to
peep through a certain wistaria-festooned window he should see his
father with pipe and book in the accustomed chair, the mother would
look up from her sewing. A recollection came to him of how once in
those childish years which had been so much with him of late a sudden
sense of overpowering loneliness had come upon him as he played. He had
rushed to that window to comfort his little soul with the sight of the
familiar faces, and had found the room empty. He recalled the terror
that had fallen upon him, the horror of desolation. He would not risk
the shock of disillusion. He saw them quite plainly, as his eyes seemed
fixed on the broken boot, but he would not disturb them. No. When the
time came and he entered the gate he would not go near the house, but
would make his way through the shrubbery in which the lawn ended, and
would seek that wilderness which had been his playground.

The wild hyacinths were blue about the roots of the tree on which his
name was cut--how low down the sprawling letters were!--the pet name by
which his mother had called him. If he fell asleep with his back
against the trunk she might come and call him by it again.

It was because he had not slept all night that he was so tired. He had
tossed and turned, tossed and turned upon his bed, seeking in his
muddled, ineffectual brain for an escape from the disgrace of the
broken boot. Quite suddenly there had presented itself to him the way
of escape--the only way--the way he intended to take.

The feathery leaves of the shepherd's-parsley would wave above the
broken boot. He would fall so blessedly asleep--so blessedly! The dog,
he remembered, had not stirred.

The present master of the wistaria-covered house was driven past him,
as he sat in the roadside chair, to turn in at the familiar gate; the
afternoon sun, sinking towards evening, shone on the smart phaeton, the
glossy-sided horse. Lesser men walked by him briskly to their humble
dwellings, little children, belated from school or at play, rushed on.
He grudged to no man his success, he looked on without bitterness at
the joy of life--he blamed no one, envied no one. He had gone astray
somehow, and was stranded and lost; but it was without rancour, or
enmity, or spite that he, a lonely outsider, watched the "flowing,
flowing, flowing, of the world."

So, at length, he rose from his place, pushed open the gate, laying a
tender touch upon the latch that such dear hands had pressed in d