Philip Hayn accounted it a special mercy of Providence that the impulse to leave New York had been so timed that the train which he caught would land him at Haynton Station after dark. He did not feel like seeing old acquaintances that day; he felt that his face was being a persistent, detestable tell-tale, and that he could not train and command it while so busy with his thoughts. If seen at all, he intended to offer as few suggestions for remark as possible: so, before leaving his hotel, he divested himself of every visible trace of city raiment, and clothed himself in the Sunday suit which Haynton had seen often enough to pass without remark. He could not restore his shorn superfluity of hair, but he again put on the hat which for a year had been his best at home. He even went so far as to leave for his father a new trunk which he had purchased, putting his own personal property into the antique carpet-bag—real carpet—which the old farmer had brought down. Lastly, that he might not appear in the least like a city youth, he carried with him two religious weeklies which some society for the reformation of hotel-boarders had caused to be placed in his box in the hotel-office, and he read them quite faithfully on the train.

Reminders of the old life to which he was returning came to him thick and fast when the train got fairly out of the city. In a field he saw a man stripping the leaves from standing corn-stalks, and although the view was what photographers term “instantaneous,” it was long enough to show the shabby attire, brown face, shocking bad hat, clumsy boots, and general air of resignation that marked all farmers in the vicinity of Haynton. Two or three miles farther along he saw a half-grown boy picking up stones in a field of thin soil and adding them to piles which were painfully significant of much similar work in past days.

Down in a marshy pasture beside the railway-embankment two men were digging a drainage-ditch: they were too far apart to be company for each other, and too muddy to be attractive to themselves. Phil at once recalled much work of like nature he had done, and more that still depended upon his muscle to make the entire acreage of Hayn farm available for cultivation. Estimating according to past experience and newly-acquired knowledge, he found that the number of days of work required, if paid for at the lowest rate of common laborers in New York, would amount to twice as much as the value of the land when improved. It was easy to see why farmers never got rich. Still, the farm was his natural sphere; he had been born to it. Heaven, in arranging his life-career, knew in advance what he was fit for, and his own difference of opinion would probably be explained away in time by the logic of events which he could not foresee.

In a dusty road near a little station at which the train stopped he saw two farmers’ wagons meet, stop, and their owners engage in conversation. Thus would he, the observer, soon be obtaining whatever news he acquired; instead of every morning opening a newspaper recording the previous day’s doings throughout the civilized world, he would be restricted to stories of how Joddles’s horse, who had cast himself, was getting along with his scraped hip-joint, and when Bragfew thought he might be likely to kill a beef if he could find somebody to take a forequarter which hadn’t been spoken for yet, the chances of Nemy Perkins being “churched” for calling Deacon Thewser a sneaking old sheep-thief, and much more information equally entertaining and instructive. Well, why not? What better news would he himself be likely to offer? He was not going to fall into the sin, warning of which had been given by one of the apostles, of esteeming himself more highly than his neighbors: some people in the vicinity of Haynton did not seem much better than fools, but probably none of them had ever been so idiotic as to fall in love with women far above them in social station and consequently far beyond their reach.

Farther and farther the train left the city behind; more and more desolate the country appeared. It was late October; all crops had been harvested, and many trees had shed all their leaves; the only green was that of grass and evergreens, the latter looking almost funereal under the overcast sky. The train entered a region of pine-barrens, through openings in which some sand-dunes could occasionally be seen. At times when the train stopped the wind brought up the sound of the surf, pounding the beach not far away, and the noise was not as cheering as Phil had often thought it in earlier days.

Then empty seats in the cars became numerous. All city people who lived out of town had already left the train, and the few who got on afterward belonged in the vicinage. Phil had noted the change as it gradually occurred, and to a well-dressed couple, the last of their kind, who occupied seats not far in front of him, his gaze clung as mournfully as a toper’s eye when fixed upon the last drops that his bottle can give him. Finally they too disappeared, and their place was taken by a sallow country-woman in a home-made brown dress and a gray bonnet trimmed with green ribbons. He tried to console himself with the thought that the car would soon be too dark for colors to be annoying, and that Haynton was but an hour distant. Then the brilliant thought came to him that he might change the scene. He acted upon it, went into the next car, and took a seat. The rustic in front of him turned his head, stared, and drawled,—

“Gret Gosh! Ef it ain’t Phil Hayn, then I’m a clam-shell! Well, I’d never have knowed ye ef twa’n’t for your father’s mouth an’ chin.” Then the rustic deliberately gathered his feet and knees into his seat, and twisted his body until his shoulders were almost squared to the rear of the car, his whole air being that of a man who had suddenly found a job greatly to his liking, and one to which he intended at once to address himself with all his might.

“Been down to York, eh?” the rustic continued, after getting his frame satisfactorily braced.

“Yes.”

The rustic looked so steadily, earnestly, hungrily into the face before him that Phil hastily looked through the window. Some men have been impressed by the historic “stony British stare,” others have admired the penetrating glance of the typical detective, or the frontiersman “sizing up” a new arrival; but the Briton, the detective, and the frontiersman combined could not equal the stare of the countryman whose tastes tend toward the affairs of his neighbors.

“York’s a good deal of a town, I s’pose,” the countryman remarked, after some earnest scrutiny.

“Yes.”

“Find anythin’ to pay the ’xpenses of the trip?” This after another soulful gaze.

“Shouldn’t wonder.”

“Carpet-bag seems pooty well stuffed,” said the tormentor, after having transferred his glance for a moment to the old satchel that occupied half of Phil’s seat.

“Mother wanted a few things that she couldn’t find at any of our stores,” said Phil.

“See anybody ye knowed?” was the next question, after the stare had returned to its principal duty.

“Not much,” Phil replied, with a shiver, well knowing to whom the man alluded. “How did your turnips average on that new ground, Mr. Bloke?”

“Only so-so. Ye put up at old—what the somethin’ was his name?—oh, Trammerly—ye stopped with him, I s’pose?”

“Of course not. Mr. Tramlay doesn’t take boarders.”

“Ort to hev been willin’ to take ye in for a few days, though, I should think, considerin’. Didn’t he even offer to?”

“No. Why should he?” asked Phil, beginning to lose his temper. “He paid his way while he was here; I paid mine in New York.”

“Oh!” drawled the rustic; then he put on a judicial air, and devoted two or three minutes to analyzing Phil’s statement and logic. Either accepting both, or mentally noting an exception for future use, he continued,—

“His gal’s as pooty as ever, I s’pose?”

“Which one?”

The questioner’s gaze changed somewhat; by various complicated twitches he slowly worked the blankness out of his face and replaced it by an attempt at a smile; then he slowly extended a long arm over the back of the seat, and unfolded a massive forefinger, which he thrust violently into the region of Phil’s vest-pocket as with a leer he exclaimed,—

“Kee!”

“Don’t be a jackass!” exclaimed Phil, frowning angrily at the fellow. Instead of being abashed, the boor seemed highly delighted, and exclaimed, in somewhat the accent of the animal Phil had named,—

“Haw, haw, haw! Give ye the mitten, did she?”

“It’ll be time for any girl to give me the mitten when I give her the chance, Mr. Bloke,” said Phil, picking up his bag and starting toward another seat.

“Oh, set down; I didn’t think ye was the kind o’ feller to go an’ git mad at an old neighbor that’s only showin’ a friendly interest in ye,” said the man, in tones of reproach. “Set down. Why, I hain’t asked ye half what I want to; you’ve gone an’ put a lot of it out of my head, too, by flyin’ off of the handle in that way.”

“Haynton!” shouted the conductor, as the train stopped with a crash. Phil hastily rose; so did his tormentor, whose face was an absolute agony of appeal as he said,—

“Lemme help ye up to the house with yer bag. I jist remembered that Naomi has been at me for a week to ask your mother somethin’ when I druv by. Might ez well do it to-night as any time: then I can give ye a friendly lift.”

“I’m not going to walk out home,” said Phil, hastily, “if I can——”

“Well, I’d jest as lieve ride,” said the man.

“Two men and a driver and a big bag aren’t going to squeeze into a buggy with seats for only two, if I can help it,” said Phil.

“Say,” whispered the native, confidentially, as the two reached the platform, “I b’lieve I know where I can borry a team as easy as fallin’ off of a log. Jest you stand here a minute or two,—all the boys is dyin’ to see you,—an’ I’ll hook up an’ be back.”

The man disappeared with great rapidity, for a being of his structural peculiarities. Phil looked quickly about, dashed across the track and under some sheltering trees in a small unlighted street, then he made a detour through the outskirts of the little village to reach, without being observed, the road to his father’s farm. The sound of an approaching wagon caused him to hide quickly behind a clump of wild blackberries; but when he saw the driver was not his persecutor he again took the road, muttering, as he plodded along,—

“Bloke isn’t half through with me yet: he said so himself. And he is only one of fifty or sixty men a good deal like him,—to say nothing of women! ‘My punishment is greater than I can bear.’”

Thanks to the charity of deep twilight, there was nothing unsightly about the familiar road, and as Phil neared the mass of shadow from which two lights gleamed just as they had done nightly ever since he had first approached his home after dark, his heart gave a mighty bound. Then his heart reproached him that he had thought so little about his mother during his absence that he had not brought her even the simplest present. He would write back to his father to get him something which he knew would please her; and in the mean time he would try to give her more love than ever before. If he could not have a certain new occupant for his heart, he would at least be as much as possible to those whom the Lord had given him.

Once within the gate, his better self took entire possession of him. Neither his mother nor his brothers should find him other than he had ever been,—affectionate, cheerful, and attentive. He stole softly to a window of the sitting-room, to see if the family were alone. He saw his two little brothers absorbed in a game of checkers. His mother sat by the table, reading a letter which Phil recognized by the hotel’s printed heading; it was his only letter home, written so many days ago that it must have been received long before that evening. Evidently she was re-reading it,—the dear soul!—as people will sometimes do with letters which contain too little, as well as those which are full.

Phil had to keep back some tears of remorse as he sprang upon the veranda and threw the door open. Down dropped the letter, over went the checker table and board, two chairs, and one small boy, and in a moment several country-people were as happy as if the sea had given up its dead or a long-time wanderer had returned. There are some glorious compensations for being simple-minded.