his new
independence of Bill's to strengthen her, they could resist Martin more
successfully as different issues came up. She could manage to help her
boy get what he wanted out of life without his having to pay such a
terrible price as, the mine on one hand, and his father's displeasure on
the other, might exact, for she knew that if he persisted too long, the
break with Martin could never be bridged and that in the end his father
would evoke the full powers of the law to disinherit him and tie her own
hands as completely as possible in that direction.

But she was far too wise to press such arguments in her son's present
mood. They would have to drift for a while, she saw that clearly, until
she could gradually impress upon him how different farming would be if
he were his own master. In time, he might even come to understand how
much Martin needed her.

"Say you will," Bill, pleading, insistent, broke in on her train of
reflections, "I've always dreamed of this day, when we'd go away, and
now it's come. I can take care of you."

As he stood there, a glorious figure in his youthful self-confidence, a
turn of his head reminded her a second time of Martin, recalling sharply
the way her husband had looked the night he told her of his love for
the other Rose. He had been bothered by no fine qualms about abandoning
herself. She thought of his final surrender of love to wisdom. It was
only youth that dared pursue happiness--to purchase delicious idleness
by gambling with death. Billy was her boy. His dreams and hopes should
be hers; her way of life, the one that gave him the most joy. She would
follow him, if need be, to the end of the earth.

"Very well, son," she said simply, her voice breaking over the few
words. "If a year from now you still feel like this, I'll do as you
wish."

"You don't know how I hate him," muttered the boy. "It's only when I'm
tramping in the woods, or in the middle of some book I like that I can
forgive him for living. No, mother, I don't mean all that," he laughed,
giving her a bear-like hug.

It was in this more reasonable side, this ability to change his point of
view quickly when he became convinced he was wrong, that Mrs. Wade now
put her faith. She would give him plenty of rope, she decided, not
try to drive him. It would all come right, if she only waited, and she
prayed, nightly, with an increasing tranquillity, that he might be kept
safe from harm, taking deep comfort in the new l