Years after, a flash of sun on water would bring things back, and I'd have a sickness in the stomach.

An hour after, mother came in. "Well, my boy, you are right," she says, as if the very life were out of her.

"Yes," I says, thinking of the knife; "and I'll just slide out quiet, and no trouble to anybody."

She roused herself. "You will leave in daylight, my son," she says, "with your mother to say good-by. You have done nothing wrong, and you sha'n't leave ashamed."

"But, mother, that will make it bad for you," I says.

"I married your father; I brought you into the world," she says. "I know my duty, and I shall do it, if it costs all our lives, let alone a little trouble. And, besides," she says, getting up, excited, "no matter what any one can say, you've been a good—" She broke down, all at once. The rest of it she cried into my shoulder, whilst I told her about how I'd be rich and great in no time, and father'd come around all right after a while, and we'd all be happy, till she felt better. And I believed it myself so strong, and put it out so clear, that I think I convinced her. Anyway, they got along all right after I left. That's a comfort.

So it was arranged. I shouldn't say anything, but keep out of father's way until she made him yield the point. She laid it out to the old gentleman clear and straight, Mattie tells me—(Mattie's mother was my mother's half-sister)—telling him I wasn't drunk, as he could readily prove, and as for the fighting, if he intended to beat me every time I defended a woman, why, she'd leave, too. That part of it stuck in mother's mind; she would not listen when I told her it was only one of the reasons for the row. And she summed the thing up by saying I was determined to leave; that it was best all around; and that he must act like a human being and a father for once. By this time, I reckon he didn't feel so terrible proud of himself. At least, it was pulled off easy. I left home, with some small money in my pocket, a trunk of clothes in Eli's care, and mother and father both waving me good-by in the road, for the Great World, per Boston, and a schooner trading South, that belonged to Eli's cousin.

"I left home ... mother and father both waving me good-by in the road"

And here's a queer thing. The day I left, Mick went into the tavern and called for a glass of whisky. He poured out a snorter and balanced it on the flat of his thumb. 

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