The negro sensed some of the innumerable difficulties of
this white boy's life, and once, as he walked on over the silent
needles, he felt an impulse to turn back and talk to young Sam
Arkwright, to sit down and try to explain to the youth what he could of
this hazardous adventure called Life. But then, he reflected, very
likely the boy would be offended at a serious talk from a negro. Also,
he thought that young Arkwright, being white, was really not within the
sphere of his ministry. He, Peter Siner, was a worker in the black world
of the South. He was part of the black world which the white South was
so meticulous to hide away, to keep out of sight and out of thought.
A certain vague sense of triumph trickled through some obscure corner of
Peter's mind. It was so subtle that Peter himself would have been the
first, in all good faith, to deny it and to affirm that all his motives
were altruistic. Once he looked back through the cedars. He could still
see the boy hunched over, chin in fist, staring at the mat of needles.
As Peter turned the brow of the Big Hill, he saw at its eastern foot the
village church, a plain brick building with a decaying spire.
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