“Something wrong here,” he remarked, ominously, “I suspected it all along.”

The business of getting his book published dispatched, the poet’s thoughts turned lovingly toward Richmond which he still called “home,” and carpet-bag in hand and a package of copies of his book which he intended as presents to his old chums under his arm, he set out upon the journey thither.

The streets of New York had been cold and bleak but he told himself as he journeyed, that April days at home were quite different.  The grass would be already green upon the hillsides, many of the trees in leaf, and the dear spring flowers in bloom.  He pictured the ample comforts of the Allan homestead, and of his own room in it, with its familiar furnishings.  Of course he had no idea of looking to Mr. Allan for support—­his pen must give him that now—­but during the visit which he was going to make “at home” it would be pleasant to sleep once more in that room with all of its associations, though many of these were with the blunders of a blinded youth.

As he thought of Mr. Allan and his last meeting with him, his heart softened.  He would try and keep their intercourse upon the friendly basis upon which his last sad visit home had placed it; would as far as possible, put himself in his foster-father’s place and see things as he saw them.

How desolate the widowed man had seemed in the big, empty house during those chill, sorrow-stricken, February days!  No wonder he had sought escape from his desolation in another marriage—­his loneliness without the lovely little mother must have been unbearable.  What was the new wife like, he wondered?  Was she like the lady of the manor he remembered?  Could there be another such gentle, tender, flower-like woman on earth?

In his unworldly, unpractical dreamer’s soul it did not occur to him for one moment that her existence might make him any less Mr. Allan’s adopted son, or even that, with all the rooms in the big house at her disposal, she might have taken a fancy to rearrange the one which, from the time the house became Mr. Allan’s property, had been “Eddie’s room,” and which had so long stood ready for his occupancy—­dedicated as it was to his own belongings.

* * * * *

At last he was on the sacred soil!

How fair and comfortable the old homestead looked in its setting of greening lawn and flowering garden, with the pleasant sunshine of the April afternoon over all!  How cheerful—­how ample—­how homelike!

He ran up the steps of the commodious front porch and was on the point of opening the door when some impulse he could not define made him pause and, instead of turning the knob, announce himself with a rap upon the shining brass knocker.

One of the old family servants whom he had known and loved from his infancy, and with whom he had always been a pet, opened the door, and with beaming face and eager voice greeted him with the enthusiastic hospitality of his kind—­lifting up his voice and his hands in praise to God that he was once more in this world permitted to look upon the face of “Marse Eddie.”