"I'll try to go straight, mother," he replied, "but that's a good deal
to promise."

"It's all I'm going to ask of you, Peter," urged Mrs. Stirling.

"I have gone through four years of my life with nothing in it I couldn't
tell her," thought Peter. "If that's possible, I guess another four is."
Then he said aloud, "Well, mother, since you want it, I'll do it."

The reason of Peter's eagerness to get to New York, was chiefly to have
something definite to do. He tried to obtain this distraction of
occupation, at present, in a characteristic way, by taking excessively
long walks, and by struggling with his mother's winter supply of wood.
He thought that every long stride and every swing of the axe was working
him free from the crushing lack of purpose that had settled upon him. He
imagined it would be even easier when he reached New York. "There'll be
plenty to keep me busy there," was his mental hope.

All his ambitions and plans seemed in a sense to have become
meaningless, made so by the something which but ten days before had been
unknown to him. Like Moses he had seen the promised land. But Moses
died. He had seen it, and must live on without it. He saw nothing in the
future worth striving for, except a struggle to forget, if possible, the
sweetest and dearest memory he had ever known. He thought of the
epigram: "Most men can die well, but few can live well." Three weeks
before he had smiled over it and set it down as a bit of French
cynicism. Now--on the verge of giving his mental assent to the theory, a
pair of slate-colored eyes in some way came into his mind, and even
French wit was discarded therefrom.