The day was still far from dawning when Northwick crept up the silent avenue, in the dark of its firs, toward his empty house, and stealthily began to seek for that home in it which had haunted his sleeping and waking dreams so long. He had a kind of ecstacy in the risk he ran; a wild pleasure mixed with the terror he felt in being what and where he was. He wanted to laugh when he thought of the perfect ease and safety of his return. At the same time a thrilling anxiety pierced him through and through, and made him take all the precautions of a thief in the night. A thief in the night: that was the phrase which kept repeating itself to him, till he said it over under his breath, as he put off his shoes, and stole up the piazza-steps, and began to peer into the long windows, at the blackness within. He did not at once notice that the shutters were open, with an effect of reckless security or indifference, which struck a pang to his heart when he realized it. He felt the evil omen of this faltering in the vigilance which had once guarded his home, and which he had been the first to break down, and lay it open to spoil and waste. He tried the windows; he must get in, somehow, and he did not dare to ring at the door, or to call out. He must steal into his house, as he had stolen out of it. One of the windows yielded; the long glass door gave inward, and he stepped on the carpetless floor of the library. Then the fact of the change that must have passed upon the whole house enforced itself, and he felt a passionate desire to face and appropriate the change in every detail. He lit one of the little taper matches that he had with him, and, hollowing his hands around it, let its glimmer show him the desolation of the dismantled and abandoned rooms. He passed through the doors set wide between library and drawing-room and dining-room and hall; and then from his dying taper he lit another, and mounted the stairs. He had no need to seek his daughter's rooms to satisfy himself that the whole place was empty; they were gone; but he had a fantastic expectation that in his own room he might find himself. There was nothing there, either; it was as if he were a ghost come back in search of the body it had left behind; any one that met him, he thought, might well be more frightened than he; and yet he did not lose the sense of risk to himself.