"'Ain't you never goin' to stop mopin', Ambrose Thompson? I'm sick of lookin' at you.'" 131 "'You kin manage me now all you've a mind to; I ain't worryin''" 198 "Thus it was that 'Lisabeth took up the business of caring for Uncle Ambrose Thompson" 214 PART ONE HIS FIRST WIFE "_Oh! lose the winter from thine heart, the darkness from thine eyes, And from the low hearth-chair of dreams, my Love-o'-May, arise, And let the maidens robe thee like a white white, lilac tree. Oh! hear the call of Spring, fair Soul,--and wilt thou come with me?_" CHAPTER I THE DEPARTURE AMBROSE THOMPSON opened his front door and looked out. It was May, the sun had just risen over Pennyroyal, and before him lay Kentucky's carnival of spring. The boy drew a deep breath that seemed to rise and quiver over his face like a breeze coming away at the end of his long, curiously emotional nose. "Glory, what a day!" he whispered; "seems about good enough to eat!" And then he vanished, only to reappear five minutes afterward dressed as a traveller and wearing a linen duster, a stovepipe hat, and carrying a carpet-bag. Out in the cinder path his glance embraced the quiet street. "Right foot, left foot"--without a change of expression the boy broke into an irrepressible jig. He was nineteen and stood six feet four in his stocking feet; the wind tilted his tall hat, showing his high forehead, his straight, straw-coloured hair, and solemn, light blue eyes; it whipped back his linen duster, disclosing his lean legs clad in tight trousers, his frock coat, and white stock. An indescribable air of adventure enveloped him. So Abraham Lincoln may have looked on some dress-occasion morning in his youth--all big bones and promises waiting for something to happen. "I sure am going to give 'em the slip this time," Ambrose panted, stopping to readjust his costume and to take another careful survey of the neighbourhood. In his garden several lilac bushes were in their first bloom, and above his doorway an ardent, over-early honeysuckle had blossomed in the night. The young man put the honeysuckle in his buttonhole. [Illustration: "Leaping ditches, tearing across ploughed fields, to the woods ahead"] "I reckon," he remarked, "there ain't nothin' sweet that don't grow in Kentucky," and then with a smile whose shine radiated through his homeliness and a blush that spread to the tips of his big ears, he added: "I ain't just figurin' on the growth of flowers," and was off tiptoeing down his garden walk and stepping across his gate to avoid the creak of opening it.