BOSTON — Mourners gathered today at both ends of a 70-mile route that was to carry the body of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy from the Cape Cod home where he spent his final days to the presidential library bearing the name of one of his slain brothers.

The late senator's loved ones began arriving shortly before noon for a private Mass at the family compound. Among those heading in were his nieces Caroline, daughter of former President John F. Kennedy, and Maria Shriver, daughter of his late sister Eunice.

After the Mass, a motorcade was scheduled to leave for Boston and pass sites that were significant to the senator on the way to the library, which he helped develop. His body will lie in repose there until Friday, a Senate office statement said.

Austin Howe, 15, a high school student from Laurel, Md., came with his 46-year-old father, Scott Howe, to see the Boston library and joined about 20 others before it opened its doors this morning. Father and son planned to pay their respects to Kennedy after the statesman's body arrived in the afternoon.

"He is someone who made a difference," Austin Howe said. "This is a person who served the people of Massachusetts and served the people of the United States."

Trudy Murray, 86, a native of Ireland who later lived in England, said Kennedy helped her and her family get visas when they moved to the United States in 1969.

"I loved Ted Kennedy. I cried yesterday when I put on the TV and saw that he had passed away," said Mullaney, a retired nurse who now lives in Brockton.

"He made his mistakes, but I don't even want to hear them. I forgive all of them because he was such a good man," she said.