And, after all, the journey was not a hard one. It had ceased either to snow or to blow. The road up the hill was by no means impassable. It was on the sheltered side of the ridge, and had not felt the full fury of the storm. Through the gap there were no drifts; the horses could trot easily along; and, within an hour after midnight, the travellers were in their own home. That Aunt Martha was rejoiced to see them goes without saying. She was spending the night as she had spent the day, moving about the house in an agony of fear, censuring herself constantly for permitting her dear boy to leave home that morning in the face of the impending storm, awaiting news of him which she felt she must have, and yet dreaded to hear. And here, at last, he was, unexpectedly home, safe and sound--ah, no! not quite safe and sound; his haggard face, his lustreless eyes, his pinched lips, his weak voice, all told a story of exhaustion, the cause of which Aunt Martha was not long in learning. She made ready, with all haste, some nourishing food and hot drink, and both the old man and the boy partook of it freely. After this Dannie dragged his tired feet up the dear old staircase to his own room, to his own bed, to his own sweet pillow, and not--he knelt to thank his God--not to the hard cot behind the grated door of a dreadful cell in the county jail. But he could not sleep. It was not the joy of being in his own home that drove slumber from his eyes, nor the memory of that awful journey through the drifting snow, nor yet his hard experience as a witness on the stand--it was the joyful, the dreadful, the bewildering thought that in one brief hour he had found a father who was more than all he had ever pictured him to be, a father who loved him and would have taken him and cared for him and rejoiced in him; and in the same brief hour had lost him, perhaps forever. It was sweet, indeed, to have found him, but it was terrible, very terrible, so soon to have lost him. And yet Dannie felt, he knew, that his proper place was with the grandfather who had been so good to him, so kind, so tender, so absolutely true. In all the journey from Mooreville to the door of the Pickett homestead, Abner Pickett had never once spoken of his son, of the scene in the jury room, or of his triumphant possession of his grandson; and Dannie knew that these things must remain forbidden subjects, as all things pertaining to Charlie Pickett had been from his earliest recollection. But when Aunt Martha came in to bid him good night, the swelling tide of emotion that he had repressed for many hours, forced its way to his lips, and he put his arms around her neck and, amid many sobs, he told the story of the afternoon.