e most boys do. I thought of a
scholar's life, like that of Father L'Homme-Dieu before his sorrow came
to him; a life spent in cities, among libraries and learned, brilliant
people, men and women. I thought of a musician's life, and dreamed of
the concerts and operas that I had never heard. The poet Wordsworth, my
dear, has written immortal words about the dreams of a boy, and my
dreams were fair enough. It seemed as if all the world outside were
clouded in a golden glory, if I may put it so, and as if I had only to
run forth and put aside this shining veil, to find myself famous, and
happy, and blessed. And when I came down from the clouds, and saw my
little black bench, and the tools and scraps of leather, and my poor
father sitting brooding over the fire, my heart would sink down within
me, and the longing would come strong upon me to throw down hammer and
last, and run away, out into that great world that was calling for me.
And so the days went by, and the months, and the years.

CHAPTER IV.

I WAS twenty years old when the change came in my life. I remember the
day was cold and bleak, an early spring day. My father had had an
accident a few days before. In one of his unconscious fits he had fallen
forward--I had left the room but for a moment--and struck his head
sharply against one of the fire-irons. He came to himself quite wild,
and seeing the blood, thought he had killed some one, and cried to us to
take him to prison as a murderer. It took Abby and me a long time to
quiet him. The shock and the pain of it all had shaken me more than I
knew, and I felt sick, and did not know what ailed me; but Abby knew,
and she sent me to see Father L'Homme-Dieu, while she sat with my
father. I was glad enough to go, more glad than my duty allowed, I fear;
yet I knew that Abby was better than I at caring for my father.

As I walked across the brown fields, where the green was beginning to
prick in little points here and there, I began to feel the life strong
in me once more. The dull cloud of depression seemed to drop away, and
instead of seeing always that sad, set face of my poor father's, I could
look up and around, and whistle to the squirrels, and note the
woodpecker running round the tree near me. It has remained a mystery to
me all my life, Melody, that this bird's brains are not constantly
addled in his head, from the violence of his rapping. When I was a
little boy, I tried, I remember, to nod my head as fa