Browning agreed that a few days more or less would not count.  “Because,” he said, “if Rose Jenvie is still Rose Jenvie, it will not much matter; if Rose Jenvie is not Rose Jenvie, then, by Jove, every minute of delay in knowing that fact is good.  Besides, you know, I want to see that three-hundred-acre farm of old Jasper’s on the hill which you are to buy.”

They remained a few hours only in Chicago, and took the evening train for the valley of the Miami.  The next morning, about seven o’clock, they left the cars at a little village station, and started on foot for the old home of Sedgwick, a mile away.

“Browning,” said Sedgwick, “it was mighty kind of you to come with me.  I ran bare-footed over this road every summer day of my boyhood.  In that old school-house I could show you notches which I cut in the tables and benches, and it seems now as though I was choking.”  They came to the old churchyard.  “Hold, Jack,” said Sedgwick, “let us go in here and look to see if any more graves have been added since I went away.”

They climbed the fence, and Sedgwick led the way to a plot of ground where there were three headstones.  “Thank God, there are no new graves,” he said.  “This was my sister; this, my baby brother, and this, my mother,” pointing to the names on the headstones.  “Had my mother been alive, I would long ago have come back.”

Then, with more calmness, he turned his steps back to the road, but he was shaking in every limb when he opened the old gate and walked up toward the house.  The path was lined with lilacs in full bloom, and a robin in a tree near by was calling her mate.  “The same old lilacs, the same old redbreast, Browning,” he said, with white lips.

He did not stop to knock, but pushed the door suddenly open and strode within.  Walking up to an old man, who was reading his Bible, he said, “Father, I am sorry that I fought the mulatto, if it grieved you, but the black rascal deserved it, all the same.”

The old man surveyed him wildly for a moment, then broke completely down, and, wringing the young man’s hands, could only sob: 

“Thank God, my son, whom I thought was lost, is back again.  Thank God!”

Then the brothers and their wives and children came in, and there was such a scene that Browning slipped out, seated himself on the piazza, and mopping his brow with his kerchief, said, “Bless my soul; I believe I will never go home.  There is more real enjoyment at a miner’s funeral in Virginia City; there is, by Jove.”

But they found him after a little, and Sedgwick presented him to his kinfolk as his close companion, and he was welcomed in a way which touched him deeply, and made him conclude that the world was filled with good people.

Soon the news spread, and the neighbors began to pour in, and what a day it was!  What old memories were awakened and rehearsed; what every one had done; who had died; who had married; all the history of the little place for all the years.