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Then spoke up small Peter Champneys, standing barefooted and
bareheaded, clothed in a coarse blue blouse and a pair of patched
and faded denim trousers, but for all that heir to a long line of
dead-and-gone Champneyses who had been, whatever their faults,
fearless and gallant gentlemen.
"Get back there, you, Mosely!" Peter Champneys spoke in the voice
his grandfather had on a time used to a recalcitrant field-hand.
"Chuck that little nigger-lover in the swamp!"
"Knock him down an' git the nigger, Mosely!"
"Burn down the house!"
But the shot-gun in that steady young hand held them in check for a
breathing-space. They knew Peter Champneys.
"Mosely!" snapped Peter. "You, too, Nicolson! Stand back, you
white-livered hounds! First one of you lays a hand on me or Daddy
Nep gets his head blown off! Damn you, Mosely! don't make me tell
you again to get back!"
And Mosely saw that in the boy's eyes that drove him back, swearing.
The huge farm-hand, who had shifted and squirmed his way to the back
of the crowd, now lifted his arm.


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