ratings, behind which an untamed little wild beast sat up and
chittered at his harmless foes. "He's a whopping old fellow," said
Elisha admiringly. "Big Jim Hooper sha'n't have him!" and as he opened
the trap, Lydia had hardly time to perch herself high on the ledge,
before the woodchuck tumbled and scuttled along the short green turf,
and was lost among the clumps of juniper and bayberry just beyond.

"I feel just like him," said the boy. "I want to get up to Boston just
as bad as that. See here, now!" and he flung a gallant cart-wheel of
himself in the same direction, and then stood on his head and waved
his legs furiously in the air. "I feel just like that."

Lydia, who had been tearful all the morning, looked at him in vague
dismay. Only a short time ago she had never been made to feel that her
brother was so much older than herself. They had been constant
playmates; but now he was like a grown man, and cared no longer for
their old pleasures. There was all possible difference between them
that there can be between fifteen years and twelve, and Lydia was
nothing but a child.

"Come, come, where be ye?" shouted the old grandfather, and they both
started guiltily. Elisha rubbed some dry grass out of his
short-cropped hair, and the little sister came down from her ledge. At
that moment the real pang of parting shot through her heart; her
brother belonged irrevocably to a wider world.

"Ma'am Stover has sent for ye to come over; she wants to say good-by
to ye!" shouted the grandfather, leaning on his two canes at the end
of the bam. "Come, step lively, an' remember you ain't got none too
much time, an' the boat ain't goin' to wait a minute for nobody."

"Ma'am Stover?" repeated the boy, with a frown. He and his sister knew
only too well the pasture path between the two houses. Ma'am Stover
was a bedridden woman, who had seen much trouble,--a town charge in
her old age. Her neighbors gave to her generously out of their own
slender stores. Yet with all this poverty and dependence, she held
firm sway over the customs and opinions of her acquaintance, from the
uneasy bed where she lay year in and year out, watching the far sea
line beyond a pasture slope.

The young people walked fast, sometimes running a little way,
light-footed, the boy going ahead, and burst into their neighbor's
room out of breath.

She was calm and critical, and their excitement had a sudden chill.

"So the great day's come at last, 'Lisha?" s