Ef Pete goes to takin' his half in the middle, and tryin' to make you take yourn on both sides, jest kick him." In this comfortless bed "in the furdest corner," Ralph found sleep out of the question.

Pete took three-fourths of the bed, and Hannah took all of his thoughts.

So he lay, and looked out through the cracks in the "clapboards" (as they call rough shingles in the old West) at the stars.
For the clouds had now broken away.

And he lay thus recounting to himself, as a miser counts the pieces that compose his hoard, every step of that road from the time he had overtaken Hannah in the hollow to the fence.

Then he imagined again the pleasure of helping her over, and then he retraced the ground to the box-elder tree at the spring, and repeated to himself the conversation until he came to the part in which she said that only time and God could help her.