"Oh, that's all right," Peters replied. "I'm not hankerin' after 'em. Just thought I'd take a few of 'em along to get 'em out of the way. Joe, if you happen down in my range drap in and see Nan's boy. Tickle you mighty nigh to death." He slouched away, and the shoemaker resumed his work. I had been sitting there in a strong draught of the town's atmosphere, with two characters for my play; and, taking my leave, I felt that I hugged a greater possession than Peters had found when he tied the boots together and threw them across his shoulder. CHAPTER XV. OLD AUNT PATSEY. Like a boy in his yearning to have Santa Claus come, I went early to bed to force the dawning of another day. I resorted to the tricks that men have employed to induce drowsiness; I counted sheep bounding over a fence, a hundred, a thousand, until their number exceeded the Patriarch's fold, and yet I lay there wide awake, with my nerves starting at every noise, before it reached my ears. I strove to trace the filmy thread that lies between consciousness and sleep, and I fancied that it was a raveling from a rainbow, with one end in the sunset, the other in the sunrise. I reached a place where the thread was broken and now the world was dark, but, feeling about, I found the two ends of the silken line, and put them together, and when they touched, the world flashed up in a blaze of light--the sun was shining. No exact hour had been fixed for the meet at the Senator's house, and I was beset by the fear that a desire not to be early might make me late. Common sense dictated a middle resort, but in my nervous anxiety I had no common sense. Why so sensitive and timorous now when I had been so bold a few days before? I had promised the negro preacher and myself that this day should see the end of a relationship. I set out earlier than the time I had fixed, expecting to loiter along the road, to breathe sweet air beneath the roses that hung above the old garden walls; but, giving no heed to the roses, I passed them hurriedly, as a hasty reader skips a beautiful sentence in eagerness to snatch the excitement of a closing scene. I passed the lamp-post and thought of the negro's black hand, a knot on the iron; I came abreast of the old chimney and the thicket, the lair of the goblins at night. And here I halted to gaze at the Senator's house, the pillared portico, the cool yard, the martin box on a tall pole, the magnolia garden. And now my progress toward the gate was slow, with the minute and senseless observation of little things; a bit of sheep's wool on a brier bush; an old shoe half buried in the sandy drain beside the road; the heavy gate-latch, made by a clumsy blacksmith; the uneven bricks in the short walk between the gate and the portico; a stone and a shell on the step, where someone had cracked a nut.