rew myself down on the dead grass, and found the
worn-out shoe I had picked up in the closet. It had every curve of her
foot--that foot which had taken so many weary steps for me. I put my
forehead down upon it, and lay there a long time--so long that when I
roused myself and went down to the canal, I had not sat on my old stump
a minute when I saw Captain Sproule's boat approaching from the west.
With a heavy heart I stepped aboard, carrying the worn-out shoe and the
letter, which I have yet. The boat was the only home left me. It had
become my world.

CHAPTER IV

I BECOME A SAILOR, AND FIND A CLUE

I was just past thirteen when I had my great wrestle with loneliness and
desertion that night under the old apple-tree at Tempe; and the next
three and a half years are not of much concern to the reader who is
interested only in the history of Vandemark Township. I was just a
growing boy, tussling, more alone than I should have been, and with no
guidance or direction, with that problem of keeping soul and body
together, which, after all, is the thing with which all of us are
naturally obliged to cope all through our lives. I lived here and there,
most of the time looking to Eben Sproule as a prop and support, as a boy
must look to some one, or fall into bad and dangerous ways--and even
then, maybe he will.

I was a backward boy, and this saved me from some deadfalls, I guess;
and I had the Dutch hard mouth and a tendency to feel my ground and see
how the land lay, which made me take so long to balk at any new vice or
virtue that the impulse or temptation was sometimes past before I could
get ready to embrace it. I guess there are some who may read this who
have let chances for sinful joys go by while an inward debate went on in
their own souls; and if they will only own up to it, found themselves
afterward guiltily sorry for not falling from grace. "As a man thinketh
in his heart, so is he," is Scripture, and must be true if rightly
understood; but I wonder if it is as bad for one of us tardy people to
regret not having sinned, as it would have been if he had been quicker
and done so. I hardly think it can be as bad; for many a saint must have
had such experiences--which really is thinking both right and wrong, and
doing right, even if he did think wrong afterward.

That first winter, I lived on Captain Sproule's farm, and had my board,
washing and mending. His sister kept house for him, and his younger
brother, F