“You may go, if you’ve a mind to, and as soon as you like. —­ It’s better travelling now than it will be by and by.  I can get along without you for a spell, I guess.”

“Thank you, father.”

But Winthrop’s eyes sought his mother’s face.  In vain little Winifred hammered upon his hand with her little doubled up fist, and repeated, “even or odd?” He threw down the chestnuts and quitted the room hastily.

CHAPTER V.

The wind blew hollow frae the hills,
By fits the sun’s departing beam
Looked on the fading yellow woods
That waved o’er Lugar’s winding stream. 
BURNS.

He five dollars were gone.  No matter —­ they could be wanted.  They must be.  Winthrop had no books either.  What had he?  A wardrobe large enough to be tied up in a pocket-handkerchief; his father’s smile; his mother’s tremulous blessing; and the tears of his little brother and sister.

He set out with his wardrobe in his hand, and a dollar in his pocket, to walk to Asphodel.  It was a walk of thirteen miles.  The afternoon was chill, misty and lowering; November’s sad-colour in the sky, and Winter’s desolating heralds all over the ground.  If the sun shone anywhere, there was no sign of it; and there was no sign of it either in the traveller’s heart.  If fortune had asked him to play “even or odd,” he could hardly have answered her.

He was leaving home. They did not know it, but he did.  It was the first step over home’s threshold.  This little walk was the beginning of a long race, of which as yet he knew only the starting-point; and for love of that starting-point and for straitness of heart at turning his back upon it, he could have sat down under the fence and cried.  How long this absence from home might be, he did not know.  But it was the snapping of the tie, —­ that he knew.  He was setting his face to the world; and the world’s face did not answer him very cheerfully.  And that poor little pocket-handkerchief of things, which his mother’s hands had tied up, he hardly dared glance at it; it said so pitifully how much they would, how little they had the power to do for him; she and his father; how little way that heart of love could reach, when once he had set out on the cold journey of life.  He had set out now, and he felt alone, —­ alone; —­ his best company was the remembrance of that whispered blessing; and that, he knew, would abide with him.  If the heart could have coined the treasure it sent back, his mother would have been poor no more.

He did not sit down, nor stop, nor shed a tear.  It would have gone hard with him if he had been obliged to speak to anybody; but there was nobody to speak to.  Few were abroad, at that late season and unlovely time.  Comfort had probably retreated to the barns and farmhouses —­ to the homesteads, —­ for it was a desolate road that he travelled; the very wagons and horses that he met were going home, or would be.  It was a long road, and mile after mile was plodded over, and evening began to say there was nothing so dark it might not be darker.  No Asphodel yet.