“And I’d give the world, if I had it, for a chance to live my life over, that I might have an opportunity to atone for the suffering I have caused you all.” “Dear Joe, you have suffered too.” He turned his face to the wall and relapsed into silence. And as he secretly invoked the presence of his beloved dead, he saw himself in an emigrant’s camp far away in the Black Hills. Again the tethered Flossie lowed plaintively at the wagon-wheel, bemoaning the death of her calf; again the still, white-robed form of his Annie appeared before his mental vision. And the sorrowing husband fell asleep. XXXIX _THE OLD HOMESTEAD_ The gray dawn of a bleak December morning found the Ranger brothers alternately stamping the snow from their feet on the front veranda of the old homestead, and listening for the first sounds of awakening within. The same denuded locust-boughs swept the lattice as of yore; and it seemed but yesterday to John Ranger as he recalled the time he had caught his gentle Annie in his arms on that momentous and well-remembered evening, and made the startling announcement, “It’s all settled, mother. Brother Lije has bought the farm, and we’ll be off in less than a month for Oregon.” He turned to his brother, whose face was like marble as he stood in the shadow of the wall, as silent as the Sphinx. “Who in thunder is coming here to rout a fellow out o’ bed at this time of a Sunday morning?” growled Lije Robinson, as he opened the door an inch or so and peeped out into the biting air. “It is I and another,” cried John Ranger, pushing the door wide open. For a moment the brothers-in-law faced each other in silence. One was dumb with many conflicting emotions, the other with simple wonder. “Your conscience must have troubled you,” said Lije, after an awkward pause, “or you wouldn’t have come back. But come in! I’ll start up the fire. Who’s this?” looking hard at Joseph, whose bronzed and bearded face was more than half concealed by the upturned collar of his fur-lined overcoat. “Don’t you know him, Lije?” “Naw, nor I don’t want to.” Meanwhile Mrs. Robinson had emerged from her room after a hurried toilet. “Sister Mollie!” “Brother John!” For half a minute not another word was spoken. “I never expected to set eyes on you again,” cried the sister at last, as, half crying and half laughing, she held him at arm’s length for a better view. “It seemed as if you had left the world when you went to Oregon; and now you are back again,—the same old John.” “This is an age of progress, Mollie. The planet doesn’t seem so very big, if you know how to get around it.” “Will you introduce the stranger, John?” asked his sister, in a welcoming tone. “I’ve been waiting to see if he would be recognized. There is another surprise in store for you, Mollie. Did you ever see this man before?” “Can it be possible,” she asked, her face deathly pale, “that this is my brother Joseph?”