It was a long trip, and he stopped twice to roll new cigarettes before he circled it.

Then he examined the stable.

This finished, he stepped over to the corral fence, leaned his arms on the top rail, and, in the moonlight that came over his shoulder, reread his father's letter, making out the picturesque chirography with difficulty.
As during the first days of his return, when he had watched the army of memories pass in review, he lingered over them now, and, to his surprise, discovered that he felt some little regret over his own conduct in those days preceding his leave-taking.

To be sure, he had been only a boy at that time, but he had been a man since, and the cold light of reason should have shown him that there must have been cause for his father's brutal treatment of him--if indeed it had been brutal.
In fact, if he had acted in his youth as he had acted since reaching maturity, there was small reason to wonder that he had received blows.
Boys needed to be reprimanded, punished, and perhaps he had deserved all he had received.
The tone of his father's letters was distinctly sorrowful.

Remorse, sincere remorse, had afflicted him.