ld out a
friendly hand for auld lang syne. Before daybreak, I stole forth,
hired a horse and buggy, asked the way to Methuen and, rousing
Hawkins, bundled him, whining and fretting, into it.

Slowly we drove in the growing light through the country lanes I
had known and loved so well as a lad--the farmland which was the
only friendly thing in my disconsolate boyhood. It was in the
early spring and the apple-trees along the stone walls by the
roadside were showered with clustering blossoms. Dandelions
sprinkled the fields. The cloud shadows slowly moved across rich
pastures of delicate green. A sun-warmed, perfume-laden breeze
blew from the east, tinged with a keen edge that sent the blood
leaping in my temples. Tiny pools stood in the ruts glinting blue
toward the sky. The old horse plodded slowly on and the robins
called among the elms that stood arching over white farm-houses
with blinds, some blue, some green.

With a harrowing sense of helplessness, the realization of what I
had thrown away of life swept over me. I turned from the sodden
creature beside me in disgust. Hawkins had slumped back in his
seat, so that his head rested upon the hood, and had fallen sound
asleep, with his mouth wide open. How I wished that I had the
courage to strangle him--and then it came to me that, after all,
it was not he who had ruined me, but I who had ruined him!

About noontime we came to a landscape that seemed familiar to me,
although more heavily wooded and with many more farms than I
remembered; and at a turn in the road I recognized a couple of huge
elms that marked the site of the homestead occupied in my boyhood
by the Quirks. There was the brook, the maple grove upon the hill,
the old stile by the pasture, and the long stone wall beside the
apple orchard, radiant with white. Yet the house seemed to have
vanished. My heart sank, for somehow I had assumed that the Quirks
must still be living, just as they had always lived. And now, as
we drew near the turn, I saw that the place where the homestead
had stood was empty, and all that remained was a heap of blackened
stone and brick thickly overgrown with brambles.

Fifty yards farther down the road we came upon an old man sitting
on the fence, smoking a pipe. He wore a tattered old brown felt
hat and overalls, and his long gray hair and beard were tangled
and unkempt. I passed the time of day and he answered me civilly
enough, although vacantly; and I saw t