But he would not leave the town. Then one day they saw the little sign which he had made and painted himself and set in his front yard, and they knew that he meant to stay. He still kept the cook, a n***o woman. He had had her all the time. But they told Byron how as soon as his wife was dead, the people seemed to realise all at once that the n***o was a woman, that he had that n***o woman in the house alone with him all day. And how the wife was hardly cold in the shameful grave before the whispering began. About how he had made his wife go bad and commit suicide because he was not a natural husband, a natural man, and that the n***o woman was the reason. And that’s all it took; all that was lacking. Byron listened quietly, thinking to himself how people everywhere are about the same, but
