the big house by exactly one biscuit. It was
Miss Brownell's thin-lipped boast that she understood negroes. She had
told Peter so several times when, as a lad, he went up to the big house
on errands. Peter Siner considered this remembrance without the faintest
feeling of humor, and mentally removed Miss Molly Brownell from his list
of possible subscribers. Yet, he recalled, the whole Brownell estate had
been reared on negro labor.

Then there was Henry Hooker, cashier of the village bank. Peter knew
that the banker subscribed liberally to foreign missions; indeed, at the
cashier's behest, the white church of Hooker's Bend kept a paid
missionary on the upper Congo. But the banker had sold some village lots
to the negroes, and in two instances, where a streak of commercial
phosphate had been discovered on the properties, the lots had reverted
to the Hooker estate. There had been in the deed something concerning a
mineral reservation that the negro purchasers knew nothing about until
the phosphate was discovered. The whole matter had been perfectly legal.

A hand shook Siner's shoulder and interrupted his review. Peter turned,
and caught an alcoholic breath over his shoulder, and the blurred voice
of a Southern negro called out above the rumble of the car and the roar
of the engine:

"'Fo' Gawd, ef dis ain't Peter Siner I's been lookin' at de las' twenty
miles, an' not knowin' him wid sich skeniptious clo'es on! Wha you fum,
nigger?"

Siner took the enthusiastic hand offered him and studied the heavily
set, powerful man bending over the seat. He was in a soldier's uniform,
and his broad nutmeg-colored face and hot black eyes brought Peter a
vague sense of familiarity; but he never would have identified his
impression had he not observed on the breast of the soldier's uniform
the Congressional military medal for bravery on the field of battle. Its
glint furnished Peter the necessary clew. He remembered his mother's
writing him something about Tump Pack going to France and getting
"crowned" before the army. He had puzzled a long time over what she
meant by "crowned" before he guessed her meaning. Now the medal aided
Peter in reconstructing out of this big umber-colored giant the rather
spindling Tump Pack he had known in Hooker's Bend.

Siner was greatly surprised, and his heart warmed at the sight of his
old playmate.

"What have you been doing to yourself, Tump?" he cried, laughing, and
shaking the big hand in sudd