August burned into September, and September, triumphant in her procession of royal colors, marched into October, the month of months.  Mrs. Masters had already completed her pathetic preparations for her son’s departure.  There, in the family carpet-bag, which his father had carried with him on his annual trip to Portland, were stowed a half dozen pairs of well-darned woollen stockings, the few decent shirts that Isaac had left, his winter flannels, which had already served six years, his comb and brush, a hand mirror that had been one of his mother’s wedding presents, likewise a couple of towels that had formed a part of her self-made trousseau; and we must not forget the neckties that Abbie had sewed from remnants of her dresses, and which Isaac naively considered masterpieces of the haberdasher’s art.

At the mouth of the deep bag Mrs. Masters tucked a Bible which fifty years ago had been presented to her husband by his Sunday-school teacher as a prize for regular attendance.  This inscription was written in a wavering hand upon the blank page: 

    “In the eighth year of the reign of Josiah, while he was yet
    young, he began to seek after the God of David his father.—­
    2 Chron. xxxiv. 3.”

“For,” said Mrs. Masters softly to Abbie, after she had read the inscription aloud, and had patted the book affectionately, “this is the first prize my Josiah ever had, an’ the Lord knows he thought more on it than he did of Lucy, his mare.  An’ if there should happen any accident to Isaac, they’d find by opening of his bag that ef he was alone in a far country he was a Christian, nor ashamed of it, neither.”

Isaac had only money enough saved up to take him as far as Boston, and to board him in the cheapest way for several days.

“If I can’t work,” he said proudly, straightening to his full height, “no one can!”

It is just such country lads as this—­strong, self-reliant, religious—­who, when poverty has projected them out of her granite mountains upon granite pavements, each as hard and bleak as the other, by massive determination have conquered a predestined success.

Too soon, for those who were to be left behind, the day of separation came.  Mrs. Masters’s haggard face and Abbie’s red eyes told of unuttered misery.

But Isaac did not notice these signs of distress.  He was absorbed in his future.  The last bustle was over, the last breakfast gulped down amid forced smiles and ready tears, the last button sewed on at the last moment; and now Mrs. Masters’s lunch of mince pie, apples, and doughnuts was tenderly tucked into the jaws of the carpet-bag; thereby disturbing a love letter that Abbie had hidden there.  A young neighbor had volunteered to drive Isaac down the mountain to the station.

[Illustration:  “MOVE ON, WILL YER!”]

“All aboard!  Hurry up, Ike!” cried this young person, consulting his silver watch, and casting a look of mingled commiseration and envy upon the giant, locked in the arms of the two women, who hardly reached to the second button of his coat.  Isaac caught the glance, and started to tear himself away.  But his mother laid her gnarled hand gently upon his arm, and led him into the unused parlor.