pletion of long-nourished schemes. He was at home again, incognito
and rich; presently he could enter his father's house by means of the
pass-key, which he had piously preserved through all his wanderings; he
would throw down the borrowed money; there would be a reconciliation,
the details of which he frequently arranged; and he saw himself, during
the next month, made welcome in many stately houses at many frigid
dinner-parties, taking his share in the conversation with the freedom of
the man and the traveller, and laying down the law upon finance with the
authority of the successful investor. But this programme was not to be
begun before evening--not till just before dinner, indeed, at which meal
the re-assembled family were to sit roseate, and the best wine, the
modern fatted calf, should flow for the prodigal's return.

Meanwhile he walked familiar streets, merry reminiscences crowding round
him, sad ones also, both with the same surprising pathos. The keen
frosty air; the low, rosy, wintry sun; the Castle, hailing him like an
old acquaintance; the names of friends on door-plates; the sight of
friends whom he seemed to recognise, and whom he eagerly avoided, in the
streets; the pleasant chant of the north-country accent; the dome of St.
George's reminding him of his last penitential moments in the lane, and
of that King of Glory whose name had echoed ever since in the saddest
corner of his memory; and the gutters where he had learned to slide,
and the shop where he had bought his skates, and the stones on which he
had trod, and the railings in which he had rattled his clacken as he
went to school; and all those thousand and one nameless particulars
which the eye sees without noting, which the memory keeps indeed yet
without knowing, and which, taken one with another, build up for us the
aspect of the place that we call home: all these besieged him, as he
went, with both delight and sadness.

His first visit was for Houston, who had a house on Regent Terrace, kept
for him in old days by an aunt. The door was opened (to his surprise)
upon the chain, and a voice asked him from within what he wanted.

"I want Mr. Houston--Mr. Alan Houston," said he.

"And who are you?" said the voice.

"This is most extraordinary," thought John; and then aloud he told his
name.

"No' young Mr. John?" cried the voice, with a sudden increase of
Scottish accent, testifying to a friendlier feeling.

"The very same," said John.

And