sounds of the city. For an
instant I waited, rigid with expectancy. And then I heard as clearly and
plainly as ever I heard anything:

"David! David!" in my sister Harriet's voice.

It was exactly the voice in which she has called me a thousand times.
Without an instant's hesitation, I stepped out of bed and called out:

"I'm coming, Harriet! I'm coming!"

"What's the matter?" inquired Bill Hahn sleepily.

"Nothing," I replied, and crept back into bed.

It may have been the result of the strain and excitement of the previous
two days. I don't explain it--I can only tell what happened.

Before I went to sleep again I determined to start straight for home in
the morning: and having decided, I turned over, drew a long, comfortable
breath and did not stir again, I think, until long after the morning sun
shone in at the window.

CHAPTER XII. THE RETURN

"Everything divine runs with light feet."

Surely the chief delight of going away from home is the joy of getting
back again. I shall never forget that spring morning when I walked from
the city of Kilburn into the open country, my bag on my back, a song in
my throat, and the gray road stretching straight before me. I remember
how eagerly I looked out across the fields and meadows and rested my
eyes upon the distant hills. How roomy it all was! I looked up into the
clear blue of the sky. There was space here to breathe, and distances in
which the spirit might spread its wings. As the old prophet says, it was
a place where a man might be placed alone in the midst of the earth.

I was strangely glad that morning of every little stream that ran under
the bridges, I was glad of the trees I passed, glad of every bird and
squirrel in the branches, glad of the cattle grazing in the fields, glad
of the jolly boys I saw on their way to school with their dinner pails,
glad of the bluff, red-faced teamster I met, and of the snug farmer who
waved his hand at me and wished me a friendly good morning. It seemed to
me that I liked every one I saw, and that every one liked me.

So I walked onward that morning, nor ever have had such a sense of
relief and escape, nor ever such a feeling of gayety.

"Here is where I belong," I said. "This is my own country. Those hills
are mine, and all the fields, and the trees and the sky--and the road
here belongs to me as much as it does to any one."

Coming presently to a small house near the side of the road, I saw a
woman working wit