"What in the world ails James?" said Diana as she retreated from the doorand surveyed him at a distance from her chamber window. His face was likea landscape over which a thunder-cloud has drifted, and he strode besidehis father with a peculiar air of proud displeasure and repression.

At that moment the youthful man was struggling with the bitterest sorrowthat can befall youth--the breaking up of his life-purpose. He had justcome to a decision to sacrifice his hopes of education, his man'sambition, his love, his home and family, and become a wanderer on theface of the earth. How this befell requires a sketch of character.

Deacon Silas Pitkin was a fair specimen of a class of men not uncommon inNew England--men too sensitive for the severe physical conditions of NewEngland life, and therefore both suffering and inflicting suffering. Hewas a man of the finest moral traits, of incorruptible probity, ofscrupulous honor, of an exacting conscientiousness, and of a sincerepiety. But he had begun life with nothing; his whole standing in theworld had been gained inch by inch by the most unremitting economy andself-denial, and he was a man of little capacity for hope, of who it wassaid, in popular phraseology, that he "took skinnygs hard." He was neversanguine of good, always expectant of evil, and seemed to view life likea sentinel forbidden to sleep and constantly under arms.