But he did not lay bare his secret to her, even then. Eph knew white folks. He knew that Jim Forrest wouldn’t want it noised abroad that a nigger street singer was supporting his mother. And he kept his tongue in his head; but he exulted. He carried his old head high; and when he met on the street one day that Sergeant Hare who had refused him enlistment, Eph went into a fit of merriment that made the Sergeant think the old darky had gone witless. “Dat man ’lowed he ’uz gwine keep me out o’ dis here war,” he boasted to Mis’ Hopkins next day. “But I showed him. Old Eph showed whut ’uz whut.” “Yo’re crazy,” Mis’ Hopkins told him scornfully. “Git out o’ my way.” Eph told his lawyer, the next week, to ask Jim’s mother to give them word of Jim; and when she wrote, two weeks later, that the boy had been admitted to an officer’s training camp, Eph danced on his bowed legs, and told Mis’ Hopkins loftily that she would have to step lively now. “Howcome?” she demanded. “’Caze I’m an orf’cer now,” Eph told her proudly. “Yo’re bughouse,” she assured him. “De booby man’ll git you.” Eph thought nothing of her word at that time; but two or three weeks later, it was repeated in a way that frightened him. He had fallen into the habit of acting a little comedy of his own; a habit infinitely soothing to his soul. When he climbed the Hill every night, on his way home, he passed the Shaw Memorial, and he had always stopped to look at it. Now he fell into the habit of marching stiffly down the middle of the road to face the Memorial, and of coming to a halt there, standing at attention, and saluting after the ancient fashion of his Rebellion days. He used to fancy that the eyes in the sculptured faces of the marching soldiers turned sidewise to look at him; he used to imagine that the arm of the officer graven in the stone flicked upward in an answering gesture. And there were nights when he stood thus for a minute or two, speaking his thoughts aloud.... Walter Ragan came upon him so, one bleak dawn in mid-November. Old Eph, very stiff and straight, was saying respectfully: “Yas suh, Cunnel; I’se a soldier now. Ol’ Eph. Yas suh; gwine tuh be an orf’cer, too.” Ragan called to him: “You, Eph, what are you doing out there?” Eph saw the patrolman, and cackled. “Howdy, Miste’ Ragan,” he called. “What are you up to, you old rascal?” “Jes’ makin’ my reports to de Cunnel,” said Eph gleefully. “Makin’ my reports on a little matter.” “Look out, Eph,” Ragan warned him. “You’ll go bugs, next thing I know, and I’ll have to ship you out to Waverly.” Now when Mis’ Hopkins had warned Eph that he was showing symptoms of insanity, Eph had laughed; but Ragan’s warning was another matter. Ragan, for all he was Eph’s good friend, was a policeman, an arm of the law; and Eph had the negro’s deep-rooted and abiding awe of the blue uniform and the helmet. Ragan’s word hushed him instantly; and it chilled him with a sudden, cold fear....