To cap everything, came the great San Francisco earthquake and fire, which caused one hundred thousand people abruptly to come across the Bay and live in Oakland.  Not least to profit from so extraordinary a boom, was Josiah Childs.  And now, after twelve years’ absence, he was departing on a visit to East Falls, Connecticut.  In the twelve years he had not received a letter from Agatha, nor had he seen even a photograph of his and Agatha’s boy.

Agatha and he had never got along together.  Agatha was masterful.  Agatha had a tongue.  She was strong on old-fashioned morality.  She was unlovely in her rectitude.  Josiah never could quite make out how he had happened to marry her.  She was two years his senior, and had long ranked as an old maid She had taught school, and was known by the young generation as the sternest disciplinarian in its experience.  She had become set in her ways, and when she married it was merely an exchange of a number of pupils for one.  Josiah had to stand the hectoring and nagging that thitherto had been distributed among many.  As to how the marriage came about, his Uncle Isaac nearly hit it off one day when he said in confidence:  “Josiah, when Agatha married you it was a case of marrying a struggling young man.  I reckon you was overpowered.  Or maybe you broke your leg and couldn’t get away.”

“Uncle Isaac,” Josiah answered, “I didn’t break my leg.  I ran my dangdest, but she just plum run me down and out of breath.”

“Strong in the wind, eh?” Uncle Isaac chuckled.

“We’ve ben married five years now,” Josiah agreed, “and I’ve never known her to lose it.”

“And never will,” Uncle Isaac added.

This conversation had taken place in the last days, and so dismal an outlook proved too much for Josiah Childs.  Meek he was, under Agatha’s firm tuition, but he was very healthy, and his promise of life was too long for his patience.  He was only thirty-three, and he came of a long-lived stock.  Thirty-three more years with Agatha and Agatha’s nagging was too hideous to contemplate.  So, between a sunset and a rising, Josiah Childs disappeared from East Falls.  And from that day, for twelve years, he had received no letter from her.  Not that it was her fault.  He had carefully avoided letting her have his address.  His first postal money orders were sent to her from Oakland, but in the years that followed he had arranged his remittances so that they bore the scattered postmarks of most of the states west of the Rockies.

But twelve years, and the confidence born of deserved success, had softened his memories.  After all, she was the mother of his boy, and it was incontestable that she had always meant well.  Besides, he was not working so hard now, and he had more time to think of things besides his business.  He wanted to see the boy, whom he had never seen and who had turned three before his father ever learned he was a father.  Then, too, homesickness had begun to crawl in him.  In a dozen years he had not seen snow, and he was always wondering if New England fruits and berries had not a finer tang than those of California.  Through hazy vistas he saw the old New England life, and he wanted to see it again in the flesh before he died.