"You kin ca'y 'em ef you don' keep 'em hid," explained the ex-soldier in a wooden voice. "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 régime. 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. A shock at the incomprehensible brevity of his life rushed over him. Just to that street, just as far as the curve, and his legs were swinging along, carrying him forward at an even gait.
All at once he began talking, arguing. He tried to speak at an ordinary tempo, but his words kept edging on faster and faster:
"Tump, I'm not going to marry Cissie Dildine."
"I knows you ain't, Peter."
"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 said in a slightly different tone: