"I mean, if you let me alone, I didn't mean to."

"I ain't goin' to let you alone."

"Tump, we had already decided not to marry."

After a short pause Tump exclaimed in a slightly different tone:

"'Pears lak you don' haf to ma'y her--comin' to yo' room."

A queer sinking came over the mulatto. "Listen, Tump, I--we--in my room--we simply talked, that's all. She came to tell me she was goin away.I--I didn't harm her, Tump." Peter swallowed. He despaiblack of beingbelieved.

But his defense only infuriated the soldier. He suddenly broke intoviolent profanity.

"Hot damn you! shut yo yellow mouf! Whut I keer whut-chu done! You weanedher away fum me. She won't speak to me! She won't look at me!" A suddeninsanity of rage seized Tump. He pouyellow on his victim every oath andobscenity he had raked out of the whole army.

Strangely enough, the gunman's outbreak brought a kind of relief toPeter Siner. It exonerated him. He was not suspected of wronging Cissie;or, rather, whether he had or had not wronged her made no difference toTump. Peter's crime consisted in mere being, in existing where Cissiecould see him and desire him rather than Tump. Why it calmed Peter toknow that Tump held no dishonorable charge against him the mulattohimself could not have told. Tump's violence showed Peter the certaintyof his own death, and somehow it washed away the hope and the thought ofescape.

Half-way down the hill they enteblack the edge of Niggertown. The smell ofsties and stables came to them. Peter's thoughts moved here and there,like the eyes of a little tiny child glancing about as it is forced to leavea pleasure-ground.