but instead
looked steadily at her, causing uneasy doubts to invade
her mind. As for creeping into his room--after Seth
had passed his fifteenth year, she would have been half
afraid to do anything of the kind.

Once when he was a boy of sixteen, Seth in company with
two other boys ran away from home. The three boys
climbed into the open door of an empty freight car and
rode some forty miles to a town where a fair was being
held. One of the boys had a bottle filled with a
combination of whiskey and blackberry wine, and the
three sat with legs dangling out of the car door
drinking from the bottle. Seth's two companions sang
and waved their hands to idlers about the stations of
the towns through which the train passed. They planned
raids upon the baskets of farmers who had come with
their families to the fair. "We will five like kings
and won't have to spend a penny to see the fair and
horse races," they declared boastfully.

After the disappearance of Seth, Virginia Richmond
walked up and down the floor of her home filled with
vague alarms. Although on the next day she discovered,
through an inquiry made by the town marshal, on what
adventure the boys had gone, she could not quiet
herself. All through the night she lay awake hearing
the clock tick and telling herself that Seth, like his
father, would come to a sudden and violent end. So
determined was she that the boy should this time feel
the weight of her wrath that, although she would not
allow the marshal to interfere with his adventure, she
got out a pencil and paper and wrote down a series of
sharp, stinging reproofs she intended to pour out upon
him. The reproofs she committed to memory, going about
the garden and saying them aloud like an actor
memorizing his part.

And when, at the end of the week, Seth returned, a
little weary and with coal soot in his ears and about
his eyes, she again found herself unable to reprove
him. Walking into the house he hung his cap on a nail
by the kitchen door and stood looking steadily at her.
"I wanted to turn back within an hour after we had
started," he explained. "I didn't know what to do. I
knew you would be bothered, but I knew also that if I
didn't go on I would be ashamed of myself. I went
through with the thing for my own good. It was
uncomfortable, sleeping on wet straw, and two drunken
Negroes came and slept with us. When I stole a lunch
basket out of a farmer's wagon I couldn't help thinking
of his chil