He knocked at the door, half doubtfully, for all his eagerness. It might be she lived elsewhere in the parish now. He had schooled himself to this thought so that it was no surprise, although a heavy disappointment, when the door was opened by a small dark man holding a sleeping baby on his arm. Timothy lowered his voice and the man gave a brief and hushed answer. He spoke in a strong French-Canadian accent. "Moira O'Donnell? I nevaire heard before. Go to ze house on ze hill--mebbe zey know--"
He closed the door, and, through the open window, Timothy saw him sit down, still holding the baby and looking at it as though the interrupting episode were already forgotten. The old man shivered with a passing eerie sense of being like a ghost knocking vainly at the doors of the living. He limped up the hill, and knocked on the kitchen door of the old Wilcox house. To his eyes, dilated with the wide dusk of the early evening, the windows seemed to blaze with light, and when the door was opened to him he shaded his eyes, blinking fast against the rays of a lamp held high in the hand of a round, little woman who looked at him with an impersonal kindness. His heart beat so he could not speak.
Suddenly from the past rang out his old name, the one he had almost lost in the dreary years of "Uncle Tim" which lay behind him.
"Why, Piper Tim!" cried the woman in a voice of exceeding warmth and affection. "Why, it's dear, dear, darling old Piper Tim come back to visit his old home. I knew ye in a minute by the pipes. Come in! Come in! There's not a soul livin' or dead that's welcomer in th' house of Moira Wilcox."
The name blazed high through all the confusion of his swimming senses. To his blank look she returned a mellow laugh. "Why sure, Timmy darlint, hasn't anybody; iver told ye I was married? I'd have written ye myself, only that I knew you couldn't read it, and 'twas hard to tell through other people. Though, saints preserve us, 'tis long since I thought anything about it, one way _or_ th' other. 'Tis as nat'ral as breathing now."
She was pulling him into the warm, light room, taking his cap and pipes from him, and at the last she pushed him affectionately into a chair, and stood looking kindly at his pale agitation, her arms wide in a soft angle as she placed her hands on her rounded hips. "Oh, Timothy Moran, you darlint! Moira's that glad to see you! You mind me of the times when I was young and that's comin' to be long ago."