"Stay here and look over the library," he broke off abruptly. "We can arrange some ground of--of common action, some--" He settled the lapels of his great-coat with precision, addressed his palm to the knob of his stick, and marched stiffly out of the library, around the piazza, and along the dismantled walk to the front gate. Peter stood utterly astonished at this strange information. Suddenly he ran after the old lawyer, and rounded the turn of the piazza in time to see him walk stiffly down the shaded street with tremulous dignity. The old gentleman was much the same as usual, a little shakier, perhaps, his tall hat a little more polished, his shiny gray overcoat set a little more snugly at the collar. CHAPTER X The village of Hooker's Bend amuses itself mainly with questionable jests that range all the way from the slightly brackish to the hopelessly obscene. Now, in using this type of anecdote, the Hooker's- Benders must not be thought to design an attack upon the decencies of life; on the contrary, they are relying on the fact that their hearers have, in the depths of their beings, a profound reverence for the object of their sallies. And so, by taking advantage of the moral shock they produce and linking it to the idea of an absurdity, they convert the whole psychical reaction into an explosion of humor. Thus the ring of raconteurs telling blackguardly stories around the stoves in Hooker's Bend stores, are, in reality, exercising one another in the more delicate sentiments of life, and may very well be classed as a round table of Sir Galahads, _sans peur et sans reproche_. However, the best men weary in well doing, and for the last few days Hooker's Bend had switched from its intellectual staple of conversation to consider the comedy of Tump Pack's undoing. The incident held undeniably comic elements. For Tump to start out carrying a forty-four, meaning to blow a rival out of his path, and to wind up hard at work, picking cotton at nothing a day for a man whose offer of three dollars a day he had just refused, certainly held the makings of a farce. On the heels of this came the news that Peter Siner meant to take advantage of Tump's arrest and marry Cissie Dildine. Old Parson Ranson was responsible for the spread of this last rumor. He had fumbled badly in his effort to hold Peter's secret. Not once, but many times, always guarded by a pledge of secrecy, had he revealed the approaching wedding. When pressed for a date, the old negro said he was "not at lib'ty to tell." Up to this point white criticism viewed the stage-setting of the black comedy with the impersonal interest of a box party. Some of the round table said they believed there would be a dead coon or so before the scrape was over.