At first he just shook his head, and then he opened the window, and said, "Hurry up. We got diphtheria here and nobody's allowed to speak to me. That's why the tollhouse is shut up. Ain't you 'fraid?"
I said, "I don't know what it is, and I'm awfully hungry and thirsty and I want to know the road to East Penniwell."
"Well," he said, "poor boy"; and handed me out a glass of milk and a piece of bread, and I was drinking the milk, when I heard some one yell at me. It was a man running up to the house, and the boy grabbed the cup away and said, "Here comes Pop. You'd better leg it." I ran as fast as I could out the gate and down the road he told me to take. The man didn't chase me far, and I didn't hear what he said, his dog barked so. But I didn't feel quite so tired, though I ached a lot still, and my feet were awful wet, through running right through a brook when the man called at me.
I went right on. Sometimes I lay down under a tree, sometimes I sat down by the road.
I don't see why a road that seems all right when you're going up it, seems so terrible when you are going down. But maybe it's because I made wrong turnings, and always when the men asked me if I'd ride with them a little ways, I said, "No," because I would have to tell them I belonged at Turners', and they might ask me about Henry, the Indian boy.
Last I took a turning that led me farther and farther down a road I never remember seeing before and there were no cross-road places; no farmhouses, and no man came along on a wagon. I just had to keep on, feeling sicker and sicker, till, just as I made a short turn, I came out on a road that led to Crosscup's farm and Rabbit Run Bridge!
My, wasn't I glad. But I wasn't going to Crosscup's house, not much! I knew what I'd do now. I'd get Mr. Taylor, and tell him, just as fast as I could.
That wasn't very fast, because my feet had needles in them, and dragged, but by and by I got there, and knocked at the door. Mr. Taylor opened it, with all the cats around him. I just began to speak, and say, "Good-morning, Mr. Taylor," when everything got kind of black and hazy, and I didn't remember any more.