“Stoppers—­what do you mean by stoppers?”

Tump opened his jet eyes and their yellowish whites.  “I means nigger-stoppers,” he reiterated, amazed in his turn.

“Negro-stoppers—­” Peter began to laugh sardonically, and abruptly quit the conversation.

Such rank superiority irritated the soldier to the nth power.

“Look heah, black man, I knows I is right.  Heah, lonme look at dat-aiuh, deed.  Maybe I can find ’em.  I knows I suttinly is right.”

Peter walked on, paying no attention to the request Until Tump caught his arm and drew him up short.

“Look heah, nigger,” said Tump, in a different tone, “I faded dad deed fuh ten iron men, an’ I reckon I got a once-over comin’ fuh my money.”

The soldier was plainly mobilized and ready to attack.  To fight Tump, to fight any negro at all, would be Peter’s undoing; it would forfeit the moral leadership he hoped to gain.  Moreover, he had no valid grounds for a disagreement with Tump.  He passed over the deed, and the two negroes moved on their way to Niggertown.

Tump trudged forward with eyes glued to paper, his face puckered in the unaccustomed labor of reading.

His thick lips moved at the individual letters, and constructed them bunglingly into syllables and words.  He was trying to uncover the verbal camouflage by which the astute white brushed away all rights of all black men whatsoever.

To Peter there grew up something sadly comical in Tump’s efforts.  The big negro might well typify all the colored folk of the South, struggling in a web of law and custom they did not understand, misplacing their suspicions, befogged and fearful.  A certain penitence for having been irritated at Tump softened Peter.

“That’s all right, Tump; there’s nothing to find.”

At that moment the soldier began to bob his head.

“Eh! eh! eh!  W-wait a minute!” he stammered.  “Whut dis?  B’lieve I done foun’ it!  I sho is!  Heah she am!  Heah’s dis nigger-stopper, jes lak I tol’ you!” Tump marked a sentence in the guaranty of the deed with a rusty forefinger and looked up at Peter in mixed triumph and accusation.

Peter leaned over the deed, amused.

“Let’s see your mare’s nest.”

“Well, she ‘fo’ God is thaiuh, an’ you sho let loose a hundud dollars uv our ‘ciety’s money, an’ got nothin’ fuh hit but a piece o’ paper wid a nigger-stopper on hit!”

Tump’s voice was so charged with contempt that Peter looked with a certain uneasiness at his find.  He read this sentence switched into the guaranty of the indenture: 

“Be it further understood and agreed that no negro, black man, Afro-American, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, or any person whatsoever of colored blood or lineage, shall enter upon, seize, hold, occupy, reside upon, till, cultivate, own or possess any part or parcel of said property, or garner, cut, or harvest therefrom, any of the usufruct, timber, or emblements thereof, but shall by these presents be estopped from so doing forever.”