It was quite a new sensation, and a very pleasant and exciting one, to drive into the old town seated beside the captain. The eight years, which had seemed to bring so many changes to the growing boy, had not changed the place at all; it appeared a little dwarfed, perhaps, grown smaller and less imposing; the gaunt old buildings, which had towered to the sky in the imagination of the small child, had dwindled, in the eyes of the youth, to mere ordinary dwellings. But, best of all, the things about it that were changeless were the solemn hush and peace that lay upon it, a stillness that belonged to no other place. The roar of London, the busy, murmuring life of school, were dropped completely behind; it was like coming home to rest, to some little place set in the heart of woods, after the toil and fret of a long day.
Homer was there, at the door of the captain's cottage, saluting in the old fashion; he had grown a little grayer and a little less erect in attitude. The old familiar room, looking out over the garden and the street, seemed smaller than before and a little shabbier. Of everything the boy remembered so well, the captain alone seemed as though the years had leaped over him and left him unaltered.
Comethup was up very early the next morning--long before the captain had risen; he had a feeling that he would like to visit some of the old places alone. He lifted the latch of the cottage door--for no one thought of locking doors in that part of the country--and stole out softly through the garden and into the street. One or two early risers whom he passed looked at him curiously, and he thought he recognised some faces he had seen in the streets as a child. He sniffed the sweet morning air with delight, thinking how good it was to be rich and free and healthy; he might have thought, too, how good it was to be very young, but for the fact that he did not consciously appreciate that blessing.
He went to the house in which he had been born; it was held by strangers now, and there were curtains of a hideous colour in the windows, and one of the blinds had been drawn up by a careless hand and hung awry. But the roses were there in all their beauty--roses grown for other hands to pluck and to delight other eyes. He leaned over the little gate which led from the street and looked about him; looked into all the familiar corners that had held such terrors for him when he had been very young indeed; thought of the mother who had wandered there, as he had heard his father describe. And that brought him quite naturally to the churchyard, where he found the two mounds--a little less prominent than they had been--side by side, with some fresh flowers upon them. He knew that the flowers must have come from the captain, and his heart swelled a little, with renewed gratitude to his old friend.