So Tump
turned off through the dark trees. Peter watched him until all he could
see was the white blur of Cissie's underwear swinging against his
holster.
After Tump's disappearance, Peter stood for several minutes thinking.
His brief crusade into Niggertown had ended in a situation far outside
of his volition. That morning he had started out with some vague idea of
taking Niggertown in his hands and molding it in accordance with his
white ideas; but Niggertown had taken Peter into its hands, had
threatened his life, had administered to him profound mental and moral
shocks, and now had dropped him, like some bit of waste, with his face
set over the Big Hill for white town.
As Peter stood there it seemed to him there was something symbolic in
his attitude. He was no longer of the black world; he was of the white.
He did not understand his people; they eluded him.
He belonged to the white world; not to the village across the hill, but
to the North. Nothing now prevented him from going North and taking the
position with Farquhar.
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