because he had not only stood
persistently between the overseers and themselves, but had recognized
their right to fun after work-hours as well as their right to protection
while they worked.

In the glow of Mrs. Westmore's Christmas visitation an athletic club had
been formed, and leave obtained to use the Hopewood grounds for Saturday
afternoon sports; and thither Amherst continued to conduct the boys
after the mills closed at the week-end. His last Saturday had now come:
a shining afternoon of late February, with a red sunset bending above
frozen river and slopes of unruffled snow. For an hour or more he had
led the usual sports, coasting down the steep descent from the house to
the edge of the woods, and skating and playing hockey on the rough
river-ice which eager hands kept clear after every snow-storm. He always
felt the contagion of these sports: the glow of movement, the tumult of
young voices, the sting of the winter air, roused all the boyhood in his
blood. But today he had to force himself through his part in the
performance. To the very last, as he now saw, he had hoped for a sign in
the heavens: not the reversal of his own sentence--for, merely on
disciplinary grounds, he perceived that to be impossible--but something
pointing to a change in the management of the mills, some proof that
Mrs. Westmore's intervention had betokened more than a passing impulse
of compassion. Surely she would not accept without question the
abandonment of her favourite scheme; and if she came back to put the
question, the answer would lay bare the whole situation.... So Amherst's
hopes had persuaded him; but the day before he had heard that she was to
sail for Europe. The report, first announced in the papers, had been
confirmed by his mother, who brought back from a visit to Hanaford the
news that Mrs. Westmore was leaving at once for an indefinite period,
and that the Hanaford house was to be closed. Irony would have been the
readiest caustic for the wound inflicted; but Amherst, for that very
reason, disdained it. He would not taint his disappointment with
mockery, but would leave it among the unspoiled sadnesses of life....

He flung himself into the boys' sports with his usual energy, meaning
that their last Saturday with him should be their merriest; but he went
through his part mechanically, and was glad when the sun began to dip
toward the rim of the woods.

He was standing on the ice, where the river widened just bel