break-up of the family, but only a
universal joy in starting off for new adventures.

* * * * *

That honest workman, "Struck Dumb," disappeared one afternoon, telling
Crook that he heard of much building at Duluth.

Crook laughed when Mother admired Mr. Struck Dumb's yearning for
creative toil. "That guy," Crook declared, "is an honest workman except
that he ain't honest and he won't work. He'll last about two days in
Duluth, and then he'll pike for Alberta or San Diego or some place. He's
got restless feet, same like me."

The K. C. Kid and Reddy jigged and shouted songs all one evening, and
were off for the north. At last no one but Father and Mother and Crook
was left. And they, too, were star-eyed with expectation of new roads,
new hills. They sat solemnly by the fire on their last evening. Mother
was magnificent in a new cloak, to buy which Father had secretly been
saving pennies out of the dimes that he had earned by working about the
country.

Usually Crook McKusick was gravely cynical when he listened to Father's
cataract of excited plans, but he seemed wistful to-night, and he
nodded his head as though, for once, he really did believe that Father
and Mother would find some friendly village that would take them in.

Father was telling a story so ardently that he almost made himself
believe it: Some day, Mother and he would be crawling along the road and
discover a great estate. The owner, a whimsical man, a lonely and
eccentric bachelor of the type that always brightens English novels,
would invite them in, make Father his steward and Mother his lady
housekeeper. There would be a mystery in the house--a walled-off room, a
sound of voices at night in dark corridors where no voices could
possibly be, a hidden tragedy, and at last Father and Mother would lift
the burden from the place, and end their days in the rose-covered
dower-house.... Not that Father was sure just what a dower-house was,
but he was quite definite and positive about the rose-covering.

"How you run on," Mother yawned.

"Aw, let him," Crook cried, with sudden fierceness. "My Gawd! you two
almost make me believe that there is such a thing as faith left in this
dirty old world, that's always seemed to me just the back of an eternal
saloon. Maybe--maybe I'll find my ambition again.... Well--g' night."

When with their pack and their outlooking smiles the Applebys prepared
to start, next day, and turned to s