gotten), he took unspoken leave of many other places: of the
bookstore where he had bought the masterpieces of his masters; of
the little Italian apple-man--who would never again have so simple
a customer for his slightly damaged fruit; of several tall, proud,
well-frosted church spires now turning rosy in the sunrise; of a
big, handsome house standing in a fashionable street, with black
coal smoke pouring out of the chimneys. There the friends of his
boyhood "boarded"; there they were now, asleep in luxurious beds,
or gone away for the holidays, he knew not which: all he did know
was that they were gone far away from him along life's other
pathways.

Soon the shops on each side were succeeded by homesteads; gradually
these stood farther apart as farm-houses set back from the
highroad; the street had become a turnpike, they were in open
country and the lad was on his way to his father and mother.

In the afternoon, at one of the stops for watering horses, he had
his traps and trappings put out. From this place a mud road wound
across the country to his neighborhood; and at a point some two
miles distant, a pair of bars tapped it as an outlet and inlet for
the travel on his father's land.

Leaving his things at the roadside farmhouse with the promise that
he would return for them, the lad struck out--not by the lane, but
straight across country.

It was a mild winter day without wind, without character--one of
the days on which Nature seems to take no interest in herself and
creates no interest in others. The sky was overcrowded with low,