Half-way down the hill they entered the edge of Niggertown.  The smell of sties and stables came to them.  Peter’s thoughts moved here and there, like the eyes of a little child glancing about as it is forced to leave a pleasure-ground.

Peter knew that Jim Pink, who now made a sorry figure in their rear, would one day give a buffoon’s mimicry of this his walk to death.  He thought of Tump, who would have to serve a year or two in the Nashville Penitentiary, for the murder of negroes is seldom severely punished.  He thought of Cissie.  He was being murdered because Cissie desired him.

And then Peter remembered the single bit of wisdom that his whole life had taught him.  It was this:  no people can become civilized until the woman has the power of choice among the males that sue for her hand.  The history of the white race shows the gradual increase of the woman’s power of choice.  Among the yellow races, where this power is curtailed, civilization is curtailed.  It was this principle that exalted chivalry.  Upon it the white man has reared all his social fabric.

So deeply ingrained is it that almost every novel written by white men revolves about some woman’s choice of her mate being thwarted by power or pride or wealth, but in every instance the rightness of the woman’s choice is finally justified.  The burden of every song is love, true love, enduring love, a woman’s true and enduring love.

And in his moment of clairvoyance Peter saw that these songs and stories were profoundly true.  Against a woman’s selectiveness no other social force may count.

That was why his own race was weak and hopeless and helpless.  The males of his people were devoid of any such sentiment or self-repression.  They were men of the jungle, creatures of tusk and claw and loin.  This very act of violence against his person condemned his whole race.

These thoughts brought the mulatto an unspeakable sadness, not only for his own particular death, but that this idea, this great redeeming truth, which burned so brightly in his brain, would in another moment flicker out, unrevealed, and be no more.

CHAPTER XVIII

The coughing and rattling of an old motor-car as it rounded the Niggertown curve delayed Tump Pack’s act of violence.  Instinctively, the three men waited for the machine to pass before Peter walked out into the road.  Next moment it appeared around the turn, moving slowly through the dust and spreading a veritable fog behind it.

All three negroes recognized the first glimpse of the hood and top, for there are only three or four cars in Hooker’s Bend, and these are as well known as the faces of their owners.  This particular motor belonged to Constable Bobbs, and the next moment the trio saw the ponderous body of the officer at the wheel, and by his side a woman.  As the machine clacked toward them Peter felt a certain surprise to see that it was Cissie Dildine.