single business street ran straight back from the river. It was stony in
places, muddy in places, strewn with goods-boxes, broken planking,
excelsior, and straw that had been used for packing. Charred rubbish-
piles lay in front of every store, which the clerks had swept out and
attempted to burn. Hogs roamed the thoroughfare, picking up decaying
fruit and parings, and nosing tin cans that had been thrown out by the
merchants. The stores that Peter had once looked upon as show-places
were poor two-story brick or frame buildings, defiled by time and wear
and weather. The white merchants were coatless, listless men who sat in
chairs on the brick pavements before their stores and who moved slowly
when a customer entered their doors.

And, strange to say, it was this fall of his white townsmen that moved
Peter Siner with a sense of the greatest loss. It seemed fantastic to
him, this sudden land-slide of the mighty.

As Peter and his mother came over the brow of the river bank, they saw a
crowd collecting at the other end of the street. The main street of
Hooker's Bend is only a block long, and the two negroes could easily
hear the loud laughter of men hurrying to the focus of interest and the
blurry expostulations of negro voices. The laughter spread like a
contagion. Merchants as far up as the river corner became infected, and
moved toward the crowd, looking back over their shoulders at every tenth
or twelfth step to see that no one entered their doors.

Presently, a little short man, fairly yipping with laughter, stumbled
back up the street to his store with tears of mirth in his eyes. A
belated merchant stopped him by clapping both hands on his shoulders and
shaking some composure into him.