Luke went into the front room and turned thence into a small chamber adjoining. It was windowless and dark, the only light filtering indirectly through the front room. On a low, narrow bed, beneath a ladder leading to a trap-door above, lay a woman. "Here I am, Luke," she cried out, warningly. "Don’t stumble over that pan o’ water. I’ve been takin’ a hot mustard foot-bath to try and get my blood warm. I have chilly spells every day about this time. La me! How you take me by surprise! I’ve prayed for little else in many a year, an’ was just about to give up. I took a little hope from some’n’ old Ann Boyd said one day about you bein’ well an’ employed somers out West, but then I met Jane Hemingway, an’ she give me the blues. She 'lowed that old Ann just pretended you was doin’ well to convince folks she’d made no mistake in sendin’ you to school. But, thank God, here you are alive, anyway." "Yes, I’m as sound as a new dollar, mother." His foot came in contact with a three-legged stool in the darkness, and he recognized it as an old friend and drew it to the head of her bed and sat down. He took one of her hard, thin hands and bent over her. Should he kiss her? She had not taught him to do so as a child, and he had never done it later in his youth, not even when he had left home, but he had been out in the world and grown wiser. He had seen other men kiss their mothers, and his heart had ached. With his hand on her hard, withered cheek he turned her face towards him and pressed his lips to hers. She was much surprised, and drew herself from him instinctively, and wiped her mouth with a corner of the coverlet, but he knew she was pleased. "Why, Luke!" she said, quickly, "what on earth do you mean? Have you gone plumb crazy?" "I wanted to kiss you, that’s all," he said, awkwardly. They were both silent for a moment, then she spoke, tremblingly: "You always was womanish and tender-like; it don’t harm anybody, though; none o’ the rest in this family are that way. But, my stars! I can’t tell a bit how you look in this pitch-dark. Mary! oh, Mary!" "What you want, ma?" The nearness of the speaker in the adjoining room betrayed the fact that she had been listening. "I can’t see my hand before me," answered the old woman. "I wish you’d fetch a light here. You’ll find a stub of a candle in the clock under the turpentine-bottle. I hid it thar so as to have some’n’ to read the Book with Sunday night if any preacher happened to drop in to hold family worship."