And here sat Timothy, with all his heart in his eyes, bidding good-by to all this soft and tender loveliness. And there, by his side, faithful unto death (but very much in hopes of something better), sat Rags, and thought it a fine enough prospect, but one that could be beaten at all points by a bit of shed-view he knew of,--a superincumbent hash-pan, an empty milk-dish, and an emaciated white cat flying round a corner! The remembrance of these past joys brought the tears to his eyes, but he forbore to let them flow lest he should add to the griefs of his little master, which, for aught he knew, might be as heavy as his own. Timothy was comporting himself, at this trying crisis, neither as a hero nor as a martyr. There is no need of exaggerating his virtues. Enough to say, not that he was a hero, but that he had in him the stuff out of which heroes are made. Win his heart and fire his imagination, and there is no splendid deed of which the little hero would not have been capable. But that he knew precisely what he was leaving behind, or what he was going forth to meet, would be saying too much. One thing he did know: that Miss Vilda had said distinctly that two was one too many, and that he was the objectionable unit referred to. And in addition to this he had more than once heard that very day that nobody in Pleasant River wanted him, but that there would be plenty of homes open to Gay if he were safely out of the way. A little allusion to a Home, which he caught when he was just bringing in a four-leafed clover to show to Samantha, completed the stock of ideas from which he reasoned. He was very clear on one point, and that was that he would never be taken alive and put in a Home with a capital H. He respected Homes, he approved of them, for other boys, but personally they were unpleasant to him, and he had no intention of dwelling in one if he could help it. The situation did not appear utterly hopeless in his eyes. He had his original dollar and eighty-five cents in money; Rags and he had supped like kings off wild blackberries and hard gingerbread; and, more than all, he was young and mercifully blind to all but the immediate present. Yet even in taking the most commonplace possible view of his character it would be folly to affirm that he was anything but unhappy. His soul was not sustained by the consciousness of having done a self-forgetting and manly act, for he was not old enough to have such a consciousness, which is something the good God gives us a little later on, to help us over some of the hard places.