g ago when Rucker proposed that they join the
Free-Lovers at Oneida; and how she had refused to ride home with him, at
first, and had walked back on that trail through the woods, leading me
by the hand, until she was exhausted, and how Rucker had tantalized her
by driving by us, and sneering at us when mother and I finally climbed
into the democrat wagon, and rode on with him toward Tempe. I could
partly see, after I had thought over it for a day or so, just what this
new torture might mean to her.

I was about to start on foot for Madison, and looked up my stage-driver
acquaintance to ask him about the road.

"Why don't you go on the railroad?" he asked. "The damned thing has put
me out of business, and I'm no friend of it; but if you're in a hurry
it's quicker'n walkin'."

I had seen the railway station in Milwaukee, and looked at the train;
but it had never occurred to me that I might ride on it to Madison. Now
we always expect a railway to run wherever we want to go; but then it
was the exception--and the only railroad running out of Milwaukee was
from there to Madison. On this I took that day my first ride in a
railway car, reaching Madison some time after three. This seemed like
flying to me. I had seen plenty of railway tracks and trains in New
York; but I had to come to Wisconsin to patronize one.

I rode on, thinking little of this new experience, as I remember, so
filled was I with the hate of John Rucker which almost made me forget my
love for my mother. Perhaps the one was only the reverse side of the
other. I had made up my mind what to do. I would try hard not to kill
Rucker, though I tried him and condemned him to death in my own mind
several times for every one of the eighty miles I rode; but I knew that
this vengeance was not for me.

I would take my mother away from him, though, in spite of everything;
and she and I would move on to a new home, somewhere, living happily
together for the rest of our lives.

I was happy when I thought of this home, in which, with my new-found,
fresh strength, my confidence in myself, my knack of turning my hand to
any sort of common work, my ability to defend her against everything and
everybody--against all the Ruckers in the world--my skill in so many
things that would make her old age easy and happy, I would repay her for
all this long miserable time,--the cruelty of Rucker when she took me
out of the factory while he was absent, the whippings she had seen him