d swore joyfully, and rolled in its
blankets to sleep under the stars.

Upon a Monday noon likewise (for things will happen so) some tearful
people in petticoats waved handkerchiefs at a train that was just
leaving Bennington, Vermont. A girl's face smiled back at them once, and
withdrew quickly, for they must not see the smile die away.

She had with her a little money, a few clothes, and in her mind a rigid
determination neither to be a burden to her mother nor to give in to
that mother's desires. Absence alone would enable her to carry out
this determination. Beyond these things, she possessed not much except
spelling-books, a colonial miniature, and that craving for the unknown
which has been mentioned. If the ancestors that we carry shut up inside
us take turns in dictating to us our actions and our state of mind,
undoubtedly Grandmother Stark was empress of Molly's spirit upon this
Monday.

At Hoosic Junction, which came soon, she passed the up-train bound back
to her home, and seeing the engineer and the conductor,--faces that she
knew well,--her courage nearly failed her, and she shut her eyes against
this glimpse of the familiar things that she was leaving. To keep
herself steady she gripped tightly a little bunch of flowers in her
hand.

But something caused her eyes to open; and there before her stood Sam
Bannett, asking if he might accompany her so far as Rotterdam Junction.

"No!" she told him with a severity born from the struggle she was making
with her grief. "Not a mile with me. Not to Eagle Bridge. Good-by."

And Sam--what did he do? He obeyed her, I should like to be sorry for
him. But obedience was not a lover's part here. He hesitated, the golden
moment hung hovering, the conductor cried "All aboard!" the train went,
and there on the platform stood obedient Sam, with his golden moment
gone like a butterfly.

After Rotterdam Junction, which was some forty minutes farther, Molly
Wood sat bravely up in the through car, dwelling upon the unknown. She
thought that she had attained it in Ohio, on Tuesday morning, and wrote
a letter about it to Bennington. On Wednesday afternoon she felt sure,
and wrote a letter much more picturesque. But on the following day,
after breakfast at North Platte, Nebraska, she wrote a very long letter
indeed, and told them that she had seen a black pig on a white pile of
buffalo bones, catching drops of water in the air as they fell from the
railroad tank. She also wro