little stream. He called
the man to him, and did what was a wise thing, something of which he had
thought much during his long railroad journey.

"Are you working for Mrs. Appleman?" he asked.

The man answered in the affirmative.

"Well," said John, "I want you to go up to the house and say to her that
her husband has come back and will be there in a few minutes."

The man started for the house. Appleman sat down on the edge of the
bridge and let his legs dangle above the water, just as he had done many
years ago when he was a barefooted boy and had fished for minnows with a
pin hook. How would his wife receive him, and what could he say to her?
Well, he would tell her the truth, that was all, and take the chances.
He rose and went up the road until opposite his own gate. How familiar
the yard seemed to him! There was the gravel path leading from the gate
to the door, and the later flowers, the asters and dahlias, were in
bloom on either side, just as they were when he went away in 1861. The
brightness of the forenoon was upon everything, and it was all
invigorating. He opened the gate and walked toward the house, and just
as he reached his hand toward the latch of the door, it opened, and a
woman whose hair was turning gray put her arms about his neck and drew
him inside, weeping, and with the exclamation, "Oh, John!"

There was another woman, fair-faced and demure, whom he did not
recognize at first, but who kissed him and called him father. Of what
else happened at this meeting I do not know. The reunion was at least
good, and John Appleman was a very happy man.

But the practical phases of life are prompt in asserting themselves. It
was not long before John Appleman knew the problem he had to face. There
was a mortgage nearly due for eleven hundred dollars on the farm, and he
had in his possession only about three hundred dollars. A shrewder
financier than he might have known how to renew the mortgage, or to lift
it by making a new one elsewhere, for the farm was worth many times the
sum involved. But Appleman was not a financier. The burden of anxiety
which had rested upon his wife and daughter now descended upon him. He
brooded and worried until he saw the hour of execution only five days
off, with no reasonable existent prospect of saving himself. He wandered
about the fields, plotting and planning vaguely, but to little purpose.
One day he stood beside the creek, gazing absent-mindedly toward the
hillsid