What a joy entered my heart when I was aboard the steamboat, at last, and on my way to all most dear to me!  As I entered Lake Champlain I consulted the map and decided to leave the boat at Chimney Point to find Kate Fullerton, who had written to the schoolmaster from Canterbury.  My aunt had said in a letter that old Kate was living there and that a great change had come over her.  So I went ashore and hired a horse of the ferryman—­one of those “Green Mountain ponies” of which my uncle had told me:  “They’ll take any gait that suits ye, except a slow one, an’ keep it to the end o’ the road.”

I think that I never had a horse so bent on reaching that traditional “end of the road.”  He was what they called a “racker” those days, and a rocking-chair was not easier to ride.  He took me swiftly across the wide flat and over the hills and seemed to resent my effort to slow him.

I passed through Middlebury and rode into the grounds of the college, where the Senator had been educated, and on out to Weybridge to see where he had lived as a boy.  I found the Wright homestead—­a comfortable white house at the head of a beautiful valley with wooded hills behind it—­and rode up to the door.  A white-haired old lady in a black lace cap was sitting on its porch looking out at the sunlit fields.

“Is this where Senator Wright lived when he was a boy?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” the old lady answered.

“I am from Canton.”

She rose from her chair.

“You from Canton!” she exclaimed.  “Why, of all things!  That’s where my boy’s home is.  I’m glad to see you.  Go an’ put your horse in the barn.”

I dismounted and she came near me.

“Silas Wright is my boy,” she said.  “What is your name?”

“Barton Baynes,” I answered as I hitched my horse.

“Barton Baynes!  Why, Silas has told me all about you in his letters.  He writes to me every week.  Come and sit down.”

We sat down together on the porch.

“Silas wrote in his last letter that you were going to leave your place in Cobleskill,” she continued to my surprise.  “He said that he was glad you had decided not to stay.”

It was joyful news to me, for the Senator’s silence had worried me and I had begun to think with alarm of my future.

“I wish that he would take you to Washington to help him.  The poor man has too much to do.”

“I should think it a great privilege to go,” I answered.

“My boy likes you,” she went on.  “You have been brought up just as he was.  I used to read to him every evening when the candles were lit.  How hard he worked to make a man of himself!  I have known the mother’s joy.  I can truly say, ‘Now let thy servant depart in peace.’”

“‘For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,’” I quoted.

“You see I know much about you and much about your aunt and uncle,” said Mrs. Wright.