shoulders and breasts shake from the sobs, which her white blood
repressed to silence.

A certain sympathy for her grief and its suppression kept Peter's eyes
on the young woman, and then, with the queer effect of one picture
melting into another, the strange girl's face assumed familiar curves
and softnesses, and he was looking at Ida May.

A quiver traveled deliberately over Peter from his crisp black hair to
the soles of his feet. He started toward her impulsively.

At that moment one of the drummers picked up his grip, and started down
the gang-plank, and with its leathern bulk pressed Tump Pack and his
mother out of his path. He moved on to the shore through the negroes,
who divided at his approach. The captain of the launch saw that other of
his white passengers were becoming impatient, and he shouted for the
darkies to move aside and not to block the gangway. The youngish man
drew the girl in the tailor suit close to him and started through with
her. Peter heard him say, "They won't hurt you, Miss Negley." And Miss
Negley, in the brisk nasal intonation of a Northern woman, replied: "Oh,
I'm not afraid. We waste a lot of sympathy on them back home, but when
you see them--"

At that moment Peter heard a cry in his ears and felt arms thrown about
his neck. He looked down and saw his mother, Caroline Siner, looking up
into his face and weeping with the general emotion of the negroes and
this joy of her own. Caroline had changed since Peter last saw her. Her
eyes were a little more wrinkled, her kinky hair was thinner and very
gray.