But the feeling that he was an intruder, a trespasser, remained with him as he passed from room to room, throwing open windows and blinds, and now and then sneezing as the impalpable dust tickled his nostrils.  In the sitting-room, as in every other apartment, everything looked as though the occupant had passed out of the room but a moment before.  Wade’s face grew grave and tender as he looked about him.  On the sewing machine a shallow basket held sewing materials and a few pairs of coarse woollen stockings, neatly rolled.  The poker was laid straight along the ledge of the big “base-burner” in the corner.  A table with a green cloth stood in front of a window and bore a few magazines dated almost ten years before.  A set of walnut book-shelves held a few sober-clad volumes, Bulfinch’s “Age of Fable,” “Webster’s Dictionary,” Parker’s “Aids to English Composition,” Horace’s “Odes” in Latin, “The Singer’s Own Book,” “Henry Esmond” and “Vanity Fair,” “A Chance Acquaintance,” two cook-books, a number of yellow-covered “Farmer’s Almanacs,” and “A Guide to the City of Boston.”  A sewing-stand supported a huge family Bible.  The walls were papered in brown and a brown ingrain carpet covered the floor.  There was a couch under the side window and a few upholstered chairs were scattered about.  Now that the windows were open and the warm sunlight was streaming in, it was a cosy, shabby, homey little room.

Wade opened the door into the hall.  Perhaps the Ghosts of Things Past scampered up the winding stairway; at least, they were not to be seen.  He found the front-door key in the lock and turned the bolt.  When the door swung inward a little thrill touched him.  For the first time in his life he was standing on his own doorsill, looking down his own front path and through his own front gate!

In every man’s nature there is the desire for home-owning.  It may lie dormant for many years, but sooner or later it will stir and call.  Wade heard its voice now, and his heart warmed to it.  Fortune had brought him the power to choose his home where he would, and build an abode far finer than this little cottage.  And yet this place, which had come to him unexpectedly and through sorrow, seemed suddenly to lay a claim upon him.  It was such a pathetic, down-at-heels, likable little house!  It seemed to Wade as though it were saying to him:  “I’m yours now.  Don’t turn your back on me.  I’ve been so very, very lonesome for so many years!  But now you’ve come, and you’ve opened my doors and windows and given me the beautiful sunlight again, and I shall be very happy.  Stay with me and love me.”