Finally, when the stocking had wriggled grotesquely to within ten feet of Hitch Diamond, there was a loud whoop--a white boy ran from behind some lumber and shrieked: “Look at that sna-a-a-ke, nigger! Jump!” Hitch jumped. He sprinted down the wharf a hundred yards, pattering along in his sock feet, leaving his precious shoes behind him. The little white boy shrieked with laughter, picked up the wriggling stocking, and jumped next for Hitch’s shoes. For a moment he paused, filled with awe when he beheld their monstrous and incredible size; then, doubtless reflecting upon their resemblance to a big mudscow, he put each shoe where a mudscow properly belongs--in the river! “Hey, you nigger!” a wharf watchman called sharply, as Hitch, looking behind him, ran full tilt into the watchman’s portly form. “’Scuse me, boss!” Hitch grunted. The watchman hung three strong fingers in the collar of Hitch’s white shirt. Hitch didn’t like that. He pulled away. The watchman pulled too. The inevitable happened. Hitch’s shirt tore half in two and hung limply in the watchman’s hands as Hitch raced down the wharf clad in socks, pants, and a red undershirt! The watchman disgustedly tossed his spoils on top of a lumber pile and gave himself up to the placid contemplation of the flight of some gulls on the river. “Lawd,” Hitch sighed, when he had dodged around the distant end of the wharf and had time to look down at his deficient apparel. “Dis here town shore is hard on clothes!” III FOURTEEN SWALLOWS. Keeping the river levee between himself and the town so that no one could see him in his half-dressed condition, Hitch departed from the vicinity of Sawtown with expedition. When he reached the edge of the woods about a mile from the mill, he sat down to think a way out of his difficulties. “My head is jes’ like a mule’s head,” he announced to himself. “I cain’t hold but only one notion at a time. I been thinkin’ so heavy all de time about my lost money dat I done loss all my good clothes, too. I oughter knowed better. Now I’s gwine git active an’ sot myse’f up in bizzness agin.” He sat for a long time in deep, silent meditation, trying to extract an idea from his slow brain. Then he concluded: “I drunk too much dram in N’Awleens. My head ain’t right. Ef I could git me a good dram now, mebbe I could think up a notion whut to do.” In his impoverished condition he saw no way of buying a drink. He cast about to see what he possessed which he might exchange for one, and pulled out of his hip-pocket his silk socks, the joy and pride of his life in their glorious coloring--purple, striped with yellow! “Dey costed me two dollars,” Hitch sighed as he gazed upon them fondly. “I could swap ’em off in Sawtown, but I ain’t gwine back dar no more. Ef I does, some nigger will steal my pants an’ my socks, too. Plenty of country niggers is got dram.”