ish
directions. "You go past the wheat field an' past the maple spring, an' at
the dead tree by Aunt Ailsey's cabin you turn into the road with the
chestnuts. Then you just keep on till you get there--an' if you don't ever
get there, come back to breakfast."

The boy had started off, but as she ended, he turned and lifted his hat.

"I am very much obliged to you," he said, with a quaint little bow; and
Betty bobbed a courtesy in her nightgown before she fled back into the
house.

I

THE COMING OF THE BOY

The boy trudged on bravely, his stick sounding the road. Sharp pains ran
through his feet where his shoes had worn away, and his head was swimming
like a top. The only pleasant fact of which he had consciousness was that
the taste of the currants still lingered in his mouth.

When he reached the maple spring, he swung himself over the stone wall and
knelt down for a drink, dipping the water in his hand. The spring was low
and damp and fragrant with the breath of mint which grew in patches in the
little stream. Overhead a wild grapevine was festooned, and he plucked a
leaf and bent it into a cup from which he drank. Then he climbed the wall
again and went on his way.

He was wondering if his mother had ever walked along this road on so
brilliant a night. There was not a tree beside it of which she had not told
him--not a shrub of sassafras or sumach that she had not carried in her
thoughts. The clump of cedars, the wild cherry, flowering in the spring
like snow, the blasted oak that stood where the branch roads met, the
perfume of the grape blossoms on the wall--these were as familiar to him as
the streets of the little crowded town in which he had lived. It was as if
nature had stood still here for twelve long summers, or as if he were
walking, ghostlike, amid the ever present memories of his mother's heart.

His mother! He drew his sleeve across his eyes and went on more slowly. She
was beside him on the road, and he saw her clearly, as he had seen her
every day until last year--a bright, dark woman, with slender, blue-veined
hands and merry eyes that all her tears had not saddened. He saw her in a
long, black dress, with upraised arm, putting back a crepe veil from her
merry eyes, and smiling as his father struck her. She had always smiled
when she was hurt--even when the blow was heavier than usual, and the blood
gushed from her temple, she had fallen with a smile. And when, at last, he
had seen her