A few groups of men were seeking
coolness at small tables with glasses before them and palm-leaf fans in
their hands, but a larger and noisier assemblage was collected before
the bar, where a man, collarless and in his shirt-sleeves, with his
back to the counter, was pretentiously addressing them. Brant, who had
moodily dropped into a chair in the corner, after ordering a cooling
drink as an excuse for his temporary refuge from the stifling street,
half-regretted his enforced participation in their conviviality. But
a sudden lowering of the speaker's voice into a note of gloomy
significance seemed familiar to him. He glanced at him quickly, from the
shadow of his corner. He was not mistaken--it was Jim Hooker!
For the first time in his life, Brant wished to evade him. In the days
of his own prosperity his heart had always gone out towards this old
companion of his boyhood; in his present humiliation his presence jarred
upon him. He would have slipped away, but to do so he would have had to
pass before the counter again, and Hooker, with the self-consciousness
of a story-teller, had an eye on his audience. Brant, with a palm-leaf
fan before his face, was obliged to listen.
"Yes, gentlemen," said Hooker, examining his glass dramatically, "when
a man's been cooped up in a Rebel prison, with a death line before him
that he's obliged to cross every time he wants a square drink, it seems
sort of like a dream of his boyhood to be standin' here comf'ble before
his liquor, alongside o' white men once more.
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