He had quickened his pace, and presently they came to a yard, neglected and overgrown with jimson-weed and pokeberry, and with here and there a tall hollyhock nodding above the rank vegetation. The ground fell way abruptly from the street level, and at the foot of a steep incline flowed the Little Wolf River. The house was an utter ruin. The windows were gone, and the huge stone chimney, built of flat rocks gathered from the bed of the Little Wolf, leaned dangerously. Like the windows the doors were gone too; the heavy hand-rived shingles were moss-grown; while daylight showed through the wide gaping chinks between the logs from which the clay had long since fallen. Nailed to the trunk of a great elm that stood near the street, was a sign with “For Sale,” painted on it in a palpably unprofessional hand.
The stranger surveyed the desolation with something very like dismay.
“I reckon twenty years is a right smart of a spell after all, son. It seemed like yesterday to me—coming back.”
But they were not unobserved. An old man had been watching them, and now he crossed the street, moving slowly with the aid of a heavy cane. He was close upon them before either became aware of his presence; then they turned, hearing his shuffling step upon the path, and saw that he was regarding them with eager curiosity out of a pair of beady black eyes.
“Maybe you are thinking of buying?” he said shrilly.
“No, I reckon not,” said the stranger; then his face changed with a look of quick recognition. “Why, you're old Pap Randall!” he cried. He seemed about to extend his hand, but the other gave him a blank stare; then he screwed his weazened wrinkled old face into a grin.
“I reckon I been old Pap Randall a heap longer than your memory lasts,” he said, chuckling. “Your father might a called me that, if he'd knowed me. The Rogers lived there onct, a do-less tribe outen the mountings of Virginia. Old Tom Rogers and me was soldiers in Colonel Landray's company in the second war agin the British; afore that, I'd fit under General Washington in the fust war—”
“What's come of the family?” asked the stranger.
“Gone—scattered like a bevy of pa'tridges as soon as they could fly. The oldest boy's dead; the second's gone back to Virginia; two of the girls married and moved west to Illinoy; and the youngest boy's in Texas or somewheres outen that ways. Old Tom was one of the fust settlers in Benson. He might a owned four hundred acres of land right about here if he'd a mind to, but he never held title to more'n this here scrap of an allotment, and a bit of an out lot up the crick, where Appleseed Johnny onct had one of his orchards; I reckon you've heard tell of him? He thought he had a call to kiver this here country with fruit trees; they say there ain't a county in the state but what's got its orchards that Appleseed Johnny planted.”
The stranger laughed shortly.