"Oh, Miss Nan, it's that constable goin' th'ugh the houses!" The girl
veered across the street to the safety of the open door and one of her
own sex.

"Good Lawd!" cried the spiked one in disgust, "ever', time a white
pusson gits somp'n misplaced--" She moved to one side to allow the girl
to enter, and continued staring up the street, with the whites of her
eyes accented against her dark face, after the way of angry negroes.

Around the crescent the dogs were furious. They were Niggertown dogs,
and the sight of a white man always drove them to a frenzy. Presently in
the hullabaloo, Peter heard Dawson Bobbs's voice shouting:

"Aunt Mahaly, if you kain't call off this dawg, I'm shore goin' to kill
him."

Then an old woman's scolding broke in and complicated the melee.
Presently Peter saw the bulky form of Dawson Bobbs come around the
curve, moving methodically from cabin to cabin. He held some legal-
looking papers in his hands, and Peter knew what the constable was
doing. He was serving a blanket search-warrant on the whole black
population of Hooker's Bend. At almost every cabin a dog ran out to
blaspheme at the intruder, but a wave of the man's pistol sent them
yelping under the floors again.

When the constable entered a house, Peter could hear him bumping and
rattling among the furnishings, while the black householders stood
outside the door and watched him disturb their housekeeping
arrangements.

Presently Bobbs came angling across the street toward the Siner cabin.
As he entered the rickety gate, old Caroline called out:

"Whut is you after, anyway, white man?"

Bobbs turned cold, truculent eyes on the old negress. "A turkey
roaster," he snapped. "Some o' you niggers stole Miss Lou Arkwright's
turkey roaster."

"Tukky roaster!" cried the old black woman, in great disgust. "Whut you
s'pose us niggers is got to roast in a tukky roaster?"

The constable answered shortly that his business was to find the
roaster, not what the negroes meant to put in it.

"I decla'," satirized old Caroline, savagely, "dish-heah Niggertown is a
white man's pocket. Ever' time he misplace somp'n, he feel in his pocket
to see ef it ain't thaiuh. Don'-chu turn over dat sody-water, white man!
You know dey ain't no tukky roaster under dat sody-water. I 'cla' 'fo'
Gawd, ef a white man wuz to eat a flapjack, an' it did n' give him de
belly-ache, I 'cla' 'fo' Gawd he'd git out a search-wa'nt to see ef some
nigger had n' stole dat f