was covered with molasses, and his appetite for the forbidden gratified to the full.  And yonder, dangling from a peg, never devoted to any other use, hung his father’s old hat, just where he had placed it on the fatal morning when he came in and lay down on the sitting-room lounge for the last time; and close to it, lovingly close to it, Sweetwater thought, his mother’s apron, the apron he had seen her wear at supper, and which he would see her wear at breakfast, with all its suggestions of ceaseless work and patient every-day thrift.

Somehow, he could not bear the sight of that apron.  With the expectation now forming in his mind, of leaving this home and leaving this mother, this symbol of humble toil became an intolerable grief to him.  Jumping up, he turned in another direction; but now another group of objects equally eloquent came under his eye.  It was his mother’s work-basket he saw, with a piece of sewing in it intended for him, and as if this were not enough, the table set for two, and at his place a little covered dish which held the one sweetmeat he craved for breakfast.  The spectacles lying beside her plate told him how old she was, and as he thought of her failing strength and enfeebled ways, he jumped up again and sought another corner.  But here his glances fell on his violin, and a new series of emotions awakened within him.  He loved the instrument and played as much from natural intuition as acquired knowledge, but in the plan of action he had laid out for himself his violin could have no part.  He would have to leave it behind.  Feeling that his regrets were fast becoming too much for him, he left the humble kitchen and went up-stairs.  But not to sleep.  Locking the door (something he never remembered doing before in all his life), he began to handle over his clothes and other trivial belongings.  Choosing out a certain strong suit, he laid it out on the bed and then went to a bureau drawer and drew out an old-fashioned wallet.  This he opened, but after he had counted the few bills it contained he shook his head and put them all back, only retaining a little silver, which he slipped into one of the pockets of the suit he had chosen.  Then he searched for and found a little Bible which his mother had once given him.  He was about to thrust that into another pocket, but he seemed to think better of this, too, for he ended by putting it back into the drawer and taking instead a bit from one of his mother’s old aprons which he had chanced upon on the stairway.  This he placed as carefully in his watch pocket as if it had been the picture of a girl he loved.  Then he undressed and went to bed.

Mrs. Sweetwater said afterwards that she never knew Caleb to talk so much and eat so little as he did that next morning at breakfast.  Such plans as he detailed for unmasking the murderer of Mrs. Webb!  Such business for the day!  So many people to see!  It made her quite dizzy, she said.  And, indeed, Sweetwater was more than usually voluble that morning,—­perhaps because he could not bear his mother’s satisfied smile; and when he went out of the house it was with a laugh and a cheery “Good-bye, mamsie” that was in spiking contrast to the irrepressible exclamation of grief which escaped him when the door was closed between them.  Ah, when should he enter those four walls again, and when should he see the old mother?