his was forbidden ground with her, or whether
she now actually said something about it, they turned to talk of other
things. I'm not telling you all this from my own memory, which deals
with only a point or two. My father and mother used to recur to it
when I was older, and I am piecing out my story from their memories.

"My uncle, with all his temperamental pensiveness, was my aunt's stay
and cheer in the fits of depression which she paid with for her usual
gaiety. But these fits always began with some uncommon depression of
his--some effect of the forebodings he was subject to. Her opposition
to that kind of thing was purely unselfish, but certainly she dreaded
it for him as well as herself. I suppose there was a sort of conscious
silence in the others which betrayed them to her. 'Well,' she said,
laughing, 'have you been at it again? That poor child looks frightened
out of his wits.'

"They all laughed then, and my father said, hypocritically, 'I was
just going to ask Felix whether he expected to start East this week or
next.'

"My uncle tried to make light of what was always a heavy matter with
him. 'Well, yesterday,' he answered, 'I should have said next week;
but it's this week, now. I'm going on Wednesday.'

"'By stage or packet?' my father asked.

"'Oh, I shall take the canal to the lake, and get the boat for Buffalo
there,' my uncle said.

"They went on to speak of the trip to New York, and how much easier it
was then than it used to be when you had to go by stage over the
mountains to Philadelphia and on by stage again. Now, it seemed, you
got the Erie Canal packet at Buffalo and the Hudson River steamboat at
Albany, and reached New York in four or five days, in great comfort
without the least fatigue. They had all risen and my aunt had gone out
with her sisters-in-law to help them get their wraps. When they
returned, it seemed that they had been talking of the journey, too,
for she said to my mother, laughing again, 'Well, Richard may think
it's easy; but somehow Felix never expects to get home alive.'

"I don't think I ever heard my uncle laugh, but I can remember how he
smiled at my aunt's laughing, as he put his hand on her shoulder; I
thought it was somehow a very sad smile. On Wednesday I was allowed to
go with my aunt and cousin to see him off on the packet, which came up
from Cincinnati early in the morning; I had lain awake most of the
night, and then nearly overslept myself, and then was at t