His curiosity keenly aroused, his ambitions kindled by his studies, Russell was restless to be off to see this great world he had read and studied about.  The mountains suddenly seemed like prison walls holding him in.  An uncontrollable longing swept his soul.  He determined to escape.  Telling no one of his intentions, one morning just before dawn, he raised the window of the little attic in which he and his brother slept, climbed out over the roof of the woodshed, slipped to the ground and made off down the valley to seek his fortune in the world.  It was a hasty resolve.  In a little bundle slung over his shoulders he had a few clothes and something to eat.  How his heart thumped as he went down the familiar path in the woods, crossed the little brook and began the tramp toward Huntington!  Every moment he expected to hear his father’s footsteps behind him.  Charles might have awakened, found him missing and roused the family!  When morning came he climbed a little hill, from which he could look back at the house.  He gazed long, and his heart nearly failed him.  He could see in imagination every homely detail of the living room, his father’s chair to the right of the fireplace, his mother’s on the left, the clock between the front windows, which his father wound every night.  On a nail hung his old rimless hat, Charlie’s coat, and the little sister’s sunbonnet.  His mother would soon be up and getting breakfast.  They would all sit down without him—­a lump began to rise in his throat and he almost turned back.  But something in his nature always prevented him from giving up a thing he had once undertaken.  He set his teeth, picked up his bundle and went down the road between the mountains, the woods stretching, dense, silent, on each side, the little brook keeping close by him like the good, true friend it was.

It was a long, long tramp to the little village of Huntington, a walk that went for miles beneath overarching green trees, the sunlight sifting down like a shower of gold in the dim wood aisles.  The wild mountain stream merged into the quiet Westfield river that flowed placidly through little sunny meadows and rippled in a sedate way here and there over stones as became the dignity of a river.  Small white farmhouses, set about with golden lilies and deep crimson peonies, here and there looked out on the road.  But his mind was intent on the wonderful experiences ahead of him; he walked as in a dream.  Reaching Huntington, he asked a conductor if he could get a job on the train to pay his way to Boston.  The conductor eyed the lanky country boy with sympathetic amusement.  He appreciated the situation and told Russell he didn’t think he had any job just then, but he might sit in the baggage car and should a job turn up, it would be given him.  Delighted with this piece of good luck, Russell sat in the baggage car and journeyed to Boston.