with young Arkwright and the old Captain, and the South.
He put his trembling nerves to work, trying to recapture his line of thought. He sat for ten minutes, following this mental train, then that, losing one, groping for another. His thoughts were jumpy. They played about Arkwright, the Captain, Cissie, his mother's death, Tump Pack in prison, the quarrel between the Persimmon and Jim Pink Staggs. The whole of Niggertown came rushing down upon him, seizing him in its passion and dustiness and greasiness, putting to flight all his cultivated white-man ideas.
After half an hour's searching he gave it up. Before he left the room he stooped, and tried to set up again the globe that the passing of the girl had caused him to throw down; but its pivot was out of plumb, and he had to lean it against the window-seat.
The sight of Captain Renfrew coming in at the gate sent Peter to his room. The hour was near twelve, and it had become a little point of household etiquette for the mulatto and the white man not to be together when old Rose jangled the triangle. By this means they forestalled the mute discourtesy of the old Captain's walking away from his secretary to eat. The subject of their separate meals had never been mentioned since their first acrimonious morning. The matter had dropped into the abeyance of custom, just as the old gentleman had predicted.
Peter had left open his jalousies, but his windows
