At last, it was time to look for the carriage. The trunks and hand-bags
were ready in the hall, and Sister Soulsby was tying up a package of
sandwiches for Alice to keep by her in the train.

Theron, with hat in hand, and overcoat on arm, loitered restlessly into
the kitchen, and watched this proceeding for a moment. Then he sauntered
out upon the stoop, and, lifting his head and drawing as long a breath
as he could, looked over at the elms.

Perhaps the face was older and graver; it was hard to tell. The long
winter's illness, with its recurring crises and sustained confinement,
had bleached his skin and reduced his figure to gauntness, but there was
none the less an air of restored and secure good health about him. Only
in the eyes themselves, as they rested briefly upon the prospect, did
a substantial change suggest itself. They did not dwell fondly upon the
picture of the lofty, spreading boughs, with their waves of sap-green
leafage stirring against the blue. They did not soften and glow this
time, at the thought of how wholly one felt sure of God's goodness in
these wonderful new mornings of spring.

They looked instead straight through the fairest and most moving
spectacle in nature's processional, and saw afar off, in conjectural
vision, a formless sort of place which was Seattle. They surveyed its
impalpable outlines, its undefined dimensions, with a certain cool
glitter of hard-and-fast resolve. There rose before his fancy, out of
the chaos of these shapeless imaginings, some faces of men, then more
behind them, then a great concourse of uplifted countenances, crowded
close together as far as the eye could reach. They were attentive faces
all, rapt, eager, credulous to a degree. Their eyes were admiringly bent
upon a common object of excited interest. They were looking at HIM; they