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 visible was its black spire set against a web of stars.  He was making no speed at all.  He panted on.  His heart hammered.  His legs drummed with Lilliputian paces.  Now he was among the village stores, all utterly black.  At one point the echo of his feet chattered back at him, as if some other futile runner strained amid vast spaces of blackness.

After a long time he found himself running up a residential street, and presently, far ahead, he saw the glow of Dr. Jallup’s porch light.  Its beam had the appearance of coming from a vast distance.  When he reached the place, he flung his breast against the top panel of the doctor’s fence and held on, exhausted.  He drew in his breath, and began shouting, “Hello, Doctor!”

Peter called persistently, and as he commanded more breath, he called louder and louder, “Hello, Doctor!  Hello, Doctor!  Hello, Doctor!” in tones edging on panic.

The doctor’s house might have been dead.  Somewhere a dog began barking.  High in the Southern sky a star looked down remotely on Peter’s frantic haste.  The black man stood in the black night with cries:  “Hello, Doctor!  Hello, Doctor!  Hello, Doctor!”

At last, in despair, he tried to think of other doctors.  He thought of telephoning to Jonesboro.  Just as he decided he must turn away there came a stirring in the dead house, a flicker of light appeared on the inside now here, now there; it steadied into a tiny beam and approached the door.  The door opened, and Dr. Jallup’s head and breast appeared, illuminated against the black interior.

“My mother’s sick, Doctor,” began Peter, in immense relief.