emed possessed by a desperate,
morbid desire to leave the scene of the calamity behind him. He was
restless and feverish in his anxiety, and scarcely able to endure the
delay which the arrangement of his affairs made necessary. He had not
been well when he had left Willowfield, and during his watching by his
wife's bedside he had grown thin and restless-eyed.

"I want to get home. I must get home," he would exclaim, as if
involuntarily. His entire physical and mental condition were strained and
unnatural. His wife's doctor, who had become his own doctor as his health
deteriorated, was not surprised, on arriving one day, to find him
prostrated with nervous fever. He was ill for months, and he rose from
his sick-bed a depressed shadow of his former self and quite unable to
think of returning to his charge, even if his old desire had not utterly
left him with his fever. He was absent from Willowfield for two years,
and when at length he turned his face homeward, it was with no eagerness.
He had passed through one of those phases which change a man's life and
being. If he had been a rich man he would have remained away and would
have lived in London, seeing much of the chief continental cities. As it
was, he must at least temporarily return to Willowfield and take with him
his little girl.

On the day distinguished by his return to his people, much subdued
excitement prevailed in Willowfield. During the whole of the previous
week Mrs. Stornaway's carriage had paid daily visits to the down-town
stores. There was a flourishing New England thrift among the Stornaways,
the Larkins, the Downings, and the Burtons, which did not allow of their
delegating the ordering of their households to assistants. Most of them
were rigorous housewives, keen at a bargain and sharp of tongue when need
be, and there was rarely any danger of their getting less than their
money's worth.

To celebrate his arrival, Mrs. Stornaway was to give an evening party
which was to combine congratulatory welcome with a touch of condolence
for the past and assurance for the future.

"We must let him see," said Mrs. Stornaway, "that Willowfield has its
attractions."

Its attractions did not present themselves as vividly to John Baird as
might have been hoped, when he descended from the train at the depot. He
had spent two or three days in Boston with a view to taking his change
gradually, but he found himself not as fully prepared for Willowfield as
he coul