around the piazza, trying to describe Caroline's symptoms. The room
Peter entered was a library, a rather stately old room, lined with books
all around the walls to about as high as a man could reach. Spaces for
doors and windows were let in among the book-cases. The volumes
themselves seemed composed mainly of histories and old-fashioned
scientific books, if Peter could judge from a certain severity of their
bindings. On a big library table burned a gasolene-lamp, which threw a
brilliant whiteness all over the room. The table was piled with books
and periodicals. Books and papers were heaped on every chair in the
study except a deep Morris chair in which the old Captain had been
sitting. A big meridional globe, about two and a half feet in diameter,
gleamed through a film of dust in the embrasure of a window. The whole
room had the womanless look of a bachelor's quarters, and was flavored
with tobacco and just a hint of whisky.

Old Captain Renfrew evidently had been reading when Peter called from
the gate. Now the old man went to a telephone and rang long and briskly
to awaken the boy who slept in the central office. Peter fidgeted as the
old Captain stood with receiver to ear.

"Hard to wake." The old gentleman spoke into the transmitter, but was
talking to Peter. "Don't be so uneasy, Peter. Human beings are harder to
kill than you think."

There was a kindliness, even a fellowship, in Captain Renfrew's tones
that spread like oil over Peter's raw nerves. It occurred to the negro
that this was the first time he had been addressed as an authentic human
being since his conversation with the two Northern men on the Pullman,
up in Illinois. It surprised him. It was sufficient to take his mind
momentarily from his mother. He looked a little closely at the old man