How small the house seemed to what it once had! The old well-sweep had been used to patch the garden fence, the woodshed roof had fallen in, and a silence that seemed to crawl out of that old ruin brooded over it. This was his boyhood home, and on it lay the burden of three years' taxes and a mortgage! And as Winn looked into windows and then entered, crossing floors gingerly, lest they give way and pitch him into the cellar, he felt that it would be a mercy to the world to set the old rookery on fire and remove it from human sight. The solitary note of joy about it was a bluebird piping away in the near-by orchard, and for that bird's presence there, Winn felt grateful. Then he wandered over the orchard, searching for the tree that had borne seek-no-further apples, and another where he had once met a colony of angry hang-legs while climbing to rob a bird's nest. He failed to reach the nest, but those vicious wasps reached him easily enough, and as Winn recalled the incident he smiled--the first time that day. For two hours he roamed about the farm, now hunting for the tree where he had shot his first squirrel, and then the thicket in which he had once kept a box-trap set for rabbits. He followed the brook up to the gorge, sauntered through the chestnut grove and back to where a group of sugar maples and a sap house stood, thankful that the familiar rocks yet remained and that the trees had not been cut away, and for the bluebirds, chirping a welcome. Then he left the scenes of his boyhood days, so happy in memory, and as he drove away, turned for a last look at the old brown house, feeling much as one does after visiting an ancient graveyard where ancestors lie buried. He had a week's leave of absence from his duties, now ahead of him, and he went cousining. He also hunted up a few old schoolmates, putting himself in touch with their rustic lives and talking over school days. Then he returned to the city, feeling that luck had dealt unfairly by him and that he was more out of place than ever.