In the midst of these thoughts Peter heard himself saying.

“He—­was trying to get Cissie out?”

“Yep.”

“He—­must have been drunk.”

“Oh, yeah.”

Mr. Bobbs sat studying the mulatto.  As he studied him he said slowly: 

“Some of ’em say he was disguised as a woman.  Others say he had some women’s clothes along, ready to put on.  Now, me and the sheriff knowed Tump Pack purty well, Peter, and we knowed that nigger never in the worl’ would ‘a’ thought up sich a plan by hisself.”

He sat looking at Peter so interrogatively that the mulatto began, in a strained, earnest voice, telling the constable precisely what had happened in regard to the clothes.

Mr. Bobbs sat listening impassively, moving his toothpick up and down from one side to the other of his small, thin-lipped mouth.  At last he nodded.

“Well, I guess that’s about the way of it.  I didn’t exactly understand the women’s clothes business,—­damn’ fool disguise,—­but we figgered it might pop into the head of a’ edjucated nigger.”  He sucked his teeth, reflectively.  “Peter,” he said at last, “seems to me, if I was you, I’d drift on away from this town.  The niggers around here ain’t strong for you now; some say you’re a hoodoo; some say this an’ some that.  The white folks don’t exactly like you trying to get up a cook’s union.  It’s your right to do that if you want to, of course, but this is a mighty small city to have unions and things.  The fact is, it ain’t a big enough place for a nigger of yore ability, Peter.  I b’lieve, if I was you, I’d jes drift on some’eres else.”

The officer tipped up his toothpick so that it lifted his upper lip in a little v-shaped opening and exposed a strong, yellowish tooth.  At the moment his machine started slowly forward.  It gave him the appearance of accidentally rolling off while immersed in deep thought.

* * * * *

The death of Tump Pack moved Peter with a sense of strange pathos.  He always remembered Tump tramping away through the night to carry Cissie some underclothes and, if possible, to take her place in jail.  At the foundation of Tump’s being lay a faithfulness and devotion to Cissie that reached the heights of a dog’s.  And yet, he might have deserted her, he would probably have beaten her, and he most certainly would have betrayed her many, many times.  It was inexplicable.

Now that Tump was dead, the mantle of his fidelity somehow seemed to fall on Peter.  For some reason Peter felt that he should assume Tump’s place as Cissie Dildine’s husband and protector.  Had Tump lived, Peter might have gone North in peace, if not in happiness.  Now such a journey, without Cissie, had become impossible.  He had a feeling that it would not be right.

As for the disgrace of marrying such a woman as Cissie Dildine, Peter slowly gave that idea up.  The “worthinesses” and “disgraces” implicit in Harvard atmosphere, which Peter had spent four years of his life imbibing, slowly melted away in the air of Niggertown.  What was honorable there, what was disgraceful there, somehow changed its color here.