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When the gate of the prison closed behind me I stood a few moments in the street, trembling and afraid. Shut up only three years, I was nevertheless in awe of the world, and I felt like a boy who is thrown into a pool and told to sink or swim. And yet my term had been short; but a boy when I went in, I was now only twenty-five. I saw how seclusion and an iron routine can crush will and independence.

I had no baggage. I took with me from the penitentiary nothing but the plain gray suit in which I stood. I went into the world unencumbered. There was nobody about—Frankfort is a small city—and I walked on a few yards to show that I had not just come from the prison gate. Then I stood there trying to accustom myself to the strangeness of the world. A man passed, and I felt a tremor. Would he see at once the “jail bird” in me? He took no notice and went on, just as if I were an ordinary citizen. Courage began to rise in my heart, and I looked about more boldly.

It was early autumn, and I felt the deep sense of the beauty of the world. Frankfort is a picturesque little city, set within its rim of circling hills, and it was clothed now in a brilliant, almost golden, sunlight that burnished walls and roofs, and lent a glory even to the squalid. On the hills the vivid tints of autumn were beginning to appear, and the browns were shot here and there with splashes of red like flame. The courage that had begun to rise in me swelled now into a flood. No, I was not afraid of the world, instead, it was mine to conquer.

I went to the railroad station, approached the ticket window carelessly, as any other traveller would have done, and asked for a ticket to Louisville, at the same time placing a five-dollar bill on the window sill. The man handed me the ticket and my change, and turned to other business. He, too, never took me for a “jail bird,” and again I felt a thrill of satisfaction.

It was an hour until train time, and buying a Louisville newspaper from a wandering newsboy, I sat down in a corner of the station and began to read it. From an almost unconscious motive of caution I held the wide sheet before my face as I read.

The newspaper affected me unpleasantly. While in the prison I had been able to obtain journals at intervals, but the news had been so disconnected that I could make little of it; now it was almost wholly strange to me, and I realized what an outsider I was. This world that I was going to conquer was like a foreign planet, on which I must first land before even beginning my work. I was yet an alien, an outcast.

Train time approached and people entered the station. I forced myself to lower the paper that I had been holding before my face, but nobody marked me out as separate from themselves. One or two glanced at me inquiringly, because in so small a place as Frankfort everybody is known, and they evidently put me down as a stray traveller, taking no further notice.

The train came and I boarded it with the crowd, feeling a certain sense of comradeship when two or three brushed against me in the narrow aisle. I went into the Pullman and bought a seat. I would travel as a gentleman and in luxury. Then I leaned back on the plush and gazed out of the window. What wonderful wide spaces I saw! Hills, valleys and fields following each other!

We reached Louisville with the coming of the twilight, and I went promptly to the best hotel in the city, paying a deposit with easy indifference as I had no baggage, and registering my name, Henry Clarke, in a bold, free hand. Then I ate a good dinner, choosing the dishes with the fastidiousness of an epicure, although I am not devoted to the table, and afterwards strolled in the lobby, which in our American hotels is always a center of life. I saw two women whom I knew, but their glances passed over my face, not recognizing me, and then I understood that my prison life had made great changes in that general expression of the countenance, by which we know people rather than by individual features.

Later in the evening I walked about the streets, and the next day I strolled through the city in the full daylight, lonesome, unrecognized, but all the time growing more used to my freedom. It was astonishing how quickly my prison life seemed to slip away from me; it was there, but it had now the effect of distance, it seemed to have happened a long time ago. On the second evening I went to the theatre, and on the third day I did what I had come to the city to do. All the time I had been but waiting the opportunity.

I knew that Louisville held one person who would recognize me at the first glance, from whom no change in either expression or dress could hide the fact that it was Harry Clarke, and that person was Alicia. I had felt that I must come to see her before beginning my new career, and I had felt with equal force that she would expect me. More than once I had passed the house, seeking a convenient chance, because I did not mean to bring risk upon her a second time, but it was not until the third day that I found it. Then I saw Alicia come out of the house alone, walk down the street a short distance and turn into a small park which is set here in the southern part of the city.

I presumed that it was merely a walk for air and exercise, but I followed at fifty yards’ distance and entered the park also. I felt mortification that I should have to slink after her in this manner, instead of walking boldly by her side in the face of all the world, because I hate the cloak of secrecy and disguise, but the circumstances compelled it.

The autumn foliage was still on the trees in the park, burning in intense tints of red and yellow and brown, and she walked into one of the more secluded paths where she was almost shut from view of the city by the intervening leaves and boughs. I followed, quickening my pace, and she sat down on one of the benches. When I came near her I hesitated, not wishing to startle her, but she rose, extended her hand and said, “Harry!” as if she had expected me.

Alicia had changed somewhat; her figure was a little fuller and there was a higher dignity, but her face still bore the seal of a great sorrow, making to me an irresistible appeal. In her eyes shone such a welcome that I forgot myself for a few moments. I seized the outstretched hand, and held it longer and tighter than I should have done, until a blush rose to her face. Then I dropped it, remembering that this woman was another man’s wife.

“Sit here,” she said, pointing to the bench, and I sat down beside her.

“I knew that you would come to see me,” she said, “and that you must be here now. Your term at Frankfort expired two days ago.. When I came from the house a little while ago I saw you. Then I turned into the park that you might follow me, and that we might talk together unobserved. Harry, I am very glad to see you again, and, oh, so glad to see you without those hateful convict stripes! Oh, I would never have allowed this had I known at the time, and even afterward I should have cried to all the world that you were innocent! Three years out of your life! Three years that can never be repaid to you!”

“They have not been lost, Alicia,” I replied; “it was a rough cure, the roughest that a man could have, but when I saw you that night I was on the road to destruction, and I was travelling fast.”

She put one gloved hand to her eyes for a moment.

“That does not absolve me,” she said bitterly. “I have always with me the knowledge that another has suffered great injustice to protect me, and the burden is heavy.”

“You are unhappy, Alicia,” I said, speaking with involuntary impulse what I had long known.

“Why should I seek to hide it from you?” she cried, as if the yielding at last to the desire to let herself go brought her relief. “You have seen it, you cannot be blind. You are my truest friend, when some other one should be!”

It was as if her soul was laid bare, and I was deeply embarrassed. At such a moment I knew nothing to say, nothing to do, and I could but sit in silence until she recovered herself.

“Harry,” she said at last, “you wrote me a letter once, telling me how you expected to take up your life again in this State. I do not know whether you are still of that mind, or whether you intend to go far away where you will see nothing to remind you of the cruelty that you have suffered. But if you——”

“But if I go,” I repeated when I saw that she hesitated.

She turned her face away from me, and spoke slowly, halting at each word.

“If you go to some far-off land you will be among new people—alone—without any—familiar face. You have suffered—the greatest of disgraces for another— who cannot repay you—except in the one way—that a woman can. She is unhappy, very unhappy—but she is not afraid to face a new land——”

Her voice died away, and she put her face in her hands. I knew that it was a pure woman who was speaking, as pure as my mother, but she was carried away by a violent emotion and her feeling that I had ruined my life to save her from a possible disgrace; in her mind was some dim idea of reparation.

“Alicia,” I said, “we suffer together, but we must carry our burdens alone. I am not going away. I shall abide by the letter; I mean to stay in this State and have my part in its life. I think, Alicia, that you are the noblest woman in the world!”

The last burst from me through impulse. It was an old-fashioned thing to do, but I took one of her hands and kissed it.

“Then I am glad you are to stay,” she said, calmly now, “because I could not bear to lose sight of you.”

She spoke unashamed. I do not think she quite understood or remembered the meaning of the words she had uttered, as one coming from a brief delirium knows little of what then passed.

“And I wish to see you again—often, Alicia,” I said; “perhaps it is wrong of me, but I cannot help it.”

She did not reply, and side by side we sat there in silence a long time. No one passed. The little park seemed to be deserted save by ourselves. A light wind rustled through the autumn foliage. The clang of a street car gong came faintly. A little bird hopped about in the path, and so silent and still were we that he came unseated to our feet. Then I roused myself. I could not keep Alicia there exposed to a second discovery. In a city the size of Louisville people are well known, and some one who recognized her might come at any moment. The knowledge that Alicia would have sacrificed herself for me gave me a great content, and I vowed to myself that if I were at least half a man I would watch over and protect her, in so far as I could. Looking at her pale face and the sadness which was always as a shadow over her eyes, I knew that she needed protection.

“Good-bye, Alicia,” I said, as I rose, “I am going home now. It may seem to you that I am saying a strange thing, but I really have a home to go to, although I have not seen it in five years.”

She rose, too, and her eyes were brave. Once more she put her hand in mine.

“We know our secrets, you and I,” she said, “and we will keep them. Always we will trust in each other.”

“Always we will trust in each other,” I repeated.

Then I dropped her hand, and not knowing what else to say or do turned and walked hastily away. Alf the turn of the path I glanced back. She had sat down on the bench again, and her figure was drooping. Poor Alicia! Far harder was her fate than was mine, and I felt a powerful desire to go back and say to her words of sympathy. Yet I am thankful that I resisted the temptation and went on, until the park was left behind.

I took a train that afternoon for the heart of the State, and about the twilight hour alighted at the little way station at Carlton. My soul filled with a tumult that I could not still, because it was here that I was born, and I was looking forward to a meeting, second only to that with Alicia, but with a poignancy of another kind. Mingled with my joy and overshadowing it were shame and remorse. I had left behind me here in this county of my birth a reputation not of too good savor, and then after wanderings in the West I had suddenly dropped from the sight of those who I knew loved me despite my many faults. What would they think? what had they thought of this long and cruel silence?

With a certain fear in my heart I stood on the station platform and watched the train that had brought me pass out of sight with its friendly noise and smoke. A last glow from the blood-red sun showed over the western hills, but darkness was already drawn like a great robe over the east, and the station lamps were lighted. The autumn wind came, chill and cutting, and I shivered in my light overcoat.

“Are you waiting for some one?” asked the station agent.

He was a new man, appointed since my time, but I decided to make no disguise, I would let my identity be disclosed at once.

“Do you know a man, a young man named Harry Clarke who lives about a mile or so from here?” I asked.

“No, I don’t know him,” he replied, “but I’ve heard of him; most people about here have heard of him, and not much good either. He was a bad egg, up to all sorts of devilment, drinkin’, gamblin’ an’ such. He went out West about five years ago, an’ they say he’s dead now, leastways he hasn’t been heard from in a long time. Prob’ly killed in some drunken row.”

I listened in silence while he talked. From mere hearsay he was branding me as I was, and my burden of shame and remorse grew heavy.

“But he had an aunt and uncle,” I said, “Mr. and Mrs. Harding; they are alive, are they not?”

My voice trembled slightly as I asked the question, because my heart was suddenly suffused with a great tenderness for this old aunt and uncle of mine, and it had never occurred to me until this moment that they might be dead. I hung breathlessly upon his answer.

“They’re up at the old house yet,” he replied, “an’ they’re in right smart good health, I ’low, though they ain’t what you’d call a lively couple. I guess that they’re grievin’ for that good for nothin’ scamp.”

I drew a deep sigh of relief and the agent hearing it looked sharply at me.

“Why are you askin’ me all these questions?” he said.

“Because I am Harry Clarke, the young man, of whom you were just speaking.”

It did not occur to him to doubt my word, and he flushed.

“You took an unfair advantage of me, Mr. Clarke,” he said. “What I said of you was what I’ve heard from everybody, but I wouldn’t have said it, if I’d knowed that it was you.”

“What you said was the truth,” I replied gravely, “but I hope that it will not continue to be the truth. You see now that I’m not dead, and I’m going over to tell the same thing to Aunt Jane and Uncle Paul.”

“Don’t break it to ’em too sudden,” he said.

“I won’t,” I replied knowing this to be good advice, and I walked down the road in the deepening twilight. I felt that he was looking curiously after me, but I did not turn back my eyes to meet his glance, instead keeping straight ahead. When I came to the brow of the first hill I looked across the little valley to the right and there among the trees on the first slope I saw a light shining. It was a light shining in my own house, and I knew whose hands had lighted it. I leaned against a tree by the roadside and there in the darkness I shed my first tears since early boyhood. Our Anglo-Saxon race does not weep easily, but I was not ashamed of these tears. When I wiped them away and looked again the light was still there, shining with a steady brilliant flame like a beacon, and I went on down the hill, across the little valley and up the slope toward it.

The darkness was now fully come, but a good moon shone in the sky, and the house, at first showing dimly among the trees, began to rise before my eyes. It was a solid, red brick building large and almost square, erected two generations ago, but as good as ever, and again I choked at the familiar sight. That burden of shame and remorse seemed now almost too heavy to be borne. Nothing had been changed. Everything although kept in perfect repair had been left just as it was when I went away five years before, the talk of the neighborhood and far gone on the road to ruin. The three years in the prison now seemed to me a providence.

I opened the gate and walked upon the lawn. We had never kept any dogs and as the habits of Aunt Jane and Uncle Paul were as the coming and going of the tides I had no fear of an alarm. The light shone from a side room and I walked toward it, until I was close up to the wall and could see clearly within. Then the unbidden tears rose again to my eyes.

Aunt Jane sat by the lamp on the little table, reading. She was reading the Bible. She read it every night of her life, and the old familiar sight moved me inexpressibly. Aunt Jane was not a beautiful woman and she never had been. She was tall and thin, and she had a long, angular, severe face. But severe as her countenance looked and severe as she usually was, I knew how good and tender she could be. Her hair was plastered down flat on each side of her face, and great spectacles hid her eyes. She was dressed as always in plain gray.

I stood fully five minutes watching. Then a door was opened and I saw a man come into the room. It was Uncle Paul, but little changed, a little older, perhaps, and certainly sterner and sadder, but presenting the same facial and bodily outlines. Like Aunt Jane he was tall, thin, angular and severe—nature had truly made them a well-matched pair in every respect and he lived up to his looks. As a deacon in the Methodist Church, the strictest of the strict, both deacon and church, he had a heavy frown, and a sharp word for all short comings, but like Aunt Jane he could be both good and tender. Again it was I who ought to know.

They spoke a few words to each other, what they were I could not hear, then she closed the Bible and they sat down in chairs before the wood fire. They said nothing—I knew because their lips did not move—but they looked into the fire and at each other and their look was the loneliest that I had ever seen upon the face of man or woman.

Never before had I felt so much shame; and remorse, not even when I first put on the convict stripes and knew myself to be branded as a felon. It was almost more than I could bear, to see those two old people sitting there in utter desolation, their lives empty, and wondering whether the youthful reprobate whom they still loved with all his faults was dead or merely had forgotten them in his hard and reckless way. I crouched against the wall and turned my eyes away that I might not see the living reproof that was fairly burnt into me.

I stayed there a minute or two, considering what I should do, and then I went to the front door. They would not know me—the changes in five years and under extraordinary circumstances had been so great—and I would come gradually to the question of identification, telling them at first that I had met their nephew in distant lands—I had heard how such things were done and romantic ideas crowded into my brain. I stood for a few moments in the little portico, my hand trembling on the old fashioned knocker, as I approached this event which was to me a crisis.

Then I struck and the blows of the knocker sounded to me in the still night like the reports of signal guns. A step came along the hall, the well-remembered step of my Aunt Jane, quick and decisive. The door was thrown open and a light from the hall fell upon my face.

Gone was my specious tale, my well-ordered plan, blown away like dust before the wind. There was a second woman who knew me at once, even as I stood there on the portico in the darkness. The eye of love, the eye of the woman who had reared me shot an instant, penetrating look through all the changes of time and stress, and knew me for what I was.

“Harry!” cried my Aunt Jane in a voice that was a great mingling of reproach, relief and love. Then she threw her arms around my neck, and the lean angular old face that belonged to one of the best women in the world was pressed against mine.

“Aunt Jane, I’ve come back,” was all I could say.

Behind her came Uncle Paul, bearing the lamp, the light of which shone upon me. The muscles of his face twitched strangely, but even at this moment the Puritan was strong within him, and he strove to repress the show of emotion. I grasped his hand and his answering squeeze left its mark.

“You’ve been away a long time, Harry,” he said.

“I know it, Uncle Paul,” I replied, “and I’ve been a scoundrel, a villain. I’ve been wandering far. I should have let you know; how can I deny that?”

“We never knew that you were not dead,” he said gravely.

I was silent at first under the heavy reproof and then I could only reply:

“The fault is all mine, but I hope to make it up to you both. I am telling you the truth, Uncle, when I say that the Harry Clarke who went away is not the Harry Clarke who has come back.”

“We won’t talk of that now, Harry,” broke in Aunt Jane, “you must be hungry and tired.”

I could not refrain from a smile which, however, I did not let them see, but it was a smile of sympathy. I knew that I was yet a little boy to her, a little boy who had wandered far and like a truant in his day’s play, and who now needed a supper and bed.

Aunt Jane insisted on setting the table for me with her own hands, although Polly, the colored cook came and held up her hands and rolled the whites of her eyes and broke into many exclamations when she found that it was I. In the old times Polly and I had been at intervals friends and enemies, but now we were wholly friends and she made far more fuss over me than Aunt Jane or Uncle Paul had done. “Bress de Lord,” she said, “de boy am come back from de grave.”

First I had to sit by the fire a long time and warm myself because they had the idea that I was chilled through, and, to account for the years I talked vaguely of wanderings in the west, and of many places to which I had really been before my imprisonment. Then I sat at the table and ate, while they sat with me and nibbled at the food to bear me company.

There are some moments of exquisite enjoyment in the life of everyone, and I, the returned prodigal, with a deep disgrace of which they did not know, tasted such a moment now. That disgrace was forgotten for the time, the years were wiped out, and there was only the joy of reunion. I knew that I was forgiven already by these two Puritans, because of the love they bore me and because I had come back from the dead to them.

“You look like a man, Harry,” said Uncle Paul at last, “you’ve changed a lot. What a healthy, strong fellow you’ve got to be. You’ve quit——”

He paused, and I blushed, though not wholly from the cause to which they naturally ascribed it.

“Yes, I’ve quit all those things, Uncle Paul,” I replied gravely, “I said that it was another man who had come back and I meant it. I am different—physically, mentally and I hope morally.”

My hand lay upon the table and he reached out and grasped my wrist.

“It’s all muscle Harry,” he said, “and it’s as hard as iron. You must have been do in’ some powerful hard work.”

I blushed again. I did not intend that he should ever know how wielding a sledge-hammer in a penitentiary had given to my wrist its power, and I replied briefly:

“It is true, Uncle Paul.”

We sat late. After the supper we drew up our chairs before the fire, and the clock struck twelve before I was sent to bed. They asked me little, almost nothing of my past, a delicacy restraining them from prying into, what they thought had been a disordered life, and I knew too that this delicacy would continue.

I can forget nothing in that evening. All its events stand before me as vividly as if it were but twenty-four hours ago. I can remember every word that we said, every movement, every gesture, every expression upon the face of Aunt Jane and Uncle Paul and the key of the whole recollection is joy. I asked innumerable questions, of other and more distant relations, of all the people I had known in the neighborhood and of all my old school mates—except one. But they spoke of her of their own accord.

“Of course you haven’t forgotten Alicia,” said Aunt Jane, “you and she were little sweethearts once, and we thought that when you grew up—well no matter what we thought, that’s all over and done with now. She married a rich man, George Grey—she was very young then—he was from Louisville and they went to live there. They say that she’s not happy. Poor Alicia; I’m sorry, she was a good girl.”

I said nothing, but stared into the coals. A sudden keen note of sorrow struck into my joy. Poor Alicia! How often had I said the same words to myself. Her face formed in the coals, pale, sad, appealing, and the old thought that after all my fate was happier than hers came to me again.

Aunt Jane glanced keenly at me, and I forced myself to repeat her words:

“I’m sorry: she was a good girl, too good for any man I know.”

When the midnight hour struck, Aunt Jane stood up with a start.

“Half the night is gone and we should be in bed,” she cried, “off with you Harry!”

She lighted a candle and when I took it from her hand I bent down and kissed her forehead.

“Aunt Jane,” I said, “you’ve been too good to a scape-grace like me.”

She flushed with pleasure, but repeated.

“Be off with you!”

As I walked upstairs to my old room I noted how nothing was changed, how the prim, Puritan, yet homelike look of the place remained, just as if I had been away only a week, instead of five years, and I rejoiced.

When I was undressed I blew out the candle, but I opened the window and let in a flood of moonlight that fell like silver gauze across the floor. I looked out at the cone-like pine trees on the lawn and the wood beyond, the branches swaying gently in a west wind. The aspect of it all was peace, innocence and welcome. It had been saved for me by those two faithful old hearts, saved for the returning prodigal in whom they had never wholly lost faith. Another and powerful motive pushed me on in the new life to which I had vowed myself.

The room too was unchanged. Every article as I had left it! Tears that were not unmanly rose to my eyes.

At last I lay down in the bed, and when I slept I dreamed of Alicia.

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