By virtue of this change Peter felt intuitively that Cissie Dildine was neither disgraced by her arrest nor soiled by her physical condition.  Somehow she seemed just as “nice” a girl, just as “good” a girl, as ever she was before.  Moreover, every other darky in Niggertown held these same instinctive beliefs.  Had it not been for that, Peter would have thought it was his passion pleading for the girl, justifying itself by a grotesque morality, as passions often do.  But this was not the correct solution.  The sentiment was enigmatic.  Peter puzzled over it time and time again as he waited in Hooker’s Bend for the outcome of Cissie’s trial.

The octoroon’s imprisonment came to an end on the third day after Tump’s death.  Sam Arkwright’s parents had not known of their son’s legal proceedings, and Mr. Arkwright immediately quashed the warrant, and hushed up the unfortunate matter as best he could.  Young Sam was suddenly sent away from home to college, as the best step in the circumstances.  And so the wishes of the adolescent in the cedar-glade came queerly to pass, even if Peter did withhold any grave, mature advice on the subject which he may have possessed.

Naturally, there was much mirth among the men of Hooker’s Bend and much virulence among the women over the peculiar conditions under which young Sam made his pilgrimage in pursuit of wisdom and morals and the right conduct of life.  And life being problematic and uncertain as it is, and prone to wind about in the strangest way, no one may say with certitude that young Sam did not make a promising start.

Certainly, over the affair the Knights of the Round Table launched many a quip and jest, but that simply proved the fineness of their sentiments toward a certain delicate human relation which forms mankind’s single awful approach to the creative and the holy.

Tump Pack became almost a mythical figure in Niggertown.  Jim Pink Staggs composed a saga relating the soldier’s exploits in France, his assault on the jail to liberate Cissie, and his death.

In his songs—­and Jim Pink had composed a good many—­the minstrel instinctively avoided humor.  He always improvised them to the sobbing of a guitar, and they were as invariably sad as the poetry of adolescents.  It was called “Tump Pack’s Lament.”  The negroes of Hooker’s Bend learned it from Jim Pink, and with them it drifted up and down the three great American rivers, and now it is sung by the roustabouts, stevedores, and underlings of our strange black American world.

This song commemorating Tump Pack’s bravery and faithfulness to his love may very well take the place of the Congressional medal which, unfortunately, was lost on the night the soldier was killed.  Between the two, there is little doubt that the accolade of fame bestowed in the buffoon’s simple melody is more vital and enduring than that accorded by special act of the Congress of the United States of America.