“Who is it?” he asked in a wavery voice.

Peter told his name and mission.

The old Captain continued holding up his light.

“Oh, Peter Siner; Caroline Siner’s sick?  All right I’ll have Jallup run over; I’ll phone him.”

Peter was beginning his thanks preparatory to going, when the old man interrupted.

“No, just stay here until Jallup comes by in his or He’ll pick us both up.  It’ll save time.  Come on inside.  What’s the matter with old Caroline?”

The old dressing-gown led the way around the continuous piazza, to a room that stood open and brightly lighted on the north face of the old house.

A great relief came to Peter at this unexpected succor.  He followed 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 at the telephone.  The Captain wore few indices of kindness.  Lines of settled sarcasm netted his eyes and drooped away from his old mouth.  The very swell of his full temples and their crinkly veins marked a sardonic old man.

At last he roused central over the wire, and impressed upon him the necessity of creating a stridor in Dr. Jallup’s dead house, and a moment later a continued buzzing in the receiver betokened the operator’s efforts to do so.