of
manhood. Now off for college, to his university in New England.
As his father and she stood side by side (he being too frail to
take that chill morning ride with his son) he waved his hand
protectingly after him, crying out: "He is a good boy." And
she, having some wide vision of other mothers of the land who
during these same autumn days were bidding God-speed to their
idols--picked youth of the republic--she with some wide vision of
this large fact stood a proud mother among them all, feeling sure
that he would take foremost place in his college for good honest
work and for high character and gentle manners and gallant
bearing--with not a dark spot in him.

It was toward the close of the first session, after she had learned
the one kind of letter he always wrote, that his letters changed.
She could not have explained how they were changed, could not have
held the pages up to the inspection of any one else and have said,
"See! it is here." But she knew it was there, and it stayed there.
She waited for his father to notice it; but if he ever noticed it,
he never told her: nor did she ever confide her discovery to him.

When vacation came, it brought a request from Rowan that he might
be allowed to spend the summer with college friends farther
north--camping, fishing, hunting, sailing, seeing more of his
country. His father's consent was more ready than her own. The
second session passed and with the second vacation the request was
renewed. "Why does he not come home? Why does he not wish to come
home?" she said, wandering restlessly over the house with his
letter in her hands; going up to his bedroom and sitting down in
the silence of it and looking at his bed--which seemed so strangely
white that day--looking at all the preparations she had made for
his comfort. "Why does he not come?"

Near the close of the third session he came quickly enough,
summoned by his father's short fatal illness.

Some time passed before she observed anything in him but natural
changes after so long an absence and grief over his great loss. He
shut himself in his room for some days, having it out alone with
himself, a young man's first solemn accounting to a father who has
become a memory. Gradually there began to emerge his new care of
her, and tenderness, a boy's no more. And he stepped forward
easily into his place as the head of affairs, as his brother's
guardian. But as time wore on and she grew used to him as so mu