He had already decided that he would go at once to Albany and there pick up the thread of his old life.

He was consumed, too, by curiosity.

What had happened since he was gone?
His feeling that he had been in the island eight or nine years instead of eight or nine months remained.

While it was his own world to which he was returning, it was also a new world.
Came the day when the harbor lights of the port of Boston showed through a haze and Robert, standing on the deck of the _Hawk_, watched the city rise out of the sea.

He was dressed in a good suit of civilian clothing that he had found on the island, and he had some money that had never been taken from him when he was kidnapped, enough to pay his way from Boston to Albany.