“Just a minute, Abbie dear, I want to be alone with my boy,” she waved the girl back.  “Then you can have him last.  It’s my right an’ your’n!”

She closed the door, and led him under the crayon portrait of his father, framed in immortelles.  She raised her arms, and he stooped that they might clasp about his neck.

“Isaac,” she said hoarsely, “I ain’t no longer young nor very strong.  Remember ’fore you go away from the farm that you’re the son of an honest man, an’ a pious woman, and”—­dropping with great solemnity into scriptural language—­“I beseech you, my son, not to disgrace your godly name.”

With partings like this the primitive Christians must have sent their sons into the whirlwind of the world.

Then Isaac broke down for the first time, and with the tears streaming, he lifted his mother bodily in his arms, and promised her, and kissed her.  “Mother trusts you, Ikey,” was all she could say.  But his time had come.  There was a crunching of wheels.

“Now go to Abbie.  Leave me here!  Good-by; you have always been a good boy, dear.”  Mrs. Masters’s voice sank into a whisper; the strong man, moved as he was, could not comprehend her exhaustion.

Abbie was waiting for him at the door, and he went to her.  The impatient wagon had gone down the road.  They were to cut through the pasture, and meet it at the brook.  There they were to part.

They clasped hands.  Isaac turned.  A gaunt, gray face, broken, helpless, hopeless, peered out beneath the green paper shade of the parlor window.  If he had known—­a doubt crossed his brain, but the girl twitched his hand, and the cloud scattered.  Down the hill they ran, down, until the brook was reached.  There they stood, panting, breathless, listening.  There were only a few minutes left, and they hid behind an oak tree and clasped.

* * * * *

It was long after dark when the train came to its halt in its vaulted terminus.  It was due at seven, but an excursion on the road delayed it until after nine.  However, this did not disconcert Isaac Masters.  He hurried out to the front of the station, where the row of herdics greeted him savagely.  Carrying his father’s old carpet-bag, he looked from his faded hat to his broad toes the ideal country bumpkin; yet his head was not turned by the rumbling of the pavements, the whiz of the electrics, the blaze of the arc lights, nor by the hectic inhalations that seem to comprehend all the human restlessness of a city just before it retires to sleep.  His breath came faster, and his great chest rose and fell; these were the only indications of acclimation.  Isaac had started from home absolutely without any “pull” or introduction but his own willingness to work.  Utterly ignorant of the city, and knowing no one in it, on the way down in the train he had marked out a line of conduct from which he determined not to be swerved.

To the mountain mind the policeman becomes the embodiment of a righteously executed law.  At home, their only constable was one of the most respected men in the community.  Isaac argued from experience—­and how else should he?  This was his syllogism: