the throes of her son's soul, a
little afraid of socialism, materialism, and all the other isms,
proposed that Jack should take a journey West or South, and have a
glimpse of the men and things beyond this narrow boundary.

"Grandmother grows feebler all the time now; and, being past ninety, we
can't expect to keep her much longer. Of course, Jack, when she is gone,
I shall have no tie but you; and, if it suited you to settle elsewhere,
I should not object. You are young and ambitious, and I ought to think
of your advancement. There never has been a time since your poor
father's death that you could be so well spared;" yet the mother sighed.
"And you have been a good son, Jack: you have given up many a wish
cheerfully to two poor old women."

"Don't call yourself an old woman," said Jack almost gruffly, then he
stooped to kiss her.

His heart gave a great boyish bound.

"Good-by, old Yerbury!" he cried exultantly one morning, quite sure of a
new, glad life elsewhere.

"Though I shall be sorry to leave Sylvie and Maverick," he thought.
"These old towns do grind the very soul out of a fellow who has any
desire or energy in him. The world isn't all alike, I know," giving his
chestnut mane a toss like a young, mettlesome colt.

CHAPTER X.

IF Jack Darcy had taken his tour for pure pleasure and enjoyment, the
time was ill chosen in every respect. Winter was bad enough; but an
unprosperous one, full of financial clouds and storms, and scurrying
drifts of distrust, was not calculated to make the way brilliant.

But he had one glorious enjoyment to begin with. He went straight to
Niagara, and took his first glimpse of it in its awesome majesty of
frost and ice. From that high exaltation we call worship, through every
intermediate degree and sense of beauty, to that of a delicate and
minute fairy dream. The winter sun radiating glowing tints, with skies
of sapphire and opal, the great stretches of wordless wonder, bound hand
and foot like some old Norse god amid his ice-fields; the one night when
a full moon silvered it with prismatic grandeur, and made of the
glittering ice-crystals entrances to diamond-mines of fabled genii,
touching him weirdly with this unearthly splendor; and the next solemn
day, when the very sky seemed chilled to unfallen snow, and the
ice-caverns turned a dull blue, reminding him of descriptions of polar
scenery, and filling his soul with a sense of boundless solitude.

Then he began