"Browning," said Sedgwick, "it was mighty kind of you to come with me.
I ran bare-footed over this road every summer day of my boyhood. In that
old school-house I could show you notches which I cut in the tables and
benches, and it seems now as though I was choking." They came to the old
churchyard. "Hold, Jack," said Sedgwick, "let us go in here and look to
see if any more graves have been added since I went away."

They climbed the fence, and Sedgwick led the way to a plot of ground
where there were three headstones. "Thank God, there are no new graves,"
he said. "This was my sister; this, my baby brother, and this, my
mother," pointing to the names on the headstones. "Had my mother been
alive, I would long ago have come back."

Then, with more calmness, he turned his steps back to the road, but he
was shaking in every limb when he opened the old gate and walked up
toward the house. The path was lined with lilacs in full bloom, and a
robin in a tree near by was calling her mate. "The same old lilacs, the
same old redbreast, Browning," he said, with white lips.

He did not stop to knock, but pushed the door suddenly open and strode
within. Walking up to an old man, who was reading his Bible, he said,
"Father, I am sorry that I fought the mulatto, if it grieved you, but the
black rascal deserved it, all the same."

The old man surveyed him wildly for a moment, then broke completely down,
and, wringing the young man's hands, could only sob:

"Thank God, my son, whom I thought was lost, is back again. Thank God!"