It was dark ere a slow-moving stage landed him at the village tavern and a cheerless supper.
And the next day's visit to the spot!
The only redeeming feature seemed to be that it was warm and the sun shone—one of those first spring days that come the last of March, and with it the early-arriving bluebirds. They were there when Winn reached the now deserted farmhouse, where a snow-drift still lingered against its northern side and patches of the same winter pall draped each stone wall. The brook which crossed the meadow in front was a brimming torrent; the barn shed across the road was filled with a confusion of worn-out vehicles, broken and rusted farming tools half buried in snow, a drift of which remained in the empty barn, the door of which had fallen to earth: the fences had great gaps in them; gates were missing; and ruin and desolation were visible on all sides.
The house that had once been "Home, Sweet Home," to Winn was the most lugubrious blotch of all. It had grown brown and moss-covered with time and the elements, missing window-panes were replaced with rags, bushes choked the dooryard, and, as he peered into what had once been the "best room," snow lay on the floor and strips of paper hung from the walls.
How small the house seemed to what it once had! The old well-sweep had been used to patch the garden fence, the woodshed roof had fallen in, and a silence that seemed to crawl out of that old ruin brooded over it.
This was his boyhood home, and on it lay the burden of three years' taxes and a mortgage!
And as Winn looked into windows and then entered, crossing floors gingerly, lest they give way and pitch him into the cellar, he felt that it would be a mercy to the world to set the old rookery on fire and remove it from human sight.
The solitary note of joy about it was a bluebird piping away in the near-by orchard, and for that bird's presence there, Winn felt grateful.
Then he wandered over the orchard, searching for the tree that had borne seek-no-further apples, and another where he had once met a colony of angry hang-legs while climbing to rob a bird's nest. He failed to reach the nest, but those vicious wasps reached him easily enough, and as Winn recalled the incident he smiled—the first time that day.
For two hours he roamed about the farm, now hunting for the tree where he had shot his first squirrel, and then the thicket in which he had once kept a box-trap set for rabbits. He followed the brook up to the gorge, sauntered through the chestnut grove and back to where a group of sugar maples and a sap house stood, thankful that the familiar rocks yet remained and that the trees had not been cut away, and for the bluebirds, chirping a welcome.