They were talking of Cissie, of course.  They hoped Cissie wouldn’t really be sent to the penitentiary, that the white folks would let her out in time for her to have her child at home.  Parson Ranson thought it would be bad luck for a child to be born in jail.

Wince Washington, who had been in jail a number of times, suggested that they bail Cissie out by signing their names to a paper.  He had been set free by this means once or twice.

Sally, Nan’s little sister, observed tartly that if Cissie hadn’t acted so, she wouldn’t have been in jail.

“Don’ speak lak dat uv dem as is in trouble, Sally,” reproved old Parson Ranson, solemnly; “anybody can say ‘Ef.’”

“Sho am de troof,” agreed Jerry Dillihay.

“Sho am, black man.”  The conversation drifted into the endless moralizing of their race, but it held no criticism or condemnation of Cissie.  From the tone of the negroes one would have thought some impersonal disaster had overtaken her.  Every one was planning how to help Cissie, how to make her present state more endurable.  They were the black folk, the unfortunate of the earth, and the pride of righteousness is only to the well placed and the untempted.

Presently Nan came back with a bundle of Cissie’s clothes.  Tump took the bundle of dainty lingerie, the intimate garments of the woman he loved, and set forth on his quixotic errand.  He tied it to his shoulder-holster and set out.  Peter went a little of the way with him.  It was almost dusk when they started.  The chill of approaching night stung the men’s faces.  As they walked past the footpath that led over the Big Hill, three pistol-shots from the glade announced that the boot-leggers had opened business for the night.

Tump paused and shivered.  He said it was a cold night.  He thought he would like to get a kick of “white mule” to put a little heart in him.  It was a long walk to Jonesboro.  He hesitated a moment, then turned off the road around the crescent for the path through the glade.

A thought to dissuade Tump from drinking the fiery “singlings” of the moonshiners crossed Peters mind, but he put it aside.  Tump was a habitue of the glade.  All the physiological arguments upon which Peter could base an argument were far beyond the ex-soldier’s comprehension.  So Tump turned off through the dark trees.  Peter watched him until all he could see was the white blur of Cissie’s underwear swinging against his holster.

After Tump’s disappearance, Peter stood for several minutes thinking.  His brief crusade into Niggertown had ended in a situation far outside of his volition.  That morning he had started out with some vague idea of taking Niggertown in his hands and molding it in accordance with his white ideas; but Niggertown had taken Peter into its hands, had threatened his life, had administered to him profound mental and moral shocks, and now had dropped him, like some bit of waste, with his face set over the Big Hill for white town.