traveler responded; then he seated himself well astern to enjoy the
views, and felt as if he had made a thousand journeys. He bought a
newspaper, and began to read it with much pride and a beating heart.
The little old woman came and sat beside him, and talked straight on
whether he listened or not, until he was afraid of what the other
passengers might think, but nobody looked that way, and he could not
find anything in the paper that he cared to read. Alone, but
unfettered and aflame with courage; to himself he was not the boy who
went away, but the proud man who one day would be coming home.

"Goin' to Boston, be ye?" asked the old lady for the third time; and
it was still a pleasure to say yes, when the boat swung round, and
there, far away on its gray and green pasture slope, with the dark
evergreens standing back, were the low gray house, and the little
square barn, and the lines of fence that shut in his home. He strained
his eyes to see if any one were watching from the door. He had almost
forgotten that they could see him still. He sprang to the boat's side:
yes, his mother remembered; there was something white waving from the
doorway. The whole landscape faded from his eyes except that faraway
gray house; his heart leaped back with love and longing; he gazed and
gazed, until a height of green forest came between and shut the
picture out. Then the country boy went on alone to make his way in the
wide world.

IN DARK NEW ENGLAND DAYS.

I.

The last of the neighbors was going home; officious Mrs. Peter Downs
had lingered late and sought for additional housework with which to
prolong her stay. She had talked incessantly, and buzzed like a busy
bee as she helped to put away the best crockery after the funeral
supper, while the sisters Betsey and Hannah Knowles grew every moment
more forbidding and unwilling to speak. They lighted a solitary small
oil lamp at last, as if for Sunday evening idleness, and put it on the
side table in the kitchen.

"We ain't intending to make a late evening of it," announced Betsey,
the elder, standing before Mrs. Downs in an expectant, final way,
making an irresistible opportunity for saying good-night. "I'm sure
we're more than obleeged to ye,--ain't we, Hannah?--but I don't feel's
if we ought to keep ye longer. We ain't going to do no more to-night,
but set down a spell and kind of collect ourselves, and then make for
bed."

Susan Downs offered one more plea. "I'd