Stiggins was not, in fact, a name; some of the men had given it to him one day when he was leaping to escape the whip. His mother was Dolly Brown, a half-witted negress who lived in the alley behind the jail, and his father had been some white man. Luce saw him going about, a small boy, as small as herself; and he belonged to the stable. He was not, she assumed, a real being, and it did not matter what one did to him. Push him into the stall where the horse manure was thrown, make him pump all morning at the broken pump, tear a bigger hole in his old ragged breeches, or make him leap to avoid the whip, it was no matter. He was a half-wit; he could never learn; he was not real. But Luce was often sorry for Stig. She had inferred that he was not a real creature, and this pity which she had was, then, sentimental. Even she felt that it must be somehow false and unnecessary, pretty in some way, as if one would be sorry for a hog because it lay in the mire. His mouth was loose and easy to drip. He would do anything anyone told him to do, or once in a while, reversed, he would do nothing anyone told him to do. He was not real, was scarcely there at all, was not a being; but often when he was tormented until he cried, or when he was locked into the filthy dark of the old harness closet, or when his clothes were torn anew until he cringed under some sort of shame that, curiously enough, he seemed to have about him, Luce would feel the approach of her own tears and a hurt would gather in her breast and spread as a fog through her members, through the substance of the earth and the air. She would wander about, unable to discover the cause, unable to discern the result or resolve it to any meanings. At the end of her confusion she would think again of Mome with richer ecstasy.