Woodie knocked. There was the sound of a tilted chair let down to the floor, and then of a heavy foot, and Draper came into the doorless hallway that ran through the middle of the house with the slinging slouch that had always made Woodie think of an enormous, sore-footed cat. He had been afraid of the preacher all his life. “Good-morning,” he said, as simply as he could, but he knew his voice had a stilted sound. Draper straightened and fumbled with his collar, which was unbuttoned. He buttoned it and made a pompous bow. “Howdy, suh? What can Ah do fer yer?” The boy had the miserable consciousness that he had been mistaken for a white man. He was tall for his seventeen years, with a coffee-and-cream coloured skin; the light shone from behind him; he and Draper had not met for five years, and he wore the kind of clothes that in that place only white men wore: a gray tweed suit, tan Oxford shoes and blue socks, a clean white collar, a blue cravat and a sailor straw hat. He was intensely conscious of them, but they were all he had. “It--it’s jest Woodie Simmons, Brudder Zach,” he stammered, dropping desperately into the vernacular in an attempt at conciliation. “Don’t yer know me?” Draper came nearer, and the morning sun shone on his boldly modelled, lustful face until it gleamed like oiled black marble. His huge body seemed to exude health and strength, along with a rank, unpleasant odour of its own and the smell of snuff. He wore enormous carpet slippers on his bare feet, blue overalls, a dirty white stiff shirt without a cravat, and the greenish black frock coat which was his inevitable badge of office. He tilted back his head, his lips curled away from his snuff-chinked teeth and bluish gums, something lightened in his live black eyes and he broke into a great whoop of laughter. The volume and unexpectedness of it startled the boy. He shrank back as if he had been pushed. His anger rose, but fear and grief made him weak. “Li’l Woodie Simmons!” Draper roared. “Li’l’ pickaninny Woodie, dressed up lak’ _dat_!” He drew an immense blue handkerchief with white polka dots on it from the tails of his coat and wiped his eyes and blew his nose, watching Woodie the while with a malignant shrewdness beneath his feigned amusement. He enjoyed the boy’s discomfort and wanted to prolong it. “Tell me, son, do de Yankee white man what’s payin’ fer yer at dat school up North throw in dem clo’es?” “He--he pays all my expenses. All the boys dress thisaway. And--and everybody else in the town.” “Do tell! Ah thought mebbe dey’d done made yer er perfesser or somethin’. And now yer’s done gradyerwaited yerse’f, is yer gwine take de colonel’s place down ter de bank, or be de chief er _po_lice, or what?” Woodie’s eyes filled with tears. He trembled like a colt in a thunderstorm--he was leggy and sensitive and slender like a colt. “Brother Zack,” he said timidly, “my father--died--last night.”