When I first went there as a boy to visit Barker the room which Agnes afterwards made into a parlor was used for storing sacks, and I never looked in at the door that I did not see venerable rats hurrying away to their holes, evidently as much alarmed at my presence as I was at theirs, and even the damp room where B. used to sit and collect moisture had dried out from having the sun often let into it. The great room above, where we had the suppers and the stories, was not much changed, except that it was cleaner and lighter, and the magic of a woman’s touch was everywhere apparent. The box stove in which we had made the famous fires, the table at which Barker sat, and the revolving shelf where he kept his books, were just the same, and but for the presence of Agnes I should have imagined that the master had stepped into the next room to look through the mysterious boxes for relics to amuse the two barefoot boys who came over from Fairview occasionally to visit him. But I found that the boxes were no longer in the next room; they had been sent to the mill loft, for nothing was left to remind them that they had ever been separated, or that there had been a shadow across their path. The room where Jo and I had slept when visiting Barker was now occupied by Agnes herself, and I sat down by the window and told her how her father came in and stood beside the bed after we had retired, as if dreading to be left alone, where he remained until we were sound asleep; how I had wakened once in the middle of the night, and, creeping to his door, found him sitting at the table with his hat and coat on, as if ready to run away; how generous and considerate he had always been with us, and how we esteemed him as a noble man, and how glad I was that she had found in my old friend one greater than a friend. To this Agnes would only reply that there was nothing now to interfere with their peace and content except the knowledge that some of their old friends were in trouble. Although I knew that Big Adam had followed Agnes to the mill, and become the assistant, I was made further aware of it by hearing him talking about his work while we were yet in the house, which sounded like distant thunder, for his voice seemed to have grown hoarser with age. When I went down to call on him he hugged me like a bear, and only released me when the miller himself appeared to greet me.