James arrives with the Virginia Minstrels at their camp outside town and is immediately unsettled by the men’s manner. Cassidy, a trombone player, offers James coffee and speaks to him in exaggerated dialect. James cannot tell whether Cassidy is mocking him or trying to put him at ease, and that mix of casual kindness and performance makes the troupe feel strange and threatening.

Daniel Decatur Emmett then tells James what he wants from him: to sing. When James asks what he is supposed to do, Emmett says he did not buy James but hired him as a tenor. Emmett adds that he and the other performers oppose slavery, though he quickly distinguishes that from abolitionism; they are not trying to free James, only to fill a musical role in their group.

The troupe begins rehearsing, and Emmett teaches James songs including “Ole Dan Tucker” and “Jimmy Crack Corn.” James joins the choruses and genuinely enjoys the sound of the instruments and the band, even while he remains skeptical of Emmett’s claim that he is not a slave. James knows Emmett paid Wiley for him and almost certainly holds a bill of sale, so the language of “hiring” does not change the reality of ownership.

After the songs, a tall, thin troupe member gives James a pile of clothes and tells him to put them on. In the tent, James struggles into wool trousers, a shirt, a vest, and a tie. The rough clothing makes him overheated and irritates the open wounds on his leg, showing that even the troupe’s apparent generosity carries physical discomfort and control.

When James comes back out, the men laugh at how he is dressed, but Cassidy gently fixes his clothes and ties the tie for him. Emmett approves the result except for the lack of shoes, since their former tenor left wearing his own. A heavy-set troupe member solves the problem by saying bare feet will suit the act because they can black James like the rest of him, ending the chapter with the humiliating reality that James is being prepared as part of a minstrel performance built on racial caricature.