up the lane of the old King homestead on the hill. Behind us a
young moon was hanging over southwestern meadows of spring-time
peace, but all about us were the soft, moist shadows of a May
night. We peered eagerly through the gloom.

"There's the big willow, Bev," whispered Felix excitedly, as we
turned in at the gate.

There it was, in truth--the tree Grandfather King had planted
when he returned one evening from ploughing in the brook field
and stuck the willow switch he had used all day in the soft soil
by the gate.

It had taken root and grown; our father and our uncles and aunts
had played in its shadow; and now it was a massive thing, with a
huge girth of trunk and great spreading boughs, each of them as
large as a tree in itself.

"I'm going to climb it to-morrow," I said joyfully.

Off to the right was a dim, branching place which we knew was the
orchard; and on our left, among sibilant spruces and firs, was
the old, whitewashed house--from which presently a light gleamed
through an open door, and Aunt Janet, a big, bustling, sonsy
woman, with full-blown peony cheeks, came to welcome us.

Soon after we were at supper in the kitchen, with its low, dark,
raftered ceiling from which substantial hams and flitches of
bacon were hanging. Everything was just as father had described
it. We felt that we had come home, leaving exile behind us.