look at the home that was his no longer. Very slowly he had walked
about the yard; pausing a little before each tree and bush and plant;
putting forth his hand, at times, to touch them softly as though he
would make sure that they were there for he saw them dimly through a
mist. The place was strangely hushed and still. The birds and bees and
even the butterflies seemed to have gone somewhere far away. Very
slowly he had gone up the steps to open the front door. Very slowly he
had passed from room to room in the empty, silent, house. On the
kitchen porch he had paused again, for a little, because he could not
see the steps; then had gone on to the well, the garden, the
woodhouse, the shop, the barn, and so out into the orchard that shaded
the gently rising slope of the hill beyond the house. At the farther
side of the orchard, on the brow of the hill, he had climbed the rail
fence and had seated himself on the ground where he could look out and
away over the familiar meadows and fields and pastures.

A bobo-link, swinging on a nearby bush, poured forth a tumbling
torrent of silvery melody. Behind him, on the fence, a meadow lark
answered with liquid music. About him on every side, in the soft
sunlight, the bluebirds were flitting here and there, twittering
cheerily the while over their bluebird tasks. And a woodpecker, hard
at work in the orchard shade, made himself known by the din of his
industry.

But the man, who did not yet quite realize that he was a man, gave no
heed to these busy companions of his boyhood. To him, it was as though
those men with their shovels had heaped that mound of naked, yellow,
earth upon his heart. The world, for him, was as empty as the old
house down there under the orchard hill. For a long time he sat very
still--seeing nothing, hearing nothing, heeding nothing--conscious