The glade was gloomy, but warm, for the shade of cedars somehow seems to hold heat. A carpet of needles hushed Siner's footfalls and spread a Sabbatical silence through the grove. The upward path was not smooth, but was broken with outcrops of the same reddish limestone that marks the whole stretch of the Tennessee River. Here and there in the grove were circles eight or ten feet in diameter, brushed perfectly clean of all needles and pebbles and twigs. These places were crap-shooters' circles, where black and white men squatted to shoot dice. Under the big stones on the hillside, Peter knew, was cached illicit whisky, and at night the boot-leggers carried on a brisk trade among the gamblers. More than that, the glade on the Big Hill was used for still more demoralizing ends. It became a squalid grove of Ashtoreth; but now, in the autumn evening, all the petty obscenities of white and black sloughed away amid the religious implications of the dark-green aisles. The sight of a white boy sitting on an outcrop of limestone with a strap of school-books dropped at his feet rather surprised Peter. The negro looked at the hobbledehoy for several seconds before he recognized in the lanky youth a little Arkwright boy whom he had known and played with in his pre-college days. Now there was such an exaggerated wistfulness in young Arkwright's attitude that Peter was amused. "Hello, Sam," he called. "What you doing out here?" The Arkwright boy turned with a start. "Aw, is that you, Siner?" Before the negro could reply, he added: "Was you on the Harvard football team, Siner? Guess the white fellers have a pretty gay time in Harvard, don't they, Siner? Geemenettie! but I git tired o' this dern town! D' reckon I could make the football team? Looks like I could if a nigger like you could, Siner." None of this juvenile outbreak of questions required answers. Peter stood looking at the hobbledehoy without smiling. "Aren't you going to school?" he asked. Arkwright shrugged. "Aw, hell!" he said self-consciously. "We got marched down to the protracted meetin' while ago--whole school did. My seat happened to be close to a window. When they all stood up to sing, I crawled out and skipped. Don't mention that, Siner." "I won't." "When a fellow goes to college he don't git marched to preachin', does he, Siner?" "I never did." "We-e-ll," mused young Sam, doubtfully, "you're a nigger." "I never saw any white men marched in, either." "Oh, hell! I wish I was in college." "What are you sitting out here thinking about?" inquired Peter of the ingenuous youngster. "Oh--football and--women and God and--how to stack cards. You think about ever'thing, in the woods. Damn it! I got to git out o' this little jay town. D' reckon I could git in the navy, Siner?" "Don't see why you couldn't, Sam. Have you seen Tump Pack anywhere?" "Yeah; on Hobbett's corner. Say, is Cissie Dildine at home?" "I believe she is."