Numberless preparations for the funeral were going on all over Niggertown.  The Knights of Tabor were putting on their regalia.  Negro women were sending out hurry notices to white mistresses that they would be unable to cook the noonday meal.  Dozens of negro girls flocked to the hair-dressing establishment of Miss Mallylou Speers.  All were bent on having their wool straightened for the obsequies, and as only a few of them could be accommodated, the little room was packed.  A smell of burning hair pervaded it.  The girls sat around waiting their turn.  Most of them already had their hair down,—­or, rather loose, for it stood out in thick mats.  The hair-dresser had a small oil stove on which lay heating half a dozen iron combs.  With a hot comb she teased each strand of wool into perfect straightness and then plastered it down with a greasy pomade.  The result was a stiff effect, something like the hair of the Japanese.  It required about three hours to straighten the hair of one negress.  The price was a dollar and a half.

By half-past nine o’clock a crowd of negro men, in lodge aprons and with spears, and negro women, with sashes of ribbon over their shoulders and across the breasts, assembled about the Siner cabin.  In the dusty curving street were ranged half a dozen battered vehicles,—­a hearse, a delivery wagon, some rickety buggies, and a hack.  Presently the undertaker arrived with a dilapidated black hearse which he used especially for negroes.  He jumped down, got out his straps and coffin stands, directed some negro men to bring in the coffin, then hurried into the cabin with his air of brisk precision.

He placed the coffin on the stands near the bed; then a number of men slipped the huge black body into it.  The undertaker settled old Caroline’s head against the cotton pillows, running his hand down beside her cheek and tipping her face just so.  Then he put on the cover, which left a little oval opening just above her dead face.  The sight of old Caroline’s face seen through the little oval pane moved some of the women to renewed sobs.  Eight black men took up the coffin and carried it out with the slow, wide-legged steps of roustabouts.  Parson Ranson, in a rusty Prince Albert coat, took Peter’s arm and led him to the first vehicle after the hearse.  It was a delivery wagon, but it was the best vehicle in the procession.

As Peter followed the coffin out, he saw the Knights and Ladies of Tabor lined up in marching order behind the van.  The men held their spears and swords at attention; the women carried flowers.  Behind the marchers came other old vehicles, a sorry procession.

At fifteen minutes to ten the bell in the steeple of the colored church tolled a single stroke.  The sound quivered through the sunshine over Niggertown.  At its signal the poor procession moved away through the dust.  At intervals the bell tolled after the vanishing train.

As the negroes passed through the white town the merchants, lolling in their doors, asked passers-by what negro had died.  The idlers under the mulberry in front of the livery-stable nodded at the old negro preacher in his long greenish-black coat, and Dawson Bobbs remarked: