broken under its imaginary wrongs.

There was no drawing back. The mother suffered, but the wife sewed, and
when Rosemont had got well into its season's work and November was
nearly gone, John was ready for "college." One morning, when the wind
was bitter and the ground frozen, father and son rode side by side down
their mountain road. A thin mantle of snow made the woods gray, and
mottled the shivering ranks of dry cornstalks. At each rider's saddle
swung an old carpet-bag stuffed with John's clothes. His best were on
him.

"Maybe they're not the latest cut, son, or the finest fit, but you won't
mind; you're not a girl. A man's dress is on'y a sort o' skin, anyhow; a
woman's is her plumage. And, anyhow, at Rosemont you'll wear soldier
clothes. Look out son, I asked yo' dear motheh to mend----"

The warning came too late; a rope handle of one of the carpet-bags
broke. The swollen budget struck the unyielding ground and burst like a
squash. John sprang nimbly from the saddle, but the Judge caught his leg
on the other carpet-bag and reached the ground in such a shape that his
horse lost all confidence and began to back wildly, putting first one
foot and then another into the scattered baggage.

One, or even two, can rarely get as much into a bursted carpet-bag,
repacking it in a public road and perspiring with the fear that somebody
is coming, as they can into a sound one at a time and place of their own
choice. There's no place like home--for this sort of task; albeit the
Judge's home may have been an exception. Time flew past while they
contrived and labored, and even when they seemed to have solved their
problem one pocket of John's trousers contained a shirt and the other
was full of socks, and the Judge's heart still retained an anxiety which
he dared neither wholly confess nor entirely conceal.

"Well, son, it's a comfort to think yo' precious motheh will never have
the mawtification of knowin' anything about this."

"Yass, sir," drawled John, "that's the first thing I thought of."

XV.

ARRIVALS AT ROSEMONT

The air was mild down on the main road which, because it led from Suez
to Pulaski City, was known as the Susie and Pussie pike. The highway
showed a mere dusting of snow, and out afield the sun had said
good-morning so cavalierly to some corn-shocks that the powder was
wholly kissed off one sallow cheek of each. The riders kept the pike
northwesterly a short way and then took the left, saying