When Rena had been
taken home, he slipped away for a long walk, after which he called at
Judge Straight's office and received the judge's report upon the matter
presented. Judge Straight had found the claim, in his opinion, a good
one; he had discovered property from which, in case the claim were
allowed, the amount might be realized. The judge, who had already been
informed of the incident at the drugstore, observed Tryon's
preoccupation and guessed shrewdly at its cause, but gave no sign.
Tryon left the matter of the note unreservedly in the lawyer's hands,
with instructions to communicate to him any further developments.

Returning to the doctor's office, Tryon listened to that genial
gentleman's comments on the accident, his own concern in which he, by a
great effort, was able to conceal. The doctor insisted upon his
returning to the Hill for supper. Tryon pleaded illness. The doctor
was solicitous, felt his pulse, examined his tongue, pronounced him
feverish, and prescribed a sedative. Tryon sought refuge in his room
at the hotel, from which he did not emerge again until morning.

His emotions were varied and stormy. At first he could see nothing but
the fraud of which he had been made the victim. A negro girl had been
foisted upon him for a white woman, and he had almost committed the
unpardonable sin against his race of marrying her. Such a step, he
felt, would have been criminal at any time; it would have been the most
odious treachery at this epoch, when his people had been subjugated and
humiliated by the Northern invaders, who had preached negro equality
and abolished the wholesome laws decreeing the separation of the races.
But no Southerner who loved his poor, downtrodden country, or his race,
the proud Anglo-Saxon race which traced the clear stream of its blood
to the cavaliers of England, could tolerate the idea that even in
distant generations that unsullied current could be polluted by the
blood of slaves. The very thought was an insult to the white people of
the South. For Tryon's liberality, of which he had spoken so nobly and
so sincerely, had been confined unconsciously, and as a matter of
course, within the boundaries of his own race. The Southern mind, in
discussing abstract questions relative to humanity, makes always,
consciously or unconsciously, the mental reservation that the
conclusions reached do not apply to the negro, unless they can be made
to harmonize with the customs of th