I leave thee--how can I bear to part?" The light was burning in the
kitchen, and he went to his mother and kissed her. His face was aglow,
and she saw what had happened to him. She put him aside with, "Run on
to bed now, sonny; I've got a little work out here." And he left her.
In the sitting room only the moon gave light. He stood at the window a
moment, and then turned to his melodeon. His hands fell on the major
chord of "G," and without knowing what he was playing he began
"Largo." He played his soul into his music, and looking up, whispered
the name "Ellen" rapturously over and over, and then as the music
mounted to its climax the whole world's mystery, and his personal
thought of the meaning of life revelled through his brain, and he
played on, not stopping at the close but wandering into he knew not
what mazes of harmony. When his hands dropped, he was playing "The
Long and Weary Day," and his mother was standing behind him humming
it. When he rose from the bench, she ran her fingers through his hair
and spoke the words of the song, "'My lone watch keeping,' John, 'my
lone watch keeping.' But I think it has been worth while."

Then she left him and he went to bed, with the moon in his room, and
the murmur of waters lulling him to sleep. But he looked out into the
sky a long time before his dream came, and then it slipped in gently
through the door of a nameless hope. For he wished to meet her in the
moon that night, but when they did meet, the white veil of the falling
waters of the dam blew across her face and he could not brush it away.
For one is bold in dreams.

A little after sunrise the next morning John rode away from his
mother's door, on one of his horses, leading the other one. He was
going up the hill to get Bob Hendricks, and the two were to ride to
Lawrence. He had been promised work, carrying newspapers, and the