However, speeding along through the clear night, treading the snow flashing back the full moonlight in his eyes like a silver mirror, he dreaded more and more the meeting his mother and telling her the news.  He slackened his pace.  Now and then he stood still and looked up at the sky, where the great white moon rode through the hosts of the stars.  Without analyzing his thoughts, the boy felt the utter irresponsiveness of all glory and all heights.  Mocking shafts of moonlight and starlight and frostlight seemed glancing off this one little soul in the freezing solitude of creation, wherein each is largely to himself alone.  What was it to the moon and all those shining swarms of stars, and that far star-dust in the Milky Way, whether he, Jerome Edwards, had shoes to close or not?  Whether he and his mother starved or not, they would shine just the same.  The triviality—­even ludicrousness—­of the sorrow of man, as compared with eternal things, was over the boy.  He was maddened at the sting and despite of his own littleness in the face of that greatness.  Suddenly a wild impulse of rebellion that was almost blasphemy seized him.  He clinched a puny fist at a great star.  “Wish I could make you stop shinin’,” he cried out, in a loud, fierce voice; “wish I could do somethin’!”

Suddenly Jerome was hemmed in by a cloud of witnesses.  Eliphalet Means, John Jennings, and Colonel Lamson had overtaken him as he stood star-gazing.  They were on their way to punch and cards at Squire Merritt’s.  Jerome felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up into John Jennings’s long, melancholy countenance, instead of the shining face of the star.  He saw the eyes of the others surveying him, half in astonishment, half in amusement, over the folds of their camlet cloaks.

“Want to make the star stop shining?” queried John Jennings, in his sweet drawl.

Jerome made no reply.  His shoulder twitched under Mr. Jennings’s hand.  He meditated pushing between these interlopers and running for home.  The New England constraint, to which he had been born, was to him as a shell of defence and decency, and these men had had a glimpse of him outside it.  He was horribly ashamed.  “S’pose they think I’m crazy,” he reflected.

“Want to stop the star shining?” repeated John Jennings.  “Well, you can.”

Jerome, in astonishment, forgot his shame, and looked up into the man’s beautiful, cavernous eyes.

“I’ll tell you how.  Don’t look at it.  I’ve stopped nearly all the stars I’ve ever seen that way.”  John Jennings’s voice seemed to melt into infinite sadness and sweetness, like a song.  The other men chuckled but feebly, as if scarcely knowing whether it were a jest or not.  John Jennings took his hand from Jerome’s shoulder, tossed the wing of his cloak higher over his face, and went on with his friends.  However, when fairly on his way, he turned and called back, with a soft laugh, “I would let the star shine, though, if I were you, boy.”