"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 regime. His thoughts danced along in peculiar excitement.
At the turn of the hill the trio came in sight of the squalid semicircle
of Niggertown. Here and there from a tumbledown chimney a feather of
pale wood smoke lifted into the chill sunshine. The sight of the houses
brought Peter a sharp realization that his life would end in the curving
street beneath him.
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