"Co'se I did; up 'mong de white folks. You know dey don' 'low no shootin' an' killin' 'mong de white folks." He drew his pistol from the holster with the address of an expert marksman. [Illustration: "Naw yuh don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to niggertown"] Peter stood, with a quickening pulse, studying his assailant. The glade, the air, the sunshine, seemed suddenly drawn to a tension, likely to, break into violent commotion. His abrupt danger brought Peter to a feeling of lightness and power. A quiver went along his spine. His nostrils widened unconsciously as he calculated a leap and a blow at Tump's gun. The soldier took a step backward, at the same time bringing the barrel to a ready. "Naw you don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to Niggertown." "What for?" Peter still tried to be casual, but his voice held new overtones. "Because, nigger, I means to drap you right on de Main Street o' Niggertown, 'fo' all dem niggers whut's been a-raggin' me 'bout you an' Cissie. I's gwine show dem fool niggers I don' take no fumi-diddles off'n nobody." "Tump," gasped Jim Pink, in a husky voice, "you oughtn't shoot Peter; he mammy jes daid." "'En she won' worry none. Turn roun', Peter, an' when I says, 'March,' you march." He leveled his pistol. "'Tention! Rat about face! March!" Peter turned and moved off down the noiseless path, walking with the stiff gait of a man who expects a terrific blow from behind at any instant. The mulatto walked twenty or more paces amid a confusion of self- protective impulses. He thought of whirling on Tump even at this late date. He thought of darting behind a cedar, but he knew the man behind him was an expert shot, and something fundamental in the brown man forbade his getting himself killed while running away. It was too undignified a death. Presently he surprised himself by calling over his shoulder, as a sort of complaint: "How came you with the pistol, Tump? Thought it was against the law to carry one." "You kin ca'y 'em ef you don' keep 'em hid," explained the ex-soldier in a wooden voice. "Mr. Bobbs tol' me dat when he guv my gun back." The irony of the thing caught Peter, for the authorities to arrest Tump not because he was trying to kill Peter, but because he went about his first attempt in an illegal manner. For the first time in his life the mulatto felt that contempt for a white man's technicalities that flavors every negro's thoughts. Here for thirty days his life had been saved by a technical law of the white man; at the end of the thirty days, by another technical law, Tump was set at liberty and allowed to carry a weapon, in a certain way, to murder him. It was grotesque; it was absurd. It filled Peter with a sudden violent questioning of the whole white régime. His thoughts danced along in peculiar excitement.