In the carryall the boy was leaning back with his feet on the dasher and whistling softly through his teeth.  The gray was nibbling sleepily at the decrepit hitching-post.  Wade glanced at his watch, and looked again in surprise.  It was later than he had thought.  If he meant to get out of Redding that night it was time he thought of starting back.  But after a moment of hesitation he turned from the door and went on with his explorations.  In the parlor there was light enough from the front door to show him the long formal room with its white marble centre-table adorned with a few gilt-topped books and a spindly lamp, the square piano, the stiff-looking chairs and rockers, the few pictures against the faded gold paper, the white mantel, set with shells and vases and a few photographs, the quaint curving-backed sofa between the side windows.  He closed the door again and turned down the hall.

The stairway was narrow and winding, with a mahogany rail set upon white spindles.  It was uncarpeted and his feet sounded eerily on the steps.  On the floor above doors opened to left and right.  The first led into what had evidently been used as a spare bedroom.  It was uncarpeted and but scantily furnished.  The door of the opposite room was closed.  Wade opened it reverently and unconsciously tiptoed to the window.  When the sunlight was streaming in he turned and surveyed the apartment with a catch of his breath.  It had been Her room.  He had never seen her, yet he had heard Ed speak of her so much that it seemed that he must have known her.  He tried not to think of the days when, lying there on the old four-post bed with the knowledge of approaching death for company, she had waited and waited for her son to come back to her.  Ed had never forgiven himself that, reflected Wade.  He had been off in Wyoming at the time, and when he had returned the two telegrams lay one upon the other with a month’s dust over them, the one apprising him of his mother’s illness and asking him to hurry home, the other tersely announcing her death.  Well, she knew all about it now, reflected Wade.  Ed had told her long before this.

It was a pleasant little room with its sloping ceilings and cheerful pink paper.  The bed was neatly spread with a patchwork quilt, and the blankets and counterpane were folded and piled upon the foot.  The old mahogany bureau was just as she had left it, doubtless.  The little, knick-knacks still stood upon the brackets, and in the worsted-worked pincushion a gold brooch was sticking.

He closed the window and returned to the floor below.  A door under the stairway led from the hall to the kitchen.  He crossed the latter and passed out into the yard.  Back of the house the ground sloped slightly to a distant stone wall, which apparently marked the limit there of Wade’s domain.  At one time there had been a fence between the orchard and the meadow beyond, but now only an occasional crumbling post remained.  Trees had grown up here and there in the meadow, a few young maples, a patch of locusts, and some straggling sumacs.  Birds sang in the trees, and once, when he listened, Wade thought he could hear the tinkling of a brook.