David Chantrey laughed, thinking of the welcome they had given him when he brought Sophy home as his young wife. His heart felt a new tenderness for her, and a throb of impatience to find her. He bade a hasty good-evening to the station-master, and walked off buoyantly toward the High street, along which his path lay. The station-master and the ticket-clerk watched him, and shook their heads significantly; but he was quite unconscious of their scrutiny. Never had the quiet little town seemed so lovely to him. The quaint irregular houses stood one-half of them in shadow, and the rest in the level rays of the May sunset; the chestnut-trees, with their young green leaves and their white blossoms lighting up each branch to the very summit of them; the hawthorn bushes here and there covered with snowy bloom; the children playing, and the swallows darting to and fro overhead; the distant shout of the cuckoo, and the deep low tone of the church clock just striking the hour--this was the threshold of home to him; the outer court, which was dearer to him and more completely his own than any other place in the wide world could ever be. No one was quick to recognize him in his somewhat foreign aspect; the children at their play took no notice of him. All the tradespeople were busy getting their shops a little in order before the shutters were put up. He might perhaps pass through the street as far as Bolton Villa without being observed, and so be sure of a perfectly quiet evening. But as he thought so his heart gave a great bound, for there before him was Sophy herself hurrying along the uneven causeway, now lost behind some jutting building, and then seen once more, still hastening with quick, unsteady steps, as if bent on some pressing errand. He did not try to overtake her, though he could have done so easily. He felt that their first meeting must not be in the street, for the tears that smarted under his eyelids and dimmed his sight, and the quicker throbbing of his pulses, warned him that such a meeting would be no common incident in their lives. She had been his wife for nine years, and she was far dearer to him now than she had been when he married her. Eighteen months of their life together had been lost--a great price to pay for his restored health. But now a long, happy union lay before them.