“You mean, she has got her mind set on it, and you won’t stop her. You don’t want to stop her.,”

Byron does not look up. “In a way, it is his house. The nighest thing to a home of his own he will ever own, I reckon. And he is her …”

“Out there alone, with a child coming. The nearest house a few negro cabins a half mile away.” He watches Byron’s face.

“I have thought of that. There are ways, things that can be done …”

“What things? What can you do to protect her out there?”

Byron does not answer at once; he does not look up. When he speaks his voice is dogged. “There are secret things a man can do without being evil, Reverend. No matter how they might look to folks.”

“I don’t think that you could do anything that would be very evil, Byron, no matter how it looked to folks. But are you going to undertake to say just how far evil extends into the appearance of evil? just where between doing and appearing evil stops?”

“No,” Byron says. Then he moves slightly; he speaks as if he too were waking: “I hope not. I reckon I am trying to do the right thing by my lights.”—‘And that,’ Hightower thinks, ‘is the firt lie he ever told me. Ever told anyone, man or woman, perhaps including himself.’ He looks across the desk at the stubborn, dogged, sober face that has not yet looked at him. ‘Or maybe it is not lie yet because he does not know himself that it is so.’ He says:

“Well.” He speaks now with a kind of spurious brusqueness which, flabbyjowled and darkcaverneyed, his face belies. “That is settled, then. You’ll take her out there, to his house, and you’ll see that she is comfortable and you’ll see that she is not disturbed until this is over. And then you’ll tell that man—Bunch, Brown—that she is here.”

“And he’ll run,” Byron says. He does not look up, yet through him there seems to go a wave of exultation, of triumph, before he can curb and hide it, when it is too late to try. For the moment he does not attempt to curb it; backthrust too in his hard chair, looking for the first time at the minister, with a face confident and bold and suffused. The other meets his gaze steadily.

“Is that what you want him to do?” Hightower says. They sit so in the lamplight. Through the open window comes the hot, myriad silence of the breathless night. “Think what you are doing. You are attempting to come between man and wife.”

Byron has caught himself. His face is no longer triumphant. But he looks steadily at the older man. Perhaps he tried to catch his voice too. But he cannot yet. “They aint man and wife yet,” he says.

“Does she think that? Do you believe that she will say that?” They look at one another. “Ah, Byron, Byron. What are a few mumbled words before God, before the steadfastness of a woman’s nature? Before that child?”

“Well, he may not run. If he gets that reward, that money. Like enough he will be drunk enough on a thousand dollars to do anything, even marry.”

“Ah, Byron, Byron.”

“Then what do you think we—I ought to do? What do you advise?”

“Go away. Leave Jefferson.” They look at one another. “No,” Hightower says. “You don’t need my help. You are already being helped by someone stronger than I am.”

For a moment Byron does not speak. They look at one another, steadily. “Helped by who?”

“By the devil,” Hightower says.

‘And the devil is looking after him, too,’ Hightower thinks. He is in midstride, halfway home, his laden small market basket on his arm. ‘Him, too. Him, too,’ he thinks, walking. It is hot. He is in his shirt sleeves, tall, with thin blackclad legs and spare, gaunt arms and shoulders, and with that flabby and obese stomach like some monstrous pregnancy. The shirt is white, but it is not fresh; his collar is toiled, as is the white lawn cravat carelessly knotted, and he has not shaved for two or three days. His panama hat is soiled, and beneath it, between hat and skull against the heat, the edge and corners of a soiled handkerchief protrude. He has been to town to do his semiweekly marketing, where, gaunt, misshapen, with his gray stubble and his dark spectacleblurred eyes and his blackrimmed hands and the rank manodor of his sedentary and unwashed flesh, he entered the one odorous and cluttered store which he patronised and paid with cash for what he bought.

“Well, they found that nigger’s trail at last,” the proprietor said.

“Negro?” Hightower said. He became utterly still, in the act of putting into his pocket the change from his purchases.

“That bah—fellow; the murderer. I said all the time that he wasn’t right. Wasn’t a white man. That there was something funny about him. But you can’t tell folks nothing until—”

“Found him?” Hightower said.

“You durn right they did. Why, the fool never even had sense enough to get out of the county. Here the sheriff has been telephoning all over the country for him, and the black son—uh was right here under his durn nose all the time.”

“And they have …” He leaned forward against the counter, above his laden basket. He could feel the counter edge against his stomach. It felt solid, stable enough; it was more like the earth itself were rocking faintly, preparing to move. Then it seemed to move, like something released slowly and without haste, in an augmenting swoop, and cleverly, since the eye was tricked into believing that the dingy shelves ranked with flyspecked tins, and the merchant himself behind the counter, had not moved; outraging, tricking sense. And he thinking, ‘I wont! I wont! I have bought immunity. I have paid. I have paid.’

“They ain’t caught him yet,” the proprietor said. “But they will. The sheriff taken the dogs out to the church before daylight this morning. They ain’t six hours behind him. To think that the durn fool never had no better sense … show he is a nigger, even if nothing else. …” Then the proprietor was saying, “Was that all today?”

“What?” Hightower said. “What?”

“Was that all you wanted?”

“Yes. Yes. That was …” He began to fumble in his pocket, the proprietor watching him. His hand came forth, still fumbling. It blundered upon the counter, shedding coins. The proprietor stopped two or three of them as they were about to roll off the counter.

“What’s this for?” the proprietor said.

“For the …” Hightower’s hand fumbled at the laden basket. “For—”

“You already paid.” The proprietor was watching him, curious. “That’s your change here, that I just gave you. For the dollar bill.”

“Oh,” Hightower said. “Yes. I … I just—” The merchant was gathering up the coins. He handed them back. When the customer’s hand touched his it felt like ice.

“It’s this hot weather,” the proprietor said. “It does wear a man out. Do you want to set down a spell before you start home?” But Hightower apparently did not hear him. He was moving now, toward the door, while the merchant watched him. He passed through the door and into the street, the basket on his arm, walking stiffly and carefully, like a man on ice. It was hot; heat quivered up from the asphalt, giving to the familiar buildings about the square a nimbus quality, a quality of living and palpitant chiaroscuro. Someone spoke to him in passing; he did not even know it. He went on, thinking And him too. And him too walking fast now, so that when he turned the corner at last and entered that dead and empty little street where his dead and empty small house waited, he was almost panting. ‘It’s the heat,’ the top of his mind was saying to him, reiterant, explanatory. But still, even in the quiet street where scarce anyone ever paused now to look at, remember, the sign, and his house, his sanctuary, already in sight, it goes on beneath the top of his mind that would cozen and soothe him: ‘I wont. I wont. I have bought immunity. It is like words spoken aloud now: reiterative, patient, justificative: ‘I paid for it. I didn’t quibble about the price. No man can say that. I just wanted peace; I paid them their price without quibbling.’ The street shimmers and swims; he has been sweating, but now even the air of noon feels cool upon him. Then sweat, heat, mirage, all, rushes fused into a finality which abrogates all logic and justification and obliterates it like fire would: I will not! I will not!