III.
Two days later Charlie Clayhorne got off the train at Montgomery, feeling strange as he felt himself enveloped by the familiar, unforgotten atmosphere of many n*****s and voices pleading-calm and girls painted bright as savages to stand out against the tropical summer. The streets were busier than he remembered in those days when he considered Montgomery a metropolis. He wondered how severely they felt the depression, and he was surprised when no beggars approached him in the street. Later, on the local train that bore him an hour farther south, he felt himself merging minute by minute with the hot countryside, the lush vegetation, the clay roads, the strange, sluggish, primeval rivers flowing softly under soft Indian names. Then Tuscarora; the broken-down station with the mules and
