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his knee. A moment later several hounds began to bark.
    Sonny crouched in the corner of the step. Henry tore his hand from the boy’s frantic grip.
    “What’s that?” Sonny asked, his voice quivering.
    Henry backed tighter against the door, feeling behind him for the latch.
    Instead of saying anything, Henry shook his head, warning Sonny to be quiet. Then he reached down and touched the boy’s head.
    “On your way, boy,” he told Sonny in a husky whisper. “This ain’t no time to be hanging around my back door. There ain’t no telling when the white folks will start swarming around here looking for you. They might be out there in the dark creeping up here right this minute.”
    Sonny threw both arms around Henry’s legs. Henry could not shake him off.
    “I don’t want to go away from here, Henry,” he said like a child lost in the dark. His eyes fastened on Henry’s gleaming face. “I want to stay where Mammy is.”
    “Shut your mouth about Mammy. This ain’t no time to be talking about Mammy. You went and let a lowdown white girl get you into trouble, and now you got to get your own self out of it. First thing you know you’ll have both me and Mammy in a mess ourselves. The white folks ain’t going to stand for no butting in now, even if it was Mammy. Go on away from here like I done told you.”
    Sonny held him tighter.
    “Will you tell Mammy for me that I didn’t do nothing, Henry? Tell Mammy it wasn’t none of my fault at all. Tell her it was Miss Katy who run out of the bushes and grabbed me. Will you tell Mammy that, Henry?”
    “Sure,” Henry said eagerly, pushing Sonny away from him. “I’ll tell Mammy the first chance I get. Right now there ain’t going to be no time to do nothing except hide out from them white folks on the hunt till they finish whatever they’re going to do. Now, you go on off like I done told you already before. I’m getting scareder every minute I have to stand here like this.”
    Henry tore Sonny’s arms from him and jumped back through the doorway. He slammed the door shut and bolted it tightly on the inside, leaving Sonny clinging to the steps.
    For a while Sonny crouched where he was, too frightened even to turn his head and look behind him. The moon still had not come up, but the starry night looked as if it had grown much brighter since midnight. When Sonny did find enough courage to turn his head and glance behind him, he could see the fence-rows crisscrossing the wide level land as plainly as he had seen them during the day when the sun was shining. Out across the fields he caught a glimpse of the persimmon trees jutting up like hands against the sky. He shut his eyes tightly, turning back again to look at Henry’s cabin door. The cabin in which he himself lived with Mammy was almost out of sight, it was that far away, and he was afraid to move away from the shadow of the building where he was.
    The dozen or more cabins in the quarters where Bob Watson’s Negro field-hands and tenants lived were scattered along both sides of the lane for a distance of half a mile. There were still no lights visible in the quarters. Sonny beat on Henry’s door with the flat of his hand, calling Henry. There was no answer. He crept on his hands and knees around the corner of the cabin and raised himself just high enough to put his eyes on the level of a crack under the tightly closed wooden shutter over the only window.
    But Vi had already covered the pine chunks with ashes. He could not see even a gleam of light in the room.
    “Henry!” he whispered through the crack.
    There was no answer for a long time, even though he thought he heard Vi and Henry whispering to each other. The only other sound he could hear was the soft padding on the floor when Vi and Henry moved in their bare feet. They had taken off their shoes so as not to make any noise.
    “Henry!” he whispered again, much louder than before. “Henry!”
    “What you want now, boy?” Henry whispered back from