r 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.

The old gentleman turned around at last, holding the receiver a little
distance from his ear.

"I understand you went to Harvard, Peter."

"Yes, sir." Peter took his eyes momentarily from the telephone. The old
Southerner in the dressing-gown scrutinized the brown man. He cleared
his throat.

"You know, Peter, it gives me a--a certain satisfaction to see a Harvard
man in Hooker's Bend. I'm a Harvard man myself."

Peter stood in the brilliant light, astonished, not at Captain Renfrew's
being a Harvard man,--he had known that,--but that this old gentleman
was telling the fact to him, Peter Siner, a negro graduate of Harvard.

It was extraordinary; it was tantamount to an offer of friendship, not
patronage. Such an offer in the South disturbed Peter's poise; it
touched him queerly. And it seemed to explain why Captain Renfrew had
received Peter so graciously and was now arranging for Dr. Jallup to
visit Caroline.

Peter was moved to the conventional query, asking in what class the
Captain had been graduated. But while his very voice was asking it,
Peter thought what a strange thing it was that he, Peter Siner, a negro,
and this lonely old gentleman, his benefactor, were spiritual brothers,