of color, like a flush on the cheek of beauty. As he was driving along
the familiar road, farm-house and grove, and even tree, rock, and
thicket, began to greet him as with the faces of old friends. At last
he saw, nestling in a wild, picturesque valley, the quaint outline of
his former home. His heart yearned toward it, and he felt that next to
his mother's face no other object could be so welcome.

"Slower, please," he said to the driver.

Though his eyes were moist, and at times dim with tears, not a feature
in the scene escaped him. When near the gateway he sprung out with a
lightness that he would not have believed possible the day before, and
said, "Come for me at five."

For a little time he stood leaning on the gate. Two children were
playing on the lawn, and it almost seemed to him that the elder, a boy
of about ten years, might be himself, and he a passing stranger, who
had merely stopped to look at the pretty scene.

"Oh that I were a boy like that one there! Oh that I were here again
as of old!" he sighed. "How unchanged it all is, and I so changed! It
seems as if the past were mocking me. That must be I there playing
with my little sister. Mother must be sewing in her cheery south room,
and father surely is taking his after-dinner nap in the library. Can
it be that they are all dead save me? and that this is but a beautiful
mirage?"

He felt that he could not meet any one until he became more composed,
and so passed on up the valley. Before turning away he noticed that a
lady come out at the front door. The children joined her, and they