“Two yeahs ago, Brudder Tump, we seen you marchin’ away fum Hooker’s Ben’ wid thirteen udder boys, white an’ colored, all marchin’ away togedder.  Fo’ uv them boys is already back home; three, we heah, is on de way back, but six uv yo’ brave comrades, Brudder Pack, is sleepin’ now in France, an’ ain’t never goin’ to come home no mo’.  When we honors you, we honors them all, de libin’ an’ de daid, de white an’ de black, who fought togedder fuh one country, fuh one flag.”

Gasps, sobs from the line of black folk, interrupted the speaker.  Just then a shriveled old negress gave a scream, and came running and half stumbling out of the line, holding out her arms to the barrel-chested soldier on the gang-plank.  She seized him and began shrieking: 

“Bless Gawd! my son’s done come home!  Praise de Lawd!  Bless His holy name!” Here her laudation broke into sobbing and choking and laughing, and she squeezed herself to her son.

Tump patted her bony black form.

“I’s heah, Mammy,” he stammered uncertainly.  “I’s come back, Mammy.”

Half a dozen other negroes caught the joyful hysteria.  They began a religious shouting, clapping their hands, flinging up their arms, shrieking.

One of the drummers grunted: 

“Good God! all this over a nigger getting back!”

At the extreme end of the dark line a tall cream-colored girl wept silently.  As Peter Siner stood blinking his eyes, he saw the octoroon’s shoulders and breasts shake from the sobs, which her white blood repressed to silence.

A certain sympathy for her grief and its suppression kept Peter’s eyes on the young woman, and then, with the queer effect of one picture melting into another, the strange girl’s face assumed familiar curves and softnesses, and he was looking at Ida May.

A quiver traveled deliberately over Peter from his crisp black hair to the soles of his feet.  He started toward her impulsively.

At that moment one of the drummers picked up his grip, and started down the gang-plank, and with its leathern bulk pressed Tump Pack and his mother out of his path.  He moved on to the shore through the negroes, who divided at his approach.  The captain of the launch saw that other of his white passengers were becoming impatient, and he shouted for the darkies to move aside and not to block the gangway.  The youngish man drew the girl in the tailor suit close to him and started through with her.  Peter heard him say, “They won’t hurt you, Miss Negley.”  And Miss Negley, in the brisk nasal intonation of a Northern woman, replied:  “Oh, I’m not afraid.  We waste a lot of sympathy on them back home, but when you see them—­”

At that moment Peter heard a cry in his ears and felt arms thrown about his neck.  He looked down and saw his mother, Caroline Siner, looking up into his face and weeping with the general emotion of the negroes and this joy of her own.  Caroline had changed since Peter last saw her.  Her eyes were a little more wrinkled, her kinky hair was thinner and very gray.