Yet, in the early morning hours there came to me the first ray of hope throughout that dreary space since I had left New York--the Quirks! The Quirks! Twenty years had passed since I had heard from them.

They might be dead and gone long ago without my knowing it; yet, were they alive, I felt that one or other of them would hold out a friendly hand for auld lang syne.

Before daybreak, I stole forth, hired a horse and buggy, asked the way to Methuen and, rousing Hawkins, bundled him, whining and fretting, into it.
Slowly we drove in the growing light through the country lanes I had known and loved so well as a lad--the farmland which was the only friendly thing in my disconsolate boyhood.

It was in the early spring and the apple-trees along the stone walls by the roadside were showered with clustering blossoms.

Dandelions sprinkled the fields.