our heart: but forgive me." But he could not say this: he
did not believe that he had done wrong. Yet all that he would now have
to show in their eyes would be the year of his wasted life, and a trunk
full of the books that had ruined him.

Ah, those two years before he had started to college, during which they
had lived happily together! Their pride in him! their self-denial,
affection--all because he was to be a scholar and a minister!

He fancied he could see them as they sat in the house this moment, not
dreaming he was anywhere near. One on each side of the fireplace; his
mother wearing her black dress and purple shawl: a ball of yarn and
perhaps a tea-cake in her lap; some knitting on her needles; she knit,
she never mended. But his father would be mending--leather perhaps, and
sewing, as he liked to sew, with hog bristles--the beeswax and the awls
lying in the bottom of a chair drawn to his side. There would be no
noises in the room otherwise: he could hear the stewing of the sap in
the end of a fagot, the ticking of one clock, the fainter ticking of
another in the adjoining room, like a disordered echo. They would not
be talking; they would be thinking of him. He shut his eyes, compressed
his lips, shook his head resolutely, and leaped down.

He had gone about twenty yards, when he heard a quick, incredulous bark
down by the house and his dog appeared in full view, looking up that
way, motionless. Then he came on running and barking resentfully, and a
short distance off stopped again.

"Captain," he called with a quivering voice.

With ears laid back and one cry of joy the dog was on him. The lad
stooped and drew him close. Neither at that moment had any articulate
speech nor needed it. As soon as he was released, the dog, after
several leaps toward his face, was off in despair either of expressing
or of containing his joy, to tell the news at the house. David
laggingly followed.

As he stepped upon the porch, piled against the wall beside the door
were fagots as he used to see them. When he reached the door itself, he
stopped, gazing foolishly at those fagots, at the little gray lichens
on them: he could not knock, he could not turn the knob without
knocking. But his step had been heard. His mother opened the door and
peered curiously out.

"Why, it's Davy!" she cried. "Davy! Davy!"

She dropped her knitting and threw her arms around him.

"David! David!" exclaimed his father, with a glad proud voice