t she always was when spring
came to remind her of her husband's promise. Somehow, well used as he
was to her mental wanderings, they made him uneasy to-night. His
father had left home on a fancied mission, a duty he believed to be a
revelation given by God through Jacob Cochrane. The farm did not miss
him much at first, Ivory reflected bitterly, for since his fanatical
espousal of Cochranism his father's interest in such mundane matters
as household expenses had diminished month by month until they had no
meaning for him at all. Letters to wife and boy had come at first,
but after six months--during which he had written from many places,
continually deferring the date of his return-they had ceased altogether.
The rest was silence. Rumors of his presence here or there came from
time to time, but though Parson Lane and Dr. Perry did their best, none
of them were ever substantiated.

Where had those years of wandering been passed, and had they all been
given even to an imaginary and fantastic service of God? Was his father
dead? If he were alive, what could keep him from writing? Nothing but a
very strong reason, or a very wrong one, so his son thought, at times.

Since Ivory had grown to man's estate, he understood that in the
later days of Cochrane's preaching, his "visions," "inspirations," and
"revelations" concerning the marriage bond were a trifle startling from
the old-fashioned, orthodox point of view. His most advanced disciples
were to hold themselves in readiness to renounce their former vows and
seek "spiritual consorts," sometimes according to his advice, sometimes
as their inclinations prompted.

Had Aaron Boynton forsaken, willingly, the wife of his youth, the
mother of his boy? If so, he must have realized to what straits he
was subjecting them. Ivory had not forgotten those first few years of
grinding poverty, anxiety, and suspense. His mother's mind had stood the
strain bravely, but it gave way at last; not, however, until that fatal
winter journey to New Hampshire, when cold, exposure, and fatigue
did their worst for her weak body. Religious enthusiast, exalted and
impressionable, a natural mystic, she had probably always been, far more
so in temperament, indeed, than her husband; but although she left home
on that journey a frail and heartsick woman, she returned a different
creature altogether, blurred and confused in mind, with clouded memory
and irrational fancies.

She must have given up hope,