tting-room
without speaking. His mother sat there alone, in her usual place--how
many nights he had seen the lamplight slant at that particular angle
across her fresh cheek and the fine wrinkles about her eyes! He was
going to add another wrinkle to the number now--soon they would creep
down and encroach upon the smoothness of the cheek.

She looked up and saw that his glance was turned to the crowded
bookshelves behind her.

"There must be nearly a thousand of them," he said as their eyes met.

"Books? Yes--with your father's. Why--were you thinking...?" She started
up suddenly and crossed over to him.

"Too many for wanderers," he continued, drawing her hands to his breast;
then, as she clung to him, weeping and trembling a little: "It had to
be, mother," he said, kissing her penitently where the fine wrinkles
died into the cheek.

VIII

AMHERST'S dismissal was not to take effect for a month; and in the
interval he addressed himself steadily to his task.

He went through the routine of the work numbly; but his intercourse with
the hands tugged at deep fibres of feelings. He had always shared, as
far as his duties allowed, in the cares and interests of their few free
hours: the hours when the automatic appendages of the giant machine
became men and women again, with desires and passions of their own.
Under Amherst's influence the mixed elements of the mill-community had
begun to crystallize into social groups: his books had served as an
improvised lending-library, he had organized a club, a rudimentary
orchestra, and various other means of binding together the better
spirits of the community. With the older men, the attractions of the
Eldorado, and kindred inducements, often worked against him; but among
the younger hands, and especially the boys, he had gained a personal
ascendency that it was bitter to relinquish.

It was the severing of this tie that cost him most pain in the final
days at Westmore; and after he had done what he could to console his
mother, and to put himself in the way of getting work elsewhere, he
tried to see what might be saved out of the ruins of the little polity
he had built up. He hoped his influence might at least persist in the
form of an awakened instinct of fellowship; and he gave every spare hour
to strengthening the links he had tried to form. The boys, at any rate,
would be honestly sorry to have him go: not, indeed, from the profounder
reasons that affected him, but