The horror of such a complex swelled in Peter's mind to monstrous
proportions. As night thickened at his window, the negro sat dazed and
wondering at the mightiness of his vision. His thoughts went groping,
trying to solve some obscure problem it posed. He thought of the
Arkwright boy; he thought of the white men smiling as his mother's
funeral went past the livery-stable; he thought of Captain Renfrew's
manuscript that he was transcribing. Through all the old man's memoirs
ran a certain lack of sincerity. Peter always felt amid his labors that
the old Captain was making an attorney's plea rather than a candid
exposition. At this point in his thoughts there gradually limned itself
in the brown man's mind the answer to that enigma which he almost had
unraveled on the day he first saw Cissie Dildine pass his window. With
it came the answer to the puzzle contained in the old Captain's library.
The library was not an ordinary compilation of the world's thought; it,
too, was an attorney's special pleading against the equality of man. Any
book or theory that upheld the equality of man was carefully excluded
from the shelves.
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