A notion of an iron cage floated before Peter’s mind.  The two negroes trudged on through the crescent side by side, their steps raising a little trail of dust in the air behind them.  Their faces and clothes were of a uniform dust color.  Streaks of mud marked the runnels of their tears down their cheeks.

The shrubbery and weeds that grew alongside the negro thoroughfare were quite dead.  Even the little avenue of dwarf box was withered that led from the gate to the door of the Dildine home.  The two colored men walked up the little path to the door, knocked, and waited on the steps for the little skirmish of observation from behind the blinds.  None came.  The worst had befallen the house; there was nothing to guard.  The door opened as soon as an inmate could reach it, and Vannie Dildine stood before them.

The quadroon’s eyes were red, and her face had the moist, slightly swollen appearance that comes of protracted weeping.  She looked so frail and miserable that Peter instinctively stepped inside and took her arm to assist her in the mere physical effort of standing.

“What is the matter, Mrs. Dildine?” he asked in a shocked tone.  “What’s happened to Cissie?”

Vannie began weeping again with a faint gasping and a racking of her flat chest.

“It’s—­it’s—­O-o-oh, Peter!” She put an arm about him and began weeping against him.  He soothed her, patted her shoulder, at the same time staring at the side of her head, wondering what could have dealt her this blow.

Presently she steadied herself and began explaining in feeble little phrases, sandwiched between sobs and gasps: 

“She—­tuk a brooch—­Kep’—­kep’ layin’ it roun’ in—­h-her way, th-that young Sam Arkwright did,—­a-an’ finally she—­she tuk hit.  N-nen, when he seen he h-had her, he said sh-sh-she ’d haf to d-do wh-whut he said, or he’d sen’ her to-to ja-a-il!” Vannie sobbed drearily for a few moments on Peter’s breast.  “Sh-she did fuh a while:  ’n ’en sh-she broke off wid h-him, anyhow, an’—­an’ he swo’ out a wa’nt an sont her to jail!” The mother sobbed without comfort, and finally added:  “Sh-she in a delicate fix now, an’ ‘at jail goin’ to be a gloomy place fuh Cissie.”

The three negroes stood motionless in the dusty hallway, motionless save for the racking of Vannie’s sobs.

Tump Pack stirred himself.

“Well, we gotta git her out.”  His words trailed off.  He stood wrinkling his half-inch of brow.  “I wonder would dey exchange pris’ners; wonder ef I could go up an’ serve out Cissie’s term.”

“Oh, Tump!” gasped the woman, “ef you only could!”

“I’ll step an’ see, Miss Vannie.  ’At sho ain’t no place fuh a nice gal lak Cissie.”  Tump turned on his mission, evidently intending to walk to Jonesboro and offer himself in the place of the prisoner.

Peter supported Vannie back into the poor living-room, and placed her in the old rocking-chair before the empty hearth.  There was where he had sat the evening Cissie made her painful confession to him.  Only now did he realize the whole of what Cissie was trying to confess.