Peter marched out.  He knew that victory perched upon his banners.  He wouldn’t be sent away, willy-nilly, to a place the bare thought of which had made his mother turn pale.  And she had wished him to keep the place on the cove, the last poor remnant of Champneys land.  To this end had she pinched and slaved.  When Peter thought of McMasters intriguing to take from him even this poor possession, his lips came together firmly.  Somehow he would manage to keep the place.  If his mother had been able to manage it, surely a man could do so, too!  He hadn’t the faintest doubt of his ability to take care of himself.

But the town was troubled and perplexed, until Peter solved his problem for himself with the aid of Emma Campbell.  Emma had always been his friend, and she had been his mother’s loyal and loving servitor.  She and Peter had several long talks; then Emma called in Cassius, an ex-husband of hers who so long as he didn’t live with her could get along with her, and had him widen the shed room, Peter taking in its stead his mother’s bedroom.  Cassius built a better wash-bench, with a shelter, under the china-berry trees in the yard, and strung some extra clothes-lines, and Emma Campbell moved in.  Emma would take care of the house, and look after Peter.  Riverton sighed, and shrugged its shoulders.

It was a sketchy sort of arrangement, but it worked very well.  Sometimes Peter provided the meals which Emma cooked, for he was expert at snaring, crabbing, shrimping, and fishing.  Sometimes the spirit moved Cassius to lay an offering of a side of bacon, a bushel of potatoes, a string of fish, or maybe a jug of syrup or a hen at his ex-spouse’s feet.  Cassius said Emma was so contrary he specked she must be ’flicted wid de moonness, which is one way of saying that one is a bit weak in the head.  But he liked her, and she washed his shirts and sewed on a button or so for him occasionally, or occasionally cracked him over the sconce with the hominy-spoon, just to show that she considered her marital ties binding.  Emma had been married twice since Cassius left her, but both these ventures had been, in her own words, “triflin’ niggers any real lady ‘d jes’ natchelly hab to throw out.”  When Cassius complained that his third wife was “diggin’ roots” against him, Emma immediately set him to digging potatoes for herself, to offset the ill effects of possible conjure.  She was a strategical person, and Peter didn’t fare very badly, considering.

The boy fell heir to all those odd jobs that boys in his position are expected to tackle.  When a task was too tiresome, too disagreeable, or too ill-paying for anybody else, Peter was sent for and graciously allowed to do it.  It enabled people to feel charitable and at the same time get something done for about a fourth of what a man would have charged.  Half the time he made his living out of the river, going partners with some negro boatman.  They are daring watermen, the coast negroes.  They took