Peter puzzled over it time and time again as he waited in Hooker's Bend for the outcome of Cissie's trial.
The octoroon's imprisonment came to an end on the third day after Tump's death. Sam Arkwright's parents had not known of their son's legal proceedings, and Mr. Arkwright immediately quashed the warrant, and hushed up the unfortunate matter as best he could. Young Sam was suddenly sent away from home to college, as the best step in the circumstances. And so the wishes of the adolescent in the cedar-glade came queerly to pass, even if Peter did withhold any grave, mature advice on the subject which he may have possessed.
Naturally, there was much mirth among the men of Hooker's Bend and much virulence among the women over the peculiar conditions under which young Sam made his pilgrimage in pursuit of wisdom and morals and the right conduct of life. And life being problematic and uncertain as it is, and prone to wind about in the strangest way, no one may say with certitude that young Sam did not make a promising start.
Certainly, over the affair the Knights of the Round Table launched many a quip and jest, but that simply proved the fineness of their sentiments toward a certain delicate human relation which forms mankind's single awful approach to the creative and the holy.
Tump Pack became almost a mythical figure in Niggertown. Jim Pink Staggs composed a saga relating
