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 lighter portion of his mind nickered about here and there on trivial things. He observed a little hole rusted in the running-board of the motor. He noticed that the officer's eyes were just the same chill, washed blue as the winter sky above his head. He remembered a tale that, before electrocution became a law in Tennessee the county sheriff's nerve had failed him at a hanging, and the constable Dawson Bobbs had sprung the drop. There was something terrible about the fat man. He would do anything, absolutely anything, that came to his hands in the way of legal sewage.

In the midst of these thoughts Peter heard himself saying.

“He—was trying to get Cissie out?”

“Yep.”

“He—must have been drunk.”

“Oh, yeah.”

Mr. Bobbs sat studying the mulatto. As he studied him he said slowly:

“Some of 'em say he was disguised as a woman. Others say he had some women's clothes along, ready to put on. Now, me and the sheriff knowed Tump Pack purty well, Peter, and we knowed that nigger never in the worl' would 'a' thought up sich a plan by hisself.”

He sat looking at Peter so interrogatively that the mulatto began, in a strained, earnest voice, telling the constable precisely what had happened in regard to the clothes.