She won't speak to me! She won't look at me!" A sudden
insanity of rage seized Tump. He poured on his victim every oath and
obscenity he had raked out of the whole army.
Strangely enough, the gunman's outbreak brought a kind of relief to
Peter Siner. It exonerated him. He was not suspected of wronging Cissie;
or, rather, whether he had or had not wronged her made no difference to
Tump. Peter's crime consisted in mere being, in existing where Cissie
could see him and desire him rather than Tump. Why it calmed Peter to
know that Tump held no dishonorable charge against him the mulatto
himself could not have told. Tump's violence showed Peter the certainty
of his own death, and somehow it washed away the hope and the thought of
escape.
Half-way down the hill they entered the edge of Niggertown. The smell of
sties and stables came to them. Peter's thoughts moved here and there,
like the eyes of a little child glancing about as it is forced to leave
a pleasure-ground.
Peter knew that Jim Pink, who now made a sorry figure in their rear,
would one day give a buffoon's mimicry of this his walk to death.
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