I looked and there was a little boy, just about seven or eight, sitting
in a chair by the window, and I came up to it, and called to him--"I
want to know the road to East Penniwell, and I want a drink of water."

At first he just shook his head, and then he opened the window, and
said, "Hurry up. We got diphtheria here and nobody's allowed to speak
to me. That's why the tollhouse is shut up. Ain't you 'fraid?"

I said, "I don't know what it is, and I'm awfully hungry and thirsty and
I want to know the road to East Penniwell."

"Well," he said, "poor boy"; and handed me out a glass of milk and a
piece of bread, and I was drinking the milk, when I heard some one yell
at me. It was a man running up to the house, and the boy grabbed the cup
away and said, "Here comes Pop. You'd better leg it." I ran as fast as I
could out the gate and down the road he told me to take. The man didn't
chase me far, and I didn't hear what he said, his dog barked so. But I
didn't feel quite so tired, though I ached a lot still, and my feet were
awful wet, through running right through a brook when the man called
at me.

I went right on. Sometimes I lay down under a tree, sometimes I sat down
by the road.

I don't see why a road that seems all right when you're going up it,
seems so terrible when you are going down. But maybe it's because I made
wrong turnings, and always when the men asked me if I'd ride with them a
little ways, I said, "No," because I would have to tell them I belonged
at Turners', and they might ask me about Henry, the Indian boy.