nly chimerical, but
traitorous to my duties.

The hens were singing their cheerful, changeless song below the stable
wall; calves were bawling from the neighboring farm-yards and on the
mellow soil the shining, broadcast seeders were clattering to their
work, while over the greening hills a faint mist wavered, delicate as a
bride's veil. Was it not a kind of madness to exchange the security, the
peace, the comfort of this homestead, for the hardships of a trail whose
circuit could not be less than ten thousand miles, a journey which
offered possible injury and certain deprivation?

The thought which gave me most uneasiness was not my danger but the
knowledge that in leaving my mother to silently brood over the perils
which she naturally exaggerated, I was recreant to my pledge. Expression
was always elliptical with her; and I shall never know how keenly she
suffered during those days of preparation. Instead of acquiring a new
daughter, she seemed on the point of losing a son.

She grudged every moment of the hours which I spent in my study. There
was so little for her to do! She kept her chair during her waking hours
either on the porch overlooking the garden or in the kitchen supervising
the women at their work. Every slightest event was pitifully important
in her life. The passing of the railway trains, the milking of the cow,
the watering of the horses, the gathering of the eggs--these were
important events in her diary. My incessant journeyings, my distant
destinations lay far beyond her utmost imagining. To her my comings and
goings were as mysterious, as incalculable as the orbits of the moon,
and I think she must have sometimes questioned whether Hamlin Garland,
the historian, could possibly be the son for whom she had once knit
mittens and repaired kites.

If I had not been under contract, if I had not gone so far in
preparation and announcement that to quit would have been disgraceful, I
would have given up my trip on her account. "I am ashamed to turn back.
I must go on," I said. "I won't be gone long. I'll come out by way of
the Stickeen."

When the time came to say good-bye, she broke down utterly and I went
away with a painful constriction in my own throat, a lump which lasted
for hours. Not till on the second day as I saw droves of Canadian
antelope racing with the train, whilst flights of geese overhead gave
certain sign of the wilderness, did I regain my desire to explore the
valleys of the North.