Down the incline he went, into the quiet street below, and along it to another which led toward his father's house. Once he saw a man and woman approaching, and he stepped behind a high fence in the grounds of an old mill. He crouched down, and heard their voices as they went by, but they sounded strange to him. He followed now in their wake, and saw them turn in another direction. Then he saw a man approaching, but he walked from side to side of the pavement, as if he were intoxicated, and Walton avoided him by crossing the street and pursuing his way on the other side.
At last he was at his old home. The grounds were the same in size, but the old house had been repainted, and trees which had been small and slender were now large and dense. There was a heartless alteration in the appearance of it all. The white paint on the house somehow made it seem a veritable ghost of its former self; its whole aspect was cold and forbidding. He opened the gate and entered. He was not afraid, for as a boy he had gone into the grounds at any hour he liked; he had even raised an unfastened window in the old dining-room, when he had mislaid his key, and climbed in long after midnight.
There was a light in his father's room on the ground floor, but the blind was drawn down. Fred could not look in from where he stood, so he crept up close to the wall, and moved noiselessly along against it till he could peer through the crack between the window-sill and the blind. He started back, for in the light of the green-shaded lamp he saw his father seated at a table reading a paper. How strange it seemed to see him after all those years! And yet the banker had changed very little. It was the same harsh, imperturbable face. In it lay no sign of concern over the absence of the son who now loved him with a woman's tenderness.
“Poor, poor father!” the young man said, in his heart. “I never understood you. I didn't know what life meant then as I do now. You are living according to your lights. It was I who was wrong--wofully wrong. God help me!”
With a low groan he crept away. Out into the street he went. He must hurry now, for his time was limited. There must be no mistake about the train. He must not let his employer suspect this stolen excursion of his, for it would mar the pleasure of the old man's journey.