"I sat down in the dark," he says, "the moon glinting in at the open
door. I sat with one leg over the chair and let my mind float."

He had received an offer of five hundred dollars for his office--the
amount of the mortgage--and in his moonlight reverie he decided to
dispose of it on those terms. This was in 1853.

His brother Samuel was no longer with him. Several months before, in
June, Sam decided he would go out into the world. He was in his
eighteenth year now, a good workman, faithful and industrious, but he had
grown restless in unrewarded service. Beyond his mastery of the trade he
had little to show for six years of hard labor. Once when he had asked
Orion for a few dollars to buy a second-hand gun, Orion, exasperated by
desperate circumstances, fell into a passion and rated him for thinking
of such extravagance. Soon afterward Sam confided to his mother that he
was going away; that he believed Orion hated him; that there was no
longer a place for him at home. He said he would go to St. Louis, where
Pamela was. There would be work for him in St. Louis, and he could send
money home. His intention was to go farther than St. Louis, but he dared
not tell her. His mother put together sadly enough the few belongings of
what she regarded as her one wayward boy; then she held up a little
Testament:

"I want you to take hold of the other end of this, Sam," she said, "and
make me a promise."

If one might have a true picture of that scene: the shin, wiry woman of
forty-nine, her figure as straight as her deportment, gray-eyed, tender,
and resolute, facing the fair-cheeked, auburn-haired youth of seventeen,
his eyes as piercing and unwavering as her own. Mother and son, they