flying to me. I had seen plenty of railway tracks and trains in New
York; but I had to come to Wisconsin to patronize one.

I rode on, thinking little of this new experience, as I remember, so
filled was I with the hate of John Rucker which almost made me forget my
love for my mother. Perhaps the one was only the reverse side of the
other. I had made up my mind what to do. I would try hard not to kill
Rucker, though I tried him and condemned him to death in my own mind
several times for every one of the eighty miles I rode; but I knew that
this vengeance was not for me.

I would take my mother away from him, though, in spite of everything;
and she and I would move on to a new home, somewhere, living happily
together for the rest of our lives.

I was happy when I thought of this home, in which, with my new-found,
fresh strength, my confidence in myself, my knack of turning my hand to
any sort of common work, my ability to defend her against everything and
everybody--against all the Ruckers in the world--my skill in so many
things that would make her old age easy and happy, I would repay her for
all this long miserable time,--the cruelty of Rucker when she took me
out of the factory while he was absent, the whippings she had seen him
give me, the sacrifices she had made to give me the little schooling I
had had, the nights she had sewed to make my life a little easier, the
tears she dropped on my bed when she came and tucked me in when I was
asleep, the pangs of motherhood, and the pains worse than those of
motherhood which she had endured because she was poor, and married to
a beast.

I would make all this up to her if I could. I went into Madison, much as