“Especially when I had made a fair square trade,” put in Peter, warmly.

“Exactly,” squeaked the cashier.  “And rather than let your project be delayed, I’m going to offer you the old Dillihay place at exactly the same price, Peter—­eight hundred.”

“The Dillihay place?”

“Yes; that’s west of town; it’s bigger by twenty acres than old man Tomwit’s place.”

Peter considered the proposition.

“I’ll have to carry this before the Sons and Daughters of Benevolence, Mr. Hooker.”

The cashier repeated the smile that bracketed his thin nose in wrinkles.

“That’s with you, but you know what you say goes with the niggers here in town, and, besides, I won’t promise how long I’ll hold the Dillihay place.  Real estate is brisk around here now.  I didn’t want to delay a good work on account of not having a location.”  Mr. Hooker turned away to a big ledger on a breast-high desk, and apparently was about to settle himself to the endless routine of bank work.

Peter knew the Dillihay place well.  It lacked the timber of the other tract; still, it was fairly desirable.  He hesitated before the tarnished grill.

“What do you think about it, Tump?”

“You won’t make a mistake in buying,” answered the high voice of Mr. Hooker at his ledger.

“I don’ think you’ll make no mistake in buyin’, Peter,” repeated Tump’s bass.

Peter turned back a little uncertainly, and asked how long it would take to fix the new deed.  He had a notion of making a flying canvass of the officers of the Sons and Daughters in the interim.  He was surprised to find that Mr. Hooker already had the deed and the notes ready to sign, in anticipation of Peter’s desires.  Here the banker brought out the set of papers.

“I’ll take it,” decided Peter; “and if the lodge doesn’t want it, I’ll keep the place myself.”

“I like to deal with a man of decision,” piped the cashier, a wrinkled smile on his sharp face.

Peter pushed in his bag of collections, then Mr. Hooker signed the deed, and Peter signed the land notes.  They exchanged the instruments.  Peter received the crisp deed, bound in blue manuscript cover.  It rattled unctuously.  To Peter it was his first step toward a second Tuskegee.

The two negroes walked out of the Planter’s Bank filled with a sense of well-doing.  Tump Pack was openly proud of having been connected, even in a casual way, with the purchase.  As he walked down the steps, he turned to Peter.

“Don’ reckon nobody could git a deed off on you wid stoppers in it, does you?”

“We don’t know any such word as ‘stop,’ Tump,” declared Peter, gaily.

For Peter was gay.  The whole incident at the bank was beginning to please him.  The meeting of a sudden difficulty, his quick decision—­it held the quality of leadership.  Napoleon had it.

The two colored men stepped briskly through the afternoon sunshine along the mean village street.  Here and there in front of their doorways sat the merchants yawning and talking, or watching pigs root in the piles of waste.