he boy, startled from his sleep, muttered, and groped as a baby will
for its mother's breast or hand. No hand met the poor little fingers,
and they fell on the pillow empty, the child going to sleep again with a
forlorn little cry. Knowles watched him, the thick lips under his
moustache growing white.

"I purpose," he said, "that next week you and I shall go to these
people, and, if possible, become members of their community,--cut loose
from all these narrow notions of home and family, and learn to stand
upright and free under God's heaven. The very air breathed by these
noble enthusiasts will give us strength and lofty thoughts. Think it
over, Humphreys."

"Yes."

He moved to the door,--held it open uncertainly. "I'll leave the boy
here to-night. He got into a foolish habit of sleeping in my arms when
he was a baby; it's time he was broke of it."

"Very well."

"He must learn to stand alone, eh?" anxiously. "Good night";--and in a
moment I heard his heavy steps on the stairs, stopping, then going on
faster, as if afraid of his own resolution.

In the middle of the night I was wakened by somebody fumbling for Tony
at my side,--"Afraid the child would prove troublesome,"--and saw him go
off with the boy like a mite in his arms, growling caresses like a
lioness who has recovered her whelp. I say lioness, for, with all his
weight of flesh and coarseness, Knowles left the impression on your mind
of a sensitive, nervous woman.

* * * * *

Late one spring afternoon, a month after that, Knowles and I stood on
one of the hills overlooking the communist village of Economy. I was
weak and dizzy from illness and a long journey; the intense quiet of the
landscape before me affected me like a strain of solemn music. Knowles
had infected me with his eager hope. Nature was about to take me to her
great mother's bosom, for the first time. Life was to give me the repose
I asked, satisfy all the needs of my soul: here was the foretaste. The
quaint little hamlet literally slept on the river-bank; not a living
creature was visible on the three grass-grown streets; many of the
high-gabled brick houses, even at that date of the colony, were closed
and vacant, their inmates having dropped from the quiet of this life
into an even deeper sleep, and having been silently transferred to rest
under the flat grass of the apple-orchards, according to the habit of
the society. From the other houses, however, p