put the book on the table, and suddenly flinging his arms across it,
dropped his head on them. The slight movement wakened his mother.

"Why, Willy!" she said.

After a moment he looked up. "I was almost asleep," he explained, more
to protect her than himself. "I--I wish that fool Nelson kid would break
his mandolin--or his neck," he said irritably. He kissed her and went
upstairs. From across the quiet street there came thin, plaintive,
occasionally inaccurate, the strains of the long, long trail.

There was the blood of Covenanters in Willy Cameron's mother, a high
courage of sacrifice, and an exceedingly shrewd brain. She lay awake
that night, carefully planning, and when everything was arranged in
orderly fashion in her mind, she lighted her lamp and carried it to the
door of Willy's room. He lay diagonally across his golden-oak bed, for
he was very long, and sleep had rubbed away the tragic lines about his
mouth. She closed his door and went back to her bed.

"I've seen too much of it," she reflected, without bitterness. She
stared around the room. "Too much of it," she repeated. And crawled
heavily back into bed, a determined little figure, rather chilled.

The next morning she expressed a desire to spend a few months with her
brother in California.

"I coughed all last winter, after I had the flu," she explained, "and
James has been wanting me this long time. I don't want to leave you,
that's all, Willy. If you were in the city it would be different."

He was frankly bewildered and a little hurt, to tell the truth. He no
more suspected her of design than of crime.

"Of course you are going," he said, heartily. "It's the very thing. But
I like the way you desert your little son!"

"I've been thinking about that, too," she said, pouring his coffee.
"I--if you were in the city, now, there would always be something to
do."

He shot her a suspicious glance, but her face was without evidence of
guile.

"What would I do in the city?"

"They use chemists in the mills, don't they?"

"A fat chance I'd have for that sort of job," he scoffed. "No city for
me, mother."

But she knew. She read his hesitation accurately, the incredulous pause
of the bird whose cage door is suddenly opened. He would go.

"I'd think about it, anyhow, Willy."

But for a long time after he had gone she sat quietly rocking in her
rocking chair in the bay window of the sitting room. It was a familiar
attitude of hers, homely, midd