"It's a nasty neighbourhood," said Mr. Paragon.
From that moment the shortest route became for Peter a North-West Passage. He would stand at the fatal corner, looking up the street with its numberless small entries. Then, on a memorable day, he plunged.
First he had a soaring sense of his audacity. He felt he had left the laws behind. To win through now must entirely depend on his personal resource. At the doors of an immense factory men, women, and boys stood in line, waiting for the signal to blow them into work. Peter felt with a sinking at the stomach that he was an object of curiosity. He indeed looked strangely out of place in his neat suit of a small tar, with a sailor's knot foppishly fastened at the breast. The curious eyes of the waiting group followed him up the street. He was painfully aware, as he passed, that jocular remarks in sleepy midland slang were freely exchanged upon his apparition. Higher up the street a little rough stopped for a moment and stared, then started into an alley screaming.
The street was suddenly alive. Peter, flinging self-respect to the winds, started to run. A stone caught him smartly on the heel, and he thought he was lost. But another cry was almost immediately sounded. The helmet of a policeman came glinting up the street.
The roughs vanished as quickly as they had appeared.
Peter did not again venture into this district alone. At least a dozen of his school friends lived in the western suburb. He formed them into a company, which daily took the forbidden way to school. Such was the origin of a feud whose deeds and passages would fill a chronicle. Peter's company was long remembered.
He soon made some striking discoveries. You cannot fight with a persistent enemy, even though his methods are not your methods, without touching his good points. It soon became evident that he and the roughs were less bitterly opposed than either of them was to the police. It was also clear that the men and women of the factory were "sports." They encouraged the boys quite impartially, and saw fair play.
Peter particularly remembered one morning of snow and dirt outside the big factory, when he slipped and fell, squirming with bitter pain of a snowball hard as ice in his ear. A stalwart woman with naked arms grimed with lead, picked him up and pressed him in a comfortable and friendly way against her bosom. She was in that dark hour an angel of strength and solace. The incident always lived in Peter's memory along with the faint smell in his nostrils of the factory grime.
On the morning after the transit of Jupiter's third moon Peter was late. His company had not waited. Peter had to pass his enemies alone.
He still wondered at the change which had come over him yesterday. Nothing that morning seemed of the least importance save a curious necessity to be still and inquire of himself what had happened.