Should he accede to Tump Pack’s possession of Cissie Dildine and give up seeing the girl?  Such a course cut across all his fine-spun theory about women having free choice of their mates.  However, the Harvard man could not advocate a socialization of courtship when he himself would be the first beneficiary.  The prophet whose finger points selfward is damned.  Furthermore, all Niggertown would side with Tump Pack in such a controversy.  It was no uncommon thing for the very negro women to fight over their beaux and husbands.  As for any social theory changing this regime, in the first place the negroes couldn’t understand the theory; in the second, it would have no effect if they could.  Actions never grow out of theories; theories grow out of actions.  A theory is a looking-glass that reflects the past and makes it look like the future, but the glass really hides the future, and when humanity comes to a turn in its course, there is always a smash-up, and a blind groping for the lost path.

Now, in regard to Cissie Dildine, Peter was not precisely afraid of Tump Pack, but he could not clear his mind of the fact that Tump had been presented with a medal by the Congress of the United States for killing four men.  Good sense and a care for his reputation and his skin told Peter to abandon his theory of free courtship for the time being.  This meant a renunciation of Cissie Dildine; but he told himself he renounced very little.  He had no reason to think that Cissie cared a picayune about him.

Peter’s work kept him indoors for a number of days following the encounter.  He was reviewing some primary school work in order to pass a teacher’s examination that would be held in Jonesboro, the county seat, in about three weeks.

To the uninitiated it may seem strange to behold a Harvard graduate stuck down day after day poring over a pile of dog-eared school-books—­ third arithmetics, primary grammars, beginners’ histories of Tennessee, of the United States, of England; physiology, hygiene.  It may seem queer.  But when it comes to standing a Wayne County teacher’s examination, the specific answers to the specific questions on a dozen old examination slips are worth all the degrees Harvard ever did confer.

So, in his newspapered study, Peter Siner looked up long lists of questions, and attempted to memorize the answers.  But the series of missteps he had made since returning to Hooker’s Bend besieged his brain and drew his thoughts from his catechism.  It seemed strange that in so short a time he should have wandered so far from the course he had set for himself.  His career in Niggertown formed a record of slight mistakes, but they were not to be undone, and their combined force had swung him a long way from the course he had plotted for himself.  There was no way to explain.  Hooker’s Bend would judge him by the sheer surface of his works.  What he had meant to do, his dreams and altruisms, they would never surmise.  That was the irony of the thing.