further conclusion that he had been knave as well as
fool, and had treated aunt Milly shamefully. He was not altogether a bad
old man, though very weak and erring, and his better nature now gained
the ascendency. Of course his disappointment had a great deal to do with
his remorse; most people do not perceive the hideousness of sin until
they begin to reap its consequences. Instead of the beautiful Northern
life he had dreamed of, he found himself stranded, penniless, in a
strange land, among people whose sympathy he had forfeited, with no one
to lean upon, and no refuge from the storms of life. His outlook was
very dark, and there sprang up within him a wild longing to get back to
North Carolina,--back to the little whitewashed cabin, shaded with china
and mulberry trees; back to the wood-pile and the garden; back to the
old cronies with whom he had swapped lies and tobacco for so many years.
He longed to kiss the rod of aunt Milly's domination. He had purchased
his liberty at too great a price.

The next day he disappeared from Groveland. He had announced his
departure only to Mr. Johnson, who sent his love to his relations in
Patesville.

It would be painful to record in detail the return journey of uncle
Wellington--Mr. Braboy no longer--to his native town; how many weary
miles he walked; how many times he risked his life on railroad tracks
and between freight cars; how he depended for sustenance on the grudging
hand of back-door charity. Nor would it be profitable or delicate to
mention any slight deviations from the path of rectitude, as judged by
conventional standards, to which he may occasionally have been driven by
a too insistent hunger; or to refer in the remotest degree to a
compulsory sojourn of thirty days in a city where he had no references,
and could show no visible means of support. True charity will let these
purely personal matters remain locked in the bosom of him who suffered
them.

IV

Just fifteen months after the date when uncle Wellington had left North
Carolina, a weather-beaten figure entered the town of Patesville after
nightfall, following the railroad track from the north. Few would have
recognized in the hungry-looking old brown tramp, clad in dusty rags and
limping along with bare feet, the trim-looking middle-aged mulatto who
so few months before had taken the train from Patesville for the distant
North; so, if he had but known it, there was no necessity for him to
avoid the