ist Church, whose duties happened to call him to Hooker's Bend
that day. So, notwithstanding Cissie's efforts at simplicity, the
wedding, after all, was resolved into an affair.

Once, in one of her moments of clairvoyance, Cissie said to Peter:

"Our trouble is, Peter, we are trying to mix what I have learned in
Nashville and what you have learned in Boston with what we both feel in
Hooker's Bend. I--I'm almost ashamed to say it, but I don't really feel
sad and plaintive at all, Peter. I feel glad, gloriously glad. Oh, my
dear, dear Peter!" and she flung her arms around Peter's neck and held
him with all her might against her ripening bosom.

To Cissie her theft, her jail sentence, her pregnancy, were nothing more
than if she had taken a sip of water. However, with the imitativeness of
her race and the histrionic ability of her sex, she appeared pensive and
subdued during the elaborate double-ring ceremony performed by the
Reverend Cleotus Haidus. Nobody in the packed church knew how
tremendously Cissie's heart was beating except Peter, who held her hand.

The ethical engine that Peter had patiently builded in Harvard almost
ceased to function in this weird morality of Niggertown. Whether he were
doing right or doing wrong, Peter could not determine. He lost all his
moorings. At times he felt himself walking according to the ethnological
law, which is the Harvard way of saying walking according to the will of
God; but at other times he felt party to some unpardonable obscenity. So
deeply was he disturbed that out of the dregs of his mind floated up old
bits of the Scriptures that he was unaware of possessing: "There is a
way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of
death." And Peter wondered if he were not in that way.

[Illustration: The bridal couple embarked for Cairo]

The bridal couple embarked for Cairo on the _Red Cloud_, a packet
in the Dubuque, Ohio, and Tennessee River trade. Peter and Cissie were
not allowed to walk up the main stairway into the passengers' cabin, but
were required to pick their way along the boiler-deck, through the
stench of freight, lumber, live stock and sleeping roustabouts. Then
they went through the heat and steam of the engine-room up a small
companionway that led through the toilet, on to the rear guard of the
main deck, and thence back to a little cuddy behind the main saloon
called the chambermaid's cabin.

The chambermaid's cabin was filled with t