again and went on his way.

He was wondering if his mother had ever walked along this road on so
brilliant a night. There was not a tree beside it of which she had not told
him--not a shrub of sassafras or sumach that she had not carried in her
thoughts. The clump of cedars, the wild cherry, flowering in the spring
like snow, the blasted oak that stood where the branch roads met, the
perfume of the grape blossoms on the wall--these were as familiar to him as
the streets of the little crowded town in which he had lived. It was as if
nature had stood still here for twelve long summers, or as if he were
walking, ghostlike, amid the ever present memories of his mother's heart.

His mother! He drew his sleeve across his eyes and went on more slowly. She
was beside him on the road, and he saw her clearly, as he had seen her
every day until last year--a bright, dark woman, with slender, blue-veined
hands and merry eyes that all her tears had not saddened. He saw her in a
long, black dress, with upraised arm, putting back a crepe veil from her
merry eyes, and smiling as his father struck her. She had always smiled
when she was hurt--even when the blow was heavier than usual, and the blood
gushed from her temple, she had fallen with a smile. And when, at last, he
had seen her lying in her coffin with her baby under her clasped hands,
that same smile had been fixed upon her face, which had the brightness and
the chill repose of marble.

Of all that she had thrown away in her foolish marriage, she had retained
one thing only--her pride. To the end she had faced her fate with all the
insolence with which she faced her husband. And yet--"the Lightfoots were
never proud, my son," she used to say; "they have no false pride, but they
know their place, and in England, between you and me, they were more
important than the Washingtons. Not that the General wasn't a great man,