"I must say she was awfully excited," he began. "I was sorry for her. She turned as white as a sheet and shook powerful; but she wants to see you, and said tell you to come right on. Now you know the way home, John, and so I'll turn back." "A cabin--a mere log cabin, such as the poorest negroes live in!" John reflected, and yet it was the abode of the woman who used to demand so many luxuries, and that woman, looked at from any angle, was his mother. He was conscious of no tenderness or pity. Those things were reserved for the instant of his first view of her. Great soul that he was, it required but the downcast eyes of the repentant woman to melt him into streams of sympathy when she appeared in the low doorway, a pitiful flush of embarrassment struggling out of the pallor of her cheeks and surrounding her still beautiful eyes. "Mother!" he cried, huskily, and he advanced to her, his arms outstretched. "I had to come to you. I heard you were in need, but I didn't know it was like this." She seemed unable to say a word. She hid her shamed face, her childlike face, so full of timid remorse, on his shoulder, and he felt her sobs shaking her breast. He led her to a chair inside the cabin and gently eased her down to it, his fingers, filially hungry for the first time in his life, gently and consolingly playing about her hair and brow. Presently she found her voice. "I was afraid you'd never come," she faltered, still with that shrinking humility which had so completely won him to her. "But here you are. Oh, I don't know what to say, John-- I don't know what to say, except that I am not the same silly woman I used to be. I used to think that the way I lived when you was here was the only way I could live, but now I'd rather die than take back a single day of it. Strange as it may seem, I like this. I like the still woods out there, the rocks, grass, and wild flowers, and being alone. Yes, I like to be all alone. When I'm all alone, even in the dead of night, something seems to come to me and pity me and give me the sweetest rest and peace. There wasn't but one thing that haunted me, and that was thinking you were dead. When I heard that was a mistake I felt very happy, though I didn't think I'd ever see you again." It seemed to him, as he sat in that crude hut, that nothing stranger had ever happened to him than seeing her in such surroundings. "Is it possible," he asked, "that you spend the nights here in this place?" "For six years now, winter and summer." She smiled wistfully. "I've got my little garden behind the cabin, and my chickens and my cats, and they keep me busy. Then I read a lot of books and stories. The Cavanaughs send them to me off and on, and--and"--she started visibly--"some other people do, too." "Other people?" he repeated to himself. "Then she _has_ friends, after all." Presently a patter of feet sounded outside and a child's voice came in at the open door. "Grandmother Trott! Where are you?"