Indeed, Dunlop flatly refused to go away without Anne.  He would not yield to coaxing and he scorned threats.  His wishes finally prevailed and it was decided that Anne should go with them to spend the week-end and return to town with Mr. Marshall.

The little party left ‘Roseland’ one warm afternoon in June, and sunset found them all dusty and tired.  Dunlop, sitting by his mother, absorbed her attention.  Martha was on the seat behind, with Arthur on her lap.  Anne, beside her, was looking out of the window with a puzzled air.  The willow-bordered river, the meadows and rolling hills, had a familiar appearance; this fresh, woodsy, evening fragrance was an odor she had known before; surely she had heard the names of the stations called by the porter.

“Lewiston!” he shouted at last.

Anne started.  It was her own home station.  As in a dream, she saw in the twilight the familiar red road shambling over the hills, the dingy little station with men and boys loafing on the platform, the houses scattered here and there among trees and gardens.  It all came back to her.  This was the route she and her mother had often travelled.  A little way off was the water-tank set in a clump of willows by the roadside.  ‘Lewis Hall’ was on the hill just beyond.  In the deepening twilight, she could not see the square house among the trees.

A great longing for home possessed her.  She slipped past Martha dozing with Arthur asleep in her lap; hardly knowing what she did, she ran to the rear of the car.  The train was about to stop at the tank.  Anne put her hand on the door-knob.  It resisted.  A lump came in her throat.  Again she tried the knob.  This time it yielded to her pressure.  She stepped on the platform and closed the door behind her.  As the train jerked and stood still, she almost fell but she quickly recovered herself and scrambled down the steps.

She stood in a well-remembered thicket of willows.  A few steps away was a footpath—­how it all came back to her!—­winding among the willows.  Clasping Honey-Sweet close, Anne walked a little way down the path.  Then she turned and looked back.  The train was puffing and panting, lights were gleaming from its windows.  There sat Mrs. Marshall, coaxing Dunlop, and there was Arthur cuddled in Martha’s lap.

As Anne looked, the train moved slowly away, gathering speed as it went.  Its lights gleamed and faded in the darkness.  It was gone.  She gazed after it, with a queer tightness about her throat.  Then she walked steadily down the footpath, across the meadow, through a gate, and along the hillside.  On top of that tree-clad hill was her old home.  From one well-remembered room, flickered lights that seemed to beckon and summon the homesick child.

CHAPTER XIX

Meanwhile, Anne was the innocent cause of trouble between Pat and his father.  Mr. Patterson came back in the early summer to spend a few weeks with his son at the old home in Georgetown before midsummer heat drove them to mountains or seashore.