ashamed to know.

In all these four years he did not come home. He would have liked to but
the trip was prohibitively expensive.

Late in the fall of 1861, he received a letter from his mother
containing a ten-dollar bill. It was a short letter. "Your father can't
live more than a week. Come at once."

Jason put his head down on that letter and sobbed, then dried his eyes
and sought the doctor, who loaned him the rest of the money needed for
the trip.

The minister's circuit had swung him round again to High Hill. Jason
disembarked from the packet late one November afternoon, carrying his
carpet bag. Even in November, High Hill was beautiful. Through his
sadness, Jason again felt the thrill of the giant headlands, the
thousand hills of his boyish imaginings.

There was the same little cottage, more weather-beaten than he had
remembered it. His mother was waiting for him at the door. The four
years had changed her, yet she seemed to Jason more beautiful than his
mental picture of her had been.

She kissed him with trembling lips. "He's still with us," she whispered.
"I'm sure he waited for you."

"What is the matter with him?" asked Jason, huskily, as he deposited his
carpet bag on the sitting-room table.

"Lung fever. He took a bad cold a month ago coming home from West
Virginia in the rain. He was absent-minded, you know. If it hadn't been
for Pilgrim, I don't think he'd ever got here."

"Pilgrim?" asked Jason, warming his hands at the fire.

"Surely I've written you about Pilgrim. Father bought him soon after you
left. He's the wisest horse that ever lived. If you're warm, now, Jason,
come to your father."

He followed her into the bedroom which opened off the kitchen. His
father lay on the feather bed, his eyes closed. O how worn--O how
changed! Young Jason was hardened to suffering and death. He had not
realized that to the sickness and death of one's own, nothing can harden
us. He stood breathing hard while his mother stooped over the bed.

"Ethan," she said softly, "our boy is here."

Brother Wilkins opened his eyes and smiled faintly. He tried to say
something and Jason sprang to take his hand.

"Oh, he wants to speak to you and can't. O my poor dear! O Ethan, my
dearest."

Jason's mother broke down. Jason put his finger on his father's wrist.

After a long moment, "Mother, he's gone," he whispered.

After the funeral, Jason wandered about the village for a day or so,
trying to plan for his