It was now Summer.  One evening, I sat upon our front step, in a kind of torpid state of mind through my refusal to contemplate the dismal future.  My eye turned listlessly down the street.  The only moving figure in it was that of a slender man approaching on the further side of the way.  He carried two valises, one with each hand, and leaned a little forward as he strode, as if weary.  Instantly I thought of years ago, and another figure coming up that street, with both hands laden, and walking in a manner of fatigue.  I rose, gazed with a fast-beating heart at the man coming nearer at every step, stifled a cry that turned into a sob, and ran across the street.  He saw me, stopped, set down his burdens, and waited for me, with a tired, kind smile.  I could not speak aloud, but threw my arms around him, and buried my clouded eyes upon his shoulder, whispering:  “Phil!  ’Tis you!”

“Ay,” said he, “back at last.  I thought I’d walk up from the boat just as I did that first day I came to New York.”

“And just as then,” said I, having raised my face and released him, “I was on the step yonder, and saw you coming, and noticed that you carried baggage in each hand, and that you walked as if you were tired.”

“I am tired,” said he, “but I walk as my wounds let me.”

“But there’s no cat this time,” said I, attempting a smile.

“No, there’s no cat,” he replied.  “And no—­”

His eye turned toward the Faringfield garden gate, and he broke off with the question:  “How are they? and your mother?”

I told him what I could, as I picked up one of his valises and accompanied him across the street, thinking how I had done a similar office on the former occasion, and of the pretty girl that had made the scene so bright to both him and me.  Alas, there was no pretty girl standing at the gate, beside her proud and stately parents, and her open-eyed little brother, to receive us.  I remembered how Ned and Fanny had come upon the scene, so that for a moment the whole family had stood together at the gateway.

“’Tis changed, isn’t it?” said Philip, quietly, reading my thoughts as we passed down the garden walk, upon which way of entrance we had tacitly agreed in preference to the front door.  “I can see the big dog walking ahead of me, and hear the kitten purring in the basket, and feel little Tom’s soft hand, and see at the other side of me—­well, ’tis the way of the world, Bert!”

He had the same boyish look; notwithstanding his face was longer and more careworn, and his hair was a little sprinkled with gray though he was but thirty-one.

I left him on the rear veranda, when old Noah had opened the hall door and shouted a hysterical “Lor’ bress me!—­it’s Massa Phil!” after a moment’s blinking inspection to make sure.  From the cheered look on Mr. Faringfield’s face that evening, and the revived lustre in Mrs. Faringfield’s eyes, I could guess what welcome Philip had received from the stricken pair.