e for many minutes.

"Well, I must not keep you up any longer, mother dear--it's time you were
resting. Good-night." And with a long embrace and kiss they separated. He
had yet fifteen miles to walk to reach the midnight stage that was to
convey him to Salem.

As he was starting from the house with his bundle in his hand, the sound
of a gay laugh came through the distant shrubbery. It was Diana and Bill
returning from the husking. Hastily he concealed himself behind a clump
of old lilac bushes till they emerged into the moonlight and passed into
the house. Diana was in one of those paroxysms of young girl frolic which
are the effervescence of young, healthy blood, as natural as the
gyrations of a bobolink on a clover head. James was thinking of dark
nights and stormy seas, years of exile, mother's sorrows, home perhaps
never to be seen more, and the laugh jarred on him like a terrible
discord. He watched her into the house, turned, and was gone.

CHAPTER VI.

GONE TO SEA.

A little way on in his moonlight walk James's ears were saluted by the
sound of some one whistling and crackling through the bushes, and soon
Biah Carter, emerged into the moonlight, having been out to the same
husking where Diana and Bill had been enjoying themselves. The sight of
him resolved a doubt which had been agitating James's mind. The note to
his mother which was to explain his absence and the reasons for it was
still in his coat-pocket, and he had designed sending it back by some
messenger at the tavern where he took the midnight stage; but here was a
more trusty party. It involved, to be sure, the necessity of taking Biah
into his confidence. James was well aware that to tell that acute
individual the least particle of a story was like starting a gimlet in a
pine board--there was no stop till it had gone through. So he told him in
brief that a good berth had been offered to him on the _Eastern Star_,
and he meant to take it to relieve his father of the pressure of his
education.

"Wal naow--you don't say so," was Biah's commentary. "Wal, yis, 'tis hard
sleddin' for the deacon--drefful hard sleddin.' Wal, naow, s'pose you're
disapp'inted--shouldn't wonder--jes' so. Eddication's a good thing, but
'taint the only thing naow; folks larns a sight rubbin' round the world--
and then they make money. Jes' see, there's Cap'n Stebbins and Cap'n
Andrews and Cap'n Merryweather--all livin' on good farms, with good, nice
houses, all got goi