ery night during his
boyhood, he left it on the hall table, and going out the front way to the
garden, walked up and down the long straight walk, between the sweet peas
and rose bushes, for more than an hour, until, having fought to no
conclusion the battle into which a new foe had entered, he returned to
the house and went noiselessly to his room.

Here, in place of the confusion he had left, quiet and order reigned. All
his clothes were laid away in their old places. He had but to reach his
hand inside the closet, the door of which hesitated before opening in its
familiar way, to find his night gear; the sheets were turned down at the
exact angle, and the pillows arranged one crosswise, one upright, as he
liked them,--his mother's remembering touch was upon everything.

He undressed without striking a light, and lay down, only to look
wakefully out at the dark lattice of tree branches against the moonlit
sky. Presently a step sounded on the stairs and paused at his partly open
door. He raised himself on his elbow, and peering through the crack saw
his mother standing there in night-dress and short sack, shading the
candle with her hand as she used when he was a little chap, to make sure
that he was safe asleep and had not perhaps crept out the window to go
coon hunting with the bigger boys,--a proceeding his father always winked
at, but which she feared would lead him to overdo and get a fever.

"I'm here, mother," he said cheerfully.

"Are you quite comfortable, Horace? Is there nothing that you want?"

He hesitated a moment, and then said frankly, "Yes and no, mother."

"Is it anything that I can do for you?" she asked, coming into the room
and smoothing his hair as she spoke.

"Ah, that is the _no_ of it, and the hard part," he answered, capturing
the hand and holding it tight between his own.

"And the hard part for your old mother too, when the one thing comes
that she cannot give or do. Whatever it is, don't shut me out from it,
Horace,--that is, unless you must," and tucking the light summer quilt in
Under the pillow by one of his hands, she kissed his forehead and went
away.

Horace Bradford must have slept, for his next consciousness was of the
fresh wind and light of morning, and as he drew his cramped hand from
under his pillow, something soft and filmy came with it,--a woman's
handkerchief edged with lace.

For a minute he held it in surprise, and then began to search the
corners for the marking