He felt that his mother, also, had been afraid.

He pictured again--and he picture was blurred and indistinct-the day when strange men had brought his father mysteriously home; men who were silent save for the shuffling of their feet, and who carried their big hats awkwardly in their hands.
There had been a day of hushed voices and much weeping and gloom, and he had been afraid to play.

Then they had carried his father as mysteriously away again, and his mother had hugged him close and cried bitterly and long.

The rest was blank.

When one is only five, the present quickly blurs what is past, and he wondered that, after all these years, he should feel the grip of something very like homesickness--and for something more than half forgotten.