After a certain indecision he compromised by entering the front gate and calling the Captain’s name from among the scattered bricks of the old walk.

The house lay silent, half smothered in a dark tangle of shrubbery.  Peter called twice before he heard the shuffle of house slippers, and then saw the Captain’s dressing-gown at the piazza steps.

“Is that you, Peter?” came a querulous voice.

“Yes, Captain.  I was told you wanted to see me.”

“You’ve been deliberate in coming,” criticized the old gentleman, testily.  “I sent you word by some black rascal three days ago.”

“I just received the message to-day.”  Peter remained discreetly at the gate.

“Yes; well, come in, come in.  See if you can do anything with this damnable lamp.”

The old man turned with a dignified drawing-together of his dressing-gown and moved back.  Apparently, the renovation of a cranky lamp was the whole content of the Captain’s summons to Peter.

There was something so characteristic in this incident that Peter was moved to a vague sense of mirth.  It was just like the old regime to call in a negro, a special negro, from ten miles away to move a jar of ferns across the lawn or trim a box hedge or fix a lamp.

Peter followed the old gentleman around to the back piazza facing his study.  There, laid out on the floor, were all the parts of a gasolene lamp, together with a pipe-wrench, a hammer, a little old-fashioned vise, a bar of iron, and an envelop containing the mantels and the more delicate parts of the lamp.

“It’s extraordinary to me,” criticized the Captain, “why they can’t make a gasolene lamp that will go, and remain in a going condition.”

“Has it been out of fix for three days?” asked Peter, sorry that the old gentleman should have lacked a light for so long.

“No,” growled the Captain; “it started gasping at four o’clock last night; so I put it out and went to bed.  I’ve been working at it this evening.  There’s a little hole in the tip,—­if I could see it,—­a hair-sized hole, painfully small.  Why any man wants to make gasolene lamps with microscopic holes that ordinary intelligence must inform him will become clogged I cannot conceive.”

Peter ventured no opinion on this trait of lampmakers, but said that if the Captain knew where he could get an oil hand-lamp for a little more light, he thought he could unstop the hole.

The Captain looked at his helper and shook his head.

“I am surprised at you, Peter.  When I was your age, I could see an aperture like that hole under the last quarter of the moon.  In this strong light I could have—­er—­lunged the cleaner through it, sir.  You must have strained your eyes in college.”  He paused, then added:  “You’ll find hand-lamps in any of the rooms fronting this porch.  I don’t know whether they have oil in them or not—­the shiftless niggers that come around to take care of this building—­no dependence to be put in them.  When I try it myself, I do even worse.”