ved them by setting out. I crossed the bridge before I came to it,
and all the way was easy. I could take no scrip for the journey, for I
had none; neither two coats, for I had but one; nor yet could I take the
blessing of any one, for to no one save the waitress did I entrust my
intentions. I set out on foot, and once on the road, I felt as free and
joyous as a bird. There were twenty-five miles to cover, and I expected
to do them from sun to sun of a late April day. Sometimes I ran for a
mile or two from sheer eagerness to arrive. Most of the way I sauntered
along thinking of nothing, overflowing with animal spirits. Enough the
freedom, the open sky, the earth, which had been lost to me for three
years. It did not occur to me that I was running away, not from outward
conditions, but from myself; that at last I had come to the not unusual
crisis in the life of boys. However, it was a very mild form of runaway,
twenty-five miles, and its objective my old home; not the lure of the
sea nor the army, nor yet the adventures of the dime novel hidden in the
hay mow. No, it was none of these, but strangely in contrast to them, an
impulsive, passionate awakening of memory, an attempted escape from a
future, which had been shown to me as in a vision, and from which I
shrank in fear and despair.

At noon I was half way between Grafton and Upton and I rested on a high
bank with my back against a stone wall. There I could see the church
spires of Milford town, and beyond, the land fell away toward
Bellingham. I ate some food that the waitress had given me for the
journey, and took the road again. Soon I was in Milford. The remainder
of the way was very familiar. I knew every house, rock and tree; yet
everything looked smaller than I anticipated. I hurried on as I wished
to arrive at Uncle Lyman's before his supper time, which I knew was
invariably at five o'clock the year round. Uncle Lyman's house, to which
I was going, was the house in which I was born. He had been my father's
most intimate friend. The house had always been like a home to me, even
after my family had one of their own. As I hurried along I saw again the
house, one-storied, and the elm tree, with its branches extending over
the roof, and arching the highway. I suddenly remembered the flat stone
that had been set in its bole for a seat, which the tree had so
overgrown that, as a child, I could sit there and be almost hidden from
sight; and the brook which flowed thro