The editor stared at him! Burnt down it certainly had been, but by no means recently. Grasses were already springing up from the charred beams in the cellar, vines were trailing over the fallen chimneys, excavations, already old, had been made among the ruins. “When were you here last?” the editor asked abruptly.
“Five years ago,” said the stranger abstractedly.
“Five years!—and you knew nothing of THIS?”
“No. I was in Tahiti, Australia, Japan, and China all the time.”
“And you never heard from home?”
“No. You see I quo'led with the old man, and ran away.”
“And you didn't write to tell them you were coming?”
“No.” He hesitated, and then added: “Never thought o' coming till I saw YOU.”
“Me!”
“Yes; you and—the high water.”