confusion of self-protective impulses. He thought of whirling on Tump even at this late date. He thought of darting behind a cedar, but he knew the man behind him was an expert shot, and something fundamental in the brown man forbade his getting himself killed while running away. It was too undignified a death.
Presently he surprised himself by calling over his shoulder, as a sort of complaint:
“How came you with the pistol, Tump? Thought it was against the law to carry one.”
“You kin ca'y 'em ef you don' keep 'em hid,” explained the ex-soldier in a wooden voice. “Mr. Bobbs tol' me dat when he guv my gun back.”
The irony of the thing caught Peter, for the authorities to arrest Tump not because he was trying to kill Peter, but because he went about his first attempt in an illegal manner. For the first time in his life the mulatto felt that contempt for a white man's technicalities that flavors every negro's thoughts. Here for thirty days his life had been saved by a technical law of the white man; at the end of the thirty days, by another technical law, Tump was set at liberty and allowed to carry a weapon, in a certain way, to murder him. It was grotesque; it was absurd. It filled Peter with a sudden violent questioning of the whole white régime. His thoughts danced along in peculiar excitement.
At the turn of the hill the trio came in sight of the
