The old woman hunched up in bed. With the penuriousness of her station
and sacrifices, she begged Peter not to go; then groaned out, "Go tell
Mars' Renfrew," but the next moment did not want Peter to leave her.

Peter said he would get Nan Berry to stay while he was gone. The Berry
cabin lay diagonally across the street. Peter ran over, thumped on the
door, and shouted his mother's needs. As soon as he received an answer,
he started on over the Big Hill toward the white town.

Peter was seriously frightened. His run to Dr. Jallup's, across the Big
Hill, was a series of renewed strivings for speed. Every segment of his
journey seemed to seize him and pin him down in the midst of the night
like a bug caught in a black jelly. He seemed to progress not at all.

Now he was in the cedar glade. His muffled flight drove in the sentries
of the crap-shooters, and gamesters blinked out their lights and
listened to his feet stumbling on through the darkness.

After an endless run in the glade, Peter found himself on top of the
hill, amid boulders and outcrops limestone and cedar-shrubs. His flash-
light picked out these objects, limned them sharply against the
blackness, then dropped them into obscurity again.

He tried to run faster. His impatience subdivided the distance into
yards and feet. Now he was approaching that boulder, now he was passing
it; now he was ten feet beyond, twenty, thirty. Perhaps his mother was
dying, alone save for stupid Nan Berry.

Now he was going down the hill past the white church. All that was