He hurried to the gate and looked up and down the road. In neither direction was anyone visible. What other way could the boy have gone? The view before him was wide and clear; the hill fell away in such broad billows that the eye commanded more of the scene than a man could have covered, running. The only region left to explore was above and back of the house. RoBards had avoided that realm for years. Up there was the Tarn of Mystery, where he had almost killed Jud Lasher; up there were the thickets where he had hunted him down and ended him. There was no pleasure in invading that accursed demesne of black memories, but his frenzy for an answer to the riddle of his son outweighed his reluctance. He turned and marched grimly up the slope. It seemed to have steepened since he ran up it so fleetly years ago. His breath was shorter—excitement it was, no doubt, that made his heart beat faster and more heavily. Time had wrought upon everything up here. Bushes were clumps of shrubbery; saplings were trees; trees were columns upholding the sky. The very boulders seemed to have enlarged with age. The dead logs must have grown higher and fatter. At the top he had to pause and sink to the ground till his heart slowed up. Sitting here he could see afar. The autumnal winds had torn away foliage like curtains pulled down, discovering a wide expanse of the surging Westchester scene. The last time he was up here there was hardly another home to be descried except his own roof and the distant hut of the Lashers. Now there were gables and chimneys and gateways everywhere. A few of the houses were mansions, snowy colonial residences with high white pillars reminiscent of Greek temples. The Lasher rookery alone was not new. It was older, more ramshackle than ever, though he had noted as he passed the growth of the little brats to big brats. The girl Molly who had run off to the city and gone to the bad, had faded into oblivion after a few noisy struggles, like one drowning in the sea. RoBards had visited the Five Points occasionally, but he had seen nothing of Molly. Perhaps it had grown too respectable for her, since the Ladies’ Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Church had ventured into the human sewer and reformed the first few sots, then called in Reverend Mr. Luckey, the former chaplain of Sing Sing. Under this explorer of the underworld they had established themselves in a room in the Old Brewery itself. Then they had bought the foul den, cleared out its three hundred human maggots, and torn the whole thing down, erecting in its place a clean new building devoted to reformation of the prematurely damned.