CHAPTER XXXIV.
HE BRINGS JOY INTO THE HOUSE.
All was silent and dark in the little house where Hanz Toodleburg lived, when the wagon containing Tite and the inn-keeper drew up at the gate.

A dull, dreamy stillness seemed to hang over the place, and the little, old house was in the full enjoyment of a deep sleep.

The two men alighted, and Tite stood for a few minutes viewing the scene around him.
How strange and yet how familiar everything seemed.

He was at the opposite side of the world only a few months ago, and time had sped on so swiftly that it seemed as if he had gone to bed at night on one side of the globe, and waked up in the morning at the other.

Then he was on an island almost unknown to the rest of the world, surrounded by scenes so wild, so strange and romantic, that the reader would not believe them real.
Here now was the old lattice gate, the vine-covered arbor leading through the garden to the cracked and blistered-faced front door, the stack of hop-vines in the garden-corner, and the rickety veranda where, when a boy, he used to sit beside his father of a summer evening, for it was here Hanz welcomed his friends and smoked his pipe.