opportunities than his father ever
had; -- of reaching a nobler scale of being than his own early
life had promised him; -- of higher walks than his young feet
had trod: they made his heart big. There came the indistinct
possibility of raising up with him the little sister he held
in his arms, not to the life of toil which their mother had
led, but to some airy unknown region of cultivation and
refinement and elegant leisure; -- hugely unknown, and yet
surely laid hold of by the mind's want. But though fancy saw
her for a moment in some strange travestie of years and
education and circumstances, that was only a flash of fancy --
not dwelt upon. Other thoughts were more near and pressing,
though almost as vague. In vain he endeavoured to calculate
expenses that he did not know, wants that he could not
estimate, difficulties that loomed up with no certain outline,
means that were far beyond ken. It was but confusion; except
his purpose, clear and steady as the sun, though as yet it
lighted not the way but only the distant goal; _that_ was always
in sight. And under all these thoughts, little looked at yet
fully recognized, his mother's question; and a certain
security that _she_ had that which would 'really last.' He knew
it. And oddly enough, when he took his candle from her hand
that night, Winthrop, though himself no believer unless with
head belief, thanked God in his heart that his mother was a
Christian.

Gradually the boys disclosed their plan; or rather the elder
of the boys; for Winthrop being so much the younger, for the
present was content to be silent. But their caution was little
needed. Rufus was hardly more ready to go than his parents
were to send him, -- if they could; and in their case, as in
his, the lack of power was made up by will. Rufus should have
an education. He should go to College. Not more cheerfully on
his part than on theirs the necessary privations were met, the
necessary penalty submitted to. The son should stand on better
ground than the father, though the father were himself the
stepping-stone that he might reach it.

It had nothing to do with Winthrop, all this. Nothing was said
of him. To send one son to College was already a great stretch
of effort, and of possibility; to send _two_ was far beyond
both. Nobody thought of it. Except the one left out of their
thoughts.

The summer passed in the diligent companionship of the oxen
and Sam Doolittle. But when the harvests were gath