"Say it three times."

"I promise, I promis. . I proms.. And then he was off.

he repeated in ritual to the voice.

Mother's patent purse was on the dresser in the bedroom. Dennis took it down and counted out thirty cents from a small change pouch. He went into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. There were two small bottles together on the top shelf. He took them and rolled them up in a blue bathtowell with his swimming trunks.

To find the path to Watkins Hill Memorial Swimming Pool you went through the Bradford's backyard, along the wall behind Gordon's place, turned left at the telephone pole, walked on the slope behind the garages to the field and across the field to the clump of trees with peeling bark. And there the path began. It wound through the tall trees and underbrush turning gradually uphill from the subdivision to the old section, half a mile to the pool.

Dennis was wont to dawdle on the path due to the sharp incline of the hill but today he moved along the dusty sun-mottled by-way with a purpose known only to himself. The rolled blue bathtowel was clutched tightly under his arm.

Sounds in the distance and then the discernible thud of running feet ahead startled him. Dennis moved off the path into some bushes on the right and remained concealed. Two large boys came bolting around a bend running at full tilt in a rough and tumble downhill race shouting as they came one behind the other. The runners disappeared as suddenly as they had come. One of the runners was Frank Brandford. Dennis had not recognized the second boy. He was glad to have avoided them.

Renewing his journey he kept his eyes on the path, concentrating on the trees. His eyes searched for one tree in particular. It was his landmark. As he walked on he thought in a moment of doubt that he had come too far and passed it by, but at last he saw his goal on the path ahead a few paces distant, its branches crooking low to the ground. One of the branches protruding into the path was dead and leafless. That was how he recognized it.