st look at that carving in front."

"Who lives there?" Henry asked.

"Did hear, but have forgotten. Yonder's one of green stone. I don't
like that so well. Here we have a sort of old stone. That house looks
as though it might be a hundred years old, but it was put up last
year. Well, here's our house."

The carriage drew up under the porte-cocher of a mansion built of
cobble-stones. It was as strong as a battlement, but its outlines
curved in obedience to gracefulness and yielded to the demand of
striking effect. Viewed from one point it might have been taken for a
castle; from another, it suggested itself as a spireless church.
Strangers halted to gaze at it; street laborers looked at it in
admiration. It was showy in a neighborhood of mansions.

Mrs. Witherspoon led Henry to the threshold and tremulously kissed
him. And it was with this degree of welcome that the wanderer was
shown into his home.

CHAPTER VII.

A MOTHER'S AFFECTION.

In one bedazzled moment we review a whole night of darkness. A luxury
brings with it the memory of a privation. The first glimpse of those
drawing-rooms, gleaming with white and warm with gold, were seen
against a black cloud, and that cloud was the past. The wanderer was
startled; there was nothing now to turn aside the full shock of his
responsibilities. He felt the enormity of his pretense, and he began
again to pick at his motive. Mrs. Witherspoon perceived a change in
him and anxiously asked if he were ill. No, but now that his long
journey was ended he felt worn by it. The father saw him with a fresh
criticism and said that he looked older than his years bespoke him;
but the mother, quick in every defense, insisted that he had gone
through enough to make any one look old; and besides, the Craigs,
being a thoughtful people, always looked older than they really were.
In the years that followed, this first day "at home" was reviewed in
all its memories--the library with its busts of old thinkers and its
bright array of new books; the sober breakfast-room in which luncheon
was served; the orderly servants; the plants; the gold fishes; the
heavy hangings; a tiger skin with a life-expressive head; the
portraits of American statesmen; the rich painting of a cow that
flashed back the tradition of a trade-mark bull on a dead wall.

Evening came with melody in the music-room; midnight, and Henry sat
alone in his room. He was heavy with sadness. The feeling that
henceforth h