He could not go yet to the great city.  The future rising steps to which Rufus looked forward so confidently, were yet far away.  He owed a bill at the tailor’s; and had besides one or two other little accounts unsettled, which it had been impossible to avoid, and was now impossible to leave.  Therefore he must not leave Shagarack.  The first thing to do was to clear these hindrances from his way.  So he entered his name as law-reader at the little office of Mr. Shamminy, to save time, and took a tutorship in the College to earn money.  He had the tutorship of the Junior Greek class, which his father loved to tell he carried further than ever a class had been carried before; but that was not all; he had a number of other recitations to attend which left him, with the necessary studies, scant time for reading law.  That little was made the most of and the year was gained.

All the year was needed to free himself from these cobweb bindings that held him fast at Shagarack.  Another Commencement over, his debts paid, he went home; to make a little pause on that landing-place of life’s journey before taking his last start from it.

CHAPTER XV.

I turn to go:  my feet are set
To leave the pleasant fields and farms: 
They mix in one another’s arms
To one pure image of regret. 
TENNYSON.

That little space of time was an exceeding sweet one.  Governor was at home again, —­ and Governor was going away again.  If anything had been needed to enhance his preciousness, those two little facts would have done it.  Such an idea entered nobody’s head.  He was the very same Winthrop, they all said, that had left them four years ago; only taller, and stronger, and handsomer.

“He’s a beautiful strong man!” said Karen, stopping in the act of rolling her cakes, to peer at him out of the kitchen window.  “Aint he a handsome feller, Mis’ Landholm?”

“Handsome is that handsome does, Karen.”

“Don’t he do handsome?” said Karen, flouring her roller.  “His mother knows he does, I wish I knowed my shortcake’d be arter the same pattern.”

Winthrop pulled off his coat and went into the fields as heartily as if he had done nothing but farming all his days; and harvests that autumn came cheerily in.  The corn seemed yellower and the apples redder than they had been for a long time.  Asahel, now a fine boy of fifteen, was good aid in whatever was going on, without or within doors.  Rufus wrote cheerfully from the North, where he still was; and there was hardly a drawback to the enjoyment of the little family at home.