He had never definitely shaped to himself the idea that there could anything happen to his mother; she was as much a part of his life as the aging apple trees and the hills that climbed, with low, gnarled pines to the sky's edge beyond the marshes, a point from which to take distance and direction.

He began to note now the graying hair, the shrunken breast and the worn hands, so blue veined for all their brownness, and he could not sleep of nights because of the sweat that was on his soul, for fear of what might come to her.

He would lie in the little room under the roof and hear the elms moving like the riffle of silence into sound, thinking of his mother until at last he would be obliged to rise and move softly about the place, as if by the mere assertion of himself he could make her safer in it.

He wished nothing so much as not to disturb her, but she must have been lying awake often herself, for the second or third time this happened, she called to him.

He came, half dressed as he was and drew the covers up close about her shoulders, and was exceedingly gay and tender with her.
"There's nothing troubling you, son ?" "Nothing--except to be sure there's nothing troubling _you_." She gave a little, low laugh like a girl.
"That's so like your father.