to the roustabout and asked about Tump Pack.

The Persimmon looked at Peter with his half-asleep, protruding eyeballs.

"Don'