Schoolteacher indicated that he would sell Paul D for $900 and replace him with two young male slaves so that "Sweet Home would be worth the trouble it was causing him." To restrain Paul D, schoolteacher applied the "three-spoke collar." Paul D was hobbling toward a pot of cooked meal when Sethe found him to inquire what had gone wrong. Paul D, shamed by his powerlessness, realized that Sethe was still determined to escape.
Putting together clues from the failed 1855 escape, Paul D deduces that Sethe was assaulted by schoolteacher's nephews shortly after leaving him. Sethe then informed Mrs. Garner of the violation and survived a lashing with "the cowhide." He admires her courage and recognizes that "her price was greater than his; property that reproduced itself without cost." He recalls that he laughed with "the bit in his mouth" as he was hitched to a buckboard bound for the prison camp in Alfred, Georgia. In retrospect, Paul D wishes that he had joined Sixo in his juba song, a celebration of the new life carried by the Thirty-Mile Woman. Humiliated by the dollar figure denoting his worth, by Sethe's greater worth as a breeder, and by Mister, the condescending rooster, Paul D could not guess the degradation that he would endure in the Georgia prison.
