As he paced his room there came into the glory of Peter’s thoughts the memory of the Arkwright boy as he sat in the cedar glade brooding on the fallen needles Peter recalled the hobbledehoy’s disjointed words as he wrestled with the moral and physical problems of adolescence.  Peter recalled his impulse to sit down by young Sam Arkwright, and, as best he might, give him some clue to the critical and feverish period through which he was passing.

He had not done so, but Peter remembered the instance down to the very desperation in the face of the brooding youngster.  And it seemed to Peter that this rejected impulse had been a sign that he was destined to be an evangel to the whites as well as to the blacks.

The joy of Peter’s mission bore him aloft on vast wings.  His room seemed to fall away from him, and he was moving about his country, releasing the two races from their bonds of suspicion and cruelty.

* * * * *

Slowly the old manor formed about Peter again, and he perceived that a tapping on the door had summoned him back.  He walked to the door with his heart full of kindness for old Rose.  She was bringing him his supper.  He felt as if he could take the old woman in his arms, and out of the mere hugeness of his love sweeten her bitter life.  The mulatto opened the door as eagerly as if he were admitting some long-desired friend; but when the shutter swung back, the old crone and her salver were not there.  All he could discern in the darkness were the white pillars marking the night into panels.  There was no light in the outer kitchen.  The whole manor was silent.

As he stood listening, the knocking was repeated, this time more faintly.  He fixed the sound at the window.  He closed the door, walked across the brilliant room, and opened the shutters.

For several moments he saw nothing more than the tall quadrangle of blackness which the window framed; then a star or two pierced it; then something moved.  He saw a woman’s figure standing close to the casement, and out of the darkness Cissie Dildine’s voice asked in its careful English: 

“Peter, may I come in?”

CHAPTER XIV

For a full thirty seconds Peter Siner stared at the girl at the window before, even with her prompting, he thought of the amenity of asking her to come inside.  As a further delayed courtesy, he drew the Heppelwhite chair toward her.

Cissie’s face looked bloodless in the blanched light of the gasolene-lamp.  She forced a faint, doubtful smile.

“You don’t seem very glad to see me, Peter.”

“I am,” he assured her, mechanically, but he really felt nothing but astonishment and dismay.  They filled his voice.  He was afraid some one would see Cissie in his room.  His thoughts went flitting about the premises, calculating the positions of the various trees and shrubs in relation to the windows, trying to determine whether, and just where, in his brilliantly lighted chamber the girl could be seen from the street.