Over the old Horton homestead hardly a shadow of change had passed. It presented the same appearance of prosperous middle age. The great elms about it looked not a day older; the hydrangeas on the door-step flowered as exuberantly; the old-fashioned roses bloomed as red, and white, and yellow, against the mossy brick walls; the flower-plots were as trim, and the rustic baskets of moneywort flourished as green, as in the days when Mrs. Horton walked among them, and tended them with her own hands. She had lain with her busy hands folded these five years, in the shadow of the Horton monument, between the grave of Dr. Jared Horton and a row of lessening mounds which had been filled many, many years—the graves of the children who were born—and had died—before Roger's birth.
A great quiet had hung about the place for several years. The blinds upon the front side had seldom been seen to open, except for weekly airings or semi-annual cleanings.
But one day in mid-summer the parlor windows are seen wide open, the front door swung back, and several trunks, covered with labels of all colors, and in several languages, are standing in the large hall.
An unwonted stir about the kitchen and stable, a lively rattling of silver and china in the dining room, attest to some unusual cause for excitement. The cause is at once manifest as the door at the end of the hall opens, and Roger Horton appears, against a background composed of mahogany side-board and the erect and vigilant figure of Nancy Swift, the faithful old housekeeper of his mother's time.
The handsome, manly lad had fulfilled the promise of his boyhood. He was tall and full-chested; a trifle thin, perhaps, and his fine face, now bronzed with travel, grave and thoughtful for his years, but capable of breaking into a smile like a sudden transition from a minor to a major key in music.
He looked more than thoughtful at this moment. He had hardly tasted the food prepared by Nancy with a keen eye to his youthful predilections, and in the firm conviction that he must have suffered terrible deprivations during his foreign travels.
Truly, this coming home was not like the comings-home of other days, when two dear faces, one gray-bearded and genial, the other pale and gentle-eyed, had smiled upon him across the comfortable board. The sense of loss was almost more than he could bear; the sound of his own footsteps in the cool, empty hall smote heavily upon his heart.
The door of the parlor stood ajar, and he pushed it open and stepped into the room. Everything was as it had always been ever since he could remember—furniture, carpets, curtains, everything. Just opposite the door hung the portraits of his parents, invested by the dim half-light with a life-like air which the unknown artist had vainly tried to impart.
Roger had not entered the room since his mother's funeral, which followed close upon that of his father, and just before the close of his collegiate course.