Opening a Chestnut Burr | Page 8

movement and life that was contagious. Gregory's
dull eyes kindled with something like interest, and then he thought:
"The storm lowered over these sunny shores yesterday. The gloom of
night rested upon these waters but a few hours since. Why is it that
nature can smile and be glad the moment the shadow passes and I
cannot? Is there no sunlight for the soul? I seem as if entering a cave,
that grows colder and darker at every step, and no gleam shines at the
further end, indicating that I may pass through it and out into the light
again."
Thus letting his fancy wander at will, at times half-dreaming and
half-waking, he passed the hours that elapsed before the boat touched at
a point in the Highlands of the Hudson, his destination. Making a better
dinner than he had enjoyed for a long time, and feeling stronger than
for weeks before, he started for the place that now, of all the world, had

for him the greatest attraction.
There was no marked change in the foliage as yet, but only a deepening
of color, like a flush on the cheek of beauty. As he was driving along
the familiar road, farm-house and grove, and even tree, rock, and
thicket, began to greet him as with the faces of old friends. At last he
saw, nestling in a wild, picturesque valley, the quaint outline of his
former home. His heart yearned toward it, and he felt that next to his
mother's face no other object could be so welcome.
"Slower, please," he said to the driver.
Though his eyes were moist, and at times dim with tears, not a feature
in the scene escaped him. When near the gateway he sprung out with a
lightness that he would not have believed possible the day before, and
said, "Come for me at five."
For a little time he stood leaning on the gate. Two children were
playing on the lawn, and it almost seemed to him that the elder, a boy
of about ten years, might be himself, and he a passing stranger, who
had merely stopped to look at the pretty scene.
"Oh that I were a boy like that one there! Oh that I were here again as
of old!" he sighed. "How unchanged it all is, and I so changed! It seems
as if the past were mocking me. That must be I there playing with my
little sister. Mother must be sewing in her cheery south room, and
father surely is taking his after-dinner nap in the library. Can it be that
they are all dead save me? and that this is but a beautiful mirage?"
He felt that he could not meet any one until he became more composed,
and so passed on up the valley. Before turning away he noticed that a
lady come out at the front door. The children joined her, and they
started for a walk.
Looking wistfully on either side, Gregory soon came to a point where
the orchard extended to the road. A well-remembered fall pippin tree
hung its laden boughs over the fence, and the fruit looked so ripe and
golden in the slanting rays of October sunlight that he determined to try

one of the apples and see if it tasted as of old. As he climbed upon the
wall a loose stone fell clattering down and rolled into the road. He did
not notice this, but an old man dozing in the porch of a little house
opposite did. As Gregory reached up his cane to detach from its spray a
great, yellow-cheeked fellow, his hand was arrested, and he was almost
startled off his perch by such a volley of oaths as shocked even his
hardened ears. Turning gingerly around so as not to lose his footing, he
faced this masked battery that had opened so unexpectedly upon him,
and saw a white-haired old man balancing himself on one crutch and
brandishing the other at him.
"Stop knockin' down that wall and fillin! the road with stuns, you--,"
shouted the venerable man, in tones that indicated anything but the
calmness of age. "Let John Walton's apples alone, you--thief. What do
you mean by robbin' in broad daylight, right under a man's nose?"
Gregory saw that he had a character to deal with, and, to divert his
mind from thoughts that were growing too painful, determined to draw
the old man out; so he said, "Is not taking things so openly a rather
honest way of robbing?"
"Git down, I tell yer," cried the guardian of the orchard.
"Suppose 'tis, it's robbin' arter all. So now move on, and none of yer
cussed impudence."
"But you call them John Walton's apples," said Gregory, eating one
with provoking coolness. "What