Fullerton is my
friend and I wish to see her."

"Come up to the steps, sor. Don't git off yer horse--'til I've chained
the dog. Kate'll be out in a minute."

He chained the dog to the hitching post and as he did so a loud, long,
wailing cry broke the silence of the house. It put me in mind of the
complaint of the damned which I remembered hearing the minister
describe years before at the little schoolhouse in Lickitysplit. How it
harrowed me!

The man went into the house. Soon he came out of the door with a lighted
candle in his hand, a woman following. How vividly I remember the little
murmur of delight that came from her lips when he held the candle so
that its light fell upon my face! I jumped off my horse and gave the
reins to the man and put my arms around the poor woman, whom I loved for
her sorrows and for my debt to her, and rained kisses upon her withered
cheek. Oh God! what a moment it was for both of us!

The way she held me to her breast and patted my shoulder and said "my
boy!"--in a low, faint, treble voice so like that of a child--it is one
of the best memories that I take with me into the new life now so near,
from which there is no returning.

"My boy!'" Did it mean that she had appointed me to be a kind of proxy
for the one she had lost and that she had given to me the affection
which God had stored in her heart for him? Of that, I know only what may
be conveyed by strong but unspoken assurance.

She led me into the house. She looked very neat now--in a black gown
over which was a spotless white apron and collar of lace--and much more
slender than when I had seen her last. She took me into a large room in
the front of the house with a carpet and furniture, handsome once but
now worn and decrepit. Old, time-stained engravings of scenes from the
Bible, framed in wood, hung on the walls.

She gave me a chair by the candle-stand and sat near me and looked into
my face with a smile of satisfaction. In a moment she pointed toward the
west with that forefinger, which in my presence had cut down her enemy,
and whispered the one word:

"News?"

I told all that I had heard from home and of my life in Cobleskill but
observed, presently, a faraway look in her eyes and judged that she was
not hearing me. Again she whispered:

"Sally?"

"She has been at school in Albany for a year," I said. "She is at home
now and I am going to see her."

"You love Sally?" she whispered.

"Better than I love my li