“Mother,” he began, “I saw Susan last night. We went to Squire Harding’s together; and,—and,—well, ’taint no use opposing it now,—Susan and I are one; and if I shouldn’t come back, be good to her, for my sake. Susan’s a nice girl, mother,” and on the brown, bearded cheek, there was a tear, wrung out by thoughts of only last night’s bride, Susan Ruggles, whose family the widow did not like, and had set herself against. There was no help now, and a sudden start was all the widow’s answer. She was not angry, John knew; and satisfied with this, he joined his brother in the yard, where he was cutting his name upon the beech tree. Thrice the widow called them back, failing each time to remember what she wanted to say. “It was something, sure,” and the hard hands worked nervously, twisting up the gingham apron into a roll, smoothing it out again and working at the strings, until Eli and John passed from the yard, and left her standing there, watching them as they walked down the road. They were a grand-looking couple, she thought, as she saw how well they kept step. They were to march together to the depot, she knew, and nobody in town could turn out a finer span, but who would go with Isaac?—“Stub,” his brothers called him. She hoped it might be Judge Warner’s son,—it would be such an honor; and that brought her back to the fact that Isaac was waiting for her inside; that the hardest part of all was yet to come, the bidding him good-bye. He was not in the chair where she had left him sitting, but was standing by the window, and raising often to his eyes his cotton handkerchief. He heard his mother come in, and turning toward her, said, with a sobbing laugh: “I wish the plaguy thing was over.” She thought he meant the war, and answered that “it would be in a few months, perhaps.” “I don’t mean that, I mean the telling you good-bye. Mother, oh, mother!” and the warm-hearted boy clasped his mother to his bosom, crying like a child; “if I’ve ever been mean to you,” he said, his voice choked with tears—“if I’ve ever been mean to you, or done a hateful thing you’ll forget it when I’m gone? I never meant to be bad and the time I made that face, and called you an old fool, when I was a little boy, you don’t know how sorry I felt, nor how long I cried in the trundle-bed after you were asleep. You’ll forget it, won’t you, when I am gone, never to come back, maybe? Will you, mother, say?” Would she? Could she remember aught against her youngest born, save that he had ever been to her the best, the dearest, most obedient child in the world? No, she could not, and so she told him, caressing his light brown hair and showering upon it the kisses which the compressed lips could no longer restrain. The fountain of love was broken, and the widow’s tears dropped like rain on the upturned face of her boy.