Nick laughed. “Why, father, do ye na know me?” he cried out. “’Tis I—’tis Nick—come home!”
Two steps the stern old tanner took—two steps to the latchet-gate. Not one word did he speak; but he set his hand to the latchet-gate and closed it in Nick’s face.
CHAPTER XXXVII
TURNED ADRIFT
Down the path and under the gate the rains had washed a shallow rut in the earth. Two pebbles, loosened by the closing of the gate, rolled down the rut and out upon the little spreading fan of sand that whitened in the grass.
There was the house with the black beams checkering its yellow walls. There was the old bench by the door, and the lettuce in the garden-bed. There were the beehives, and the bees humming among the orchard boughs.
“Why, father, what!” cried Nick, “dost na know me yet? See, ’tis I, Nick, thy son.”
A strange look came into the tanner’s face. “I do na know thee, boy,” he answered heavily; “thou canst na enter here.”
“But, father, indeed ’tis I!”
Simon Attwood looked across the town; yet he did not see the town: across the town into the sky, yet he did not see the sky, nor the drifting banks of cloud, nor the sunlight shining on the clouds. “I say I do na know thee,” he replied; “be off to the place whence ye ha’ come.”