If he had stopped to consider, he would no doubt have replied very differently. But a hundred questions, stirred by what he had seen, were clamoring for light, and they threw the desperate impulse to his lips. “If I COULD dance, would you dance with me?” The two lively girls heard the words, and looked at Becky with roguish faces. “Oh yes, take him for your next partner!” cried one. “I will,” said Becky, “after he comes back from his journey.” Then all three laughed. Jacob leaned against the tree, his eyes fixed on the ground. “Is it a bargain?” asked one of the girls. “No,” said he, and walked rapidly away. He went to the house, and, finding that Robert had arrived, took his hat, and left by the rear door. There was a grassy alley between the orchard and garden, from which it was divided by a high hawthorn hedge. He had scarcely taken three paces on his way to the meadow, when the sound of the voice he had last heard, on the other side of the hedge, arrested his feet. “Becky, I think you rather hurt Jake Flint,” said the girl. “Hardly,” answered Becky; “he's used to that.” “Not if he likes you; and you might go further and fare worse.” “Well, I MUST say!” Becky exclaimed, with a laugh; “you'd like to see me stuck in that hollow, out of your way!” “It's a good farm, I've heard,” said the other. “Yes, and covered with as much as it'll bear!” Here the girls were called away to the dance. Jacob slowly walked up the dewy meadow, the sounds of fiddling, singing, and laughter growing fainter behind him. “My journey!” he repeated to himself,--“my journey! why shouldn't I start on it now? Start off, and never come back?” It was a very little thing, after all, which annoyed him, but the mention of it always touched a sore nerve of his nature. A dozen years before, when a boy at school, he had made a temporary friendship with another boy of his age, and had one day said to the latter, in the warmth of his first generous confidence: “When I am a little older, I shall make a great journey, and come back rich, and buy Whitney's place!”