In Peter’s heart came a wonderful thought.  He would make his industrial institution such a model of neatness that the whole village of Hooker’s Bend would catch the spirit.  The white people should see that something clean and uplifting could come out of Niggertown.  The two races ought to live for a mutual benefit.  It was a fine, generous thought.  For some reason, just then, there flickered through Peter’s mind a picture of the Arkwright boy sitting hunched over in the cedar glade, staring at the needles.

All this musing was brushed away by the sight of old Mr. Tomwit crossing the street from the east side to the livery-stable on the west.  That human desire of wanting the person who has wronged you to know that you know your injury moved Peter to hurry his steps and to speak to the old gentleman.

Mr. Tomwit had been a Confederate cavalryman in the Civil War, and there was still a faint breeze and horsiness about him.  He was a hammered-down old gentleman, with hair thin but still jet-black, a seamed, sunburned face, and a flattened nose.  His voice was always a friendly roar.  Now, when he saw Peter turning across the street to meet him, he halted and called out at once: 

“Now Peter, I know what’s the matter with you.  I didn’t do you right.”

Peter went closer, not caring to take the whole village into his confidence.

“How came you to turn down my proposition, Mr. Tomwit,” he asked, “after we had agreed and drawn up the papers?”

“We-e-ell, I had to do it, Peter,” explained the old man, loudly.

“Why, Mr. Tomwit?”

“A white neighbor wanted me to, Peter,” boomed the cavalryman.

“Who, Mr. Tomwit?”

“Henry Hooker talked me into it, Peter.  It was a mean trick, Peter.  I done you wrong.”  He stood nodding his head and rubbing his flattened nose in an impersonal manner.  “Yes, I done you wrong, Peter,” he acknowledged loudly, and looked frankly into Peter’s eyes.

The negro was immensely surprised that Henry Hooker had done such a thing.  A thought came that perhaps some other Henry Hooker had moved into town in his absence.

“You don’t mean the cashier of the bank?”

Old Mr. Tomwit drew out a plug of Black Mule tobacco, set some gapped, discolored teeth into corner, nodded at Peter silently, at the same time utilizing the nod to tear off a large quid.  He rolled tin about with his tongue and after a few moments adjusted it so that he could speak.

“Yeah,” he proceeded in a muffled tone, “they ain’t but one Henry Hooker; he is the one and only Henry.  He said if I sold you my land, you’d put up a nigger school and bring in so many blackbirds you’d run me clean off my farm.  He said it’d ruin the whole town, a nigger school would.”

Peter was astonished.

“Why, he didn’t talk that way to me!”

“Natchelly, natchelly,” agreed the old cavalryman, dryly.—­“Henry has a different way to talk to ever’ man, Peter.”