knowledge is power, and I know he was right. I feel like a man
with his hands tied, because I am so ignorant."

"You are hardly a man yet, Winthrop; you are only a boy in
years."

"I am almost sixteen, mother, and I haven't taken the first
step yet."

What should the first step be? A question in the minds of
both; the answer -- a blank.

"How long have you been thinking of this?"

"Since last spring, mother."

"Didn't Will's going put it in your head?"

"That gave me the first thought; but it would have made no
difference, mother; it would have come, sooner or later. I
know it would, by my feeling ever since."

Mrs. Landholm's eye wandered round the room, the very walls in
their humbleness and roughness reminding her anew of the
labour and self-denial it had cost to rear them, and then to
furnish them, and that was now expended in keeping the inside
warm. Every brown beam and little window-sash could witness
the story of privation and struggle, if she would let her mind
go back to it; the associations were on every hand; neither
was the struggle over. She turned her back upon the room, and