he was walking at his side in a respectful silence. He
stopped talking, and presently she smiled and said:

"You haven't noticed my new brooch, Peter." She lifted her hand to her
bosom, and twisted the face of the trinket toward him. "You oughtn't to
have made me show it to you after you recommended it yourself." She made
a little _moue_ of disappointment.

It was a pretty bit of old gold that complimented the creamy skin. Peter
began admiring it at once, and, negro fashion, rather overstepped the
limits white beaux set to their praise, as he leaned close to her.

At the moment the two were passing one of the oddest houses in
Niggertown. It was a two-story cabin built in the shape of a steamboat.
A little cupola represented a pilot-house, and two iron chimneys served
for smoke-stacks.

This queer building had been built by a negro stevedore because of a
deep admiration for the steamboats on which he had made his living.
Instead of steps at the front door, this boat-like house had a stage-
plank. As Peter strolled down the street with Cissie, admiring her
brooch, and suffused with a sense of her nearness, he happened to glance
up, and saw Tump Pack walk down the stage-plank, come out, and wait for
them at the gate.

There was something grim in the ex-soldier's face and in the set of his
gross lips as the two came up, but the aura of the girl prevented Peter
from paying much attention to it. As the two reached Tump, Peter had
just lifted his hand to his hat when Tump made a quick step out at the
gate, in front of them, and swung a furious blow at Peter's head.

Cissie screamed. Siner staggered back with flames dancing before his
eyes. The soldier lunged after his toppling man with gorilla-like blows.
Hot pains shot through Peter's body. His head roared like a gong. The
sunlight danced about him in flashes. The air was full of black fists
smashing him, and not five feet away, the bullet head of Tump Pack
bobbed this way and that in the rapid shifts of his attack. A stab of
pain cut off Peter's breath. He stood with his diaphragm muscles tense
and paralyzed, making convulsive efforts to breathe. At that moment he
glimpsed the convexity of Tump's stomach. He drop-kicked at it with
foot-ball desperation. Came a loud explosive groan. Tump seemed to rise
a foot or two in air, turned over, and thudded down on his shoulders in
the dust. The soldier made no attempt to rise, but curled up, twisting
in agony.

Peter stood in