of
a deed in escrow snapping up the sale himself; then he had sold Peter
the Dillihay place. It was a queer shift.

Tump Pack caught his principal's mood with that chameleon-like mental
quality all negroes possess.

"Dat Henry Hooker," criticized Tump, "allus was a lil ole dried-up snake
in de grass."

"He abused his position of trust," said Peter, gloomily; "I must say,
his motives seem very obscure to me."

"Dat sho am a fine way to put hit," said Tump, admiringly.

"Why do you suppose he bought in the Tomwit tract and sold me the
Dillihay place?"

Asked for an opinion, Tump began twiddling military medal and corrugated
the skin on his inch-high brow.

"Now you puts it to me lak dat, Peter," he answered with importance, "I
wonders ef dat gimlet-haided white man ain't put some stoppers in dat
deed he guv you. He mout of."

Such remarks as that from Tump always annoyed Peter. Tump's intellectual
method was to talk sense just long enough to gain his companion's ear,
and then produce something absurd and quash the tentative interest.

Siner turned away from him and said, "Piffle."

Tump was defensive at once.

"'T ain't piffle, either! I's talkin' sense, nigger."

Peter shrugged, and walked a little way in silence, but the soldier's
nonsense stuck in his brain and worried him. Finally he turned, rather
irritably.

"Stoppers--what do you mean by stoppers?"

Tump opened his jet eyes and their yellowish whites. "I means nigger-
stoppers," he reiterated, amazed in his turn.

"Negro-stoppers--" Peter began to laugh sardonically, and abruptly quit
the conversation.

Such rank superiority irritated the soldier to the nth power.

"Look heah, black man, I knows I _is_ right. Heah, lonme look at
dat-aiuh, deed. Maybe I can find 'em. I knows I suttinly is right."

Peter walked on, paying no attention to the request Until Tump caught
his arm and drew him up short.

"Look heah, nigger," said Tump, in a different tone, "I faded dad deed
fuh ten iron men, an' I reckon I got a once-over comin' fuh my money."

The soldier was plainly mobilized and ready to attack. To fight Tump, to
fight any negro at all, would be Peter's undoing; it would forfeit the
moral leadership he hoped to gain. Moreover, he had no valid grounds for
a disagreement with Tump. He passed over the deed, and the two negroes
moved on their way to Niggertown.

Tump trudged forward with eyes glued to paper, his face puckered in the
unaccustomed