There were more
seeds and gayer flowers than there used to be, but there were the
old trees still--the very tree under which he had lain a thousand
times when tired of playing in the sun, and felt the soft, mild sleep
of happy boyhood steal gently upon him. There were voices
within the house. He listened, but they fell strangely upon his ear;
he knew them not. They were merry too; and he well knew that
his poor old mother could not be cheerful, and he away. The door
opened, and a group of little children bounded out, shouting and
romping. The father, with a little boy in his arms, appeared at the
door, and they crowded round him, clapping their tiny hands,
and dragging him out, to join their joyous sports. The convict
thought on the many times he had shrunk from his father's sight
in that very place. He remembered how often he had buried his
trembling head beneath the bedclothes, and heard the harsh word,
and the hard stripe, and his mother's wailing; and though the
man sobbed aloud with agony of mind as he left the spot, his fist
was clenched, and his teeth were set, in a fierce and deadly passion.
'And such was the return to which he had looked through the
weary perspective of many years, and for which he had undergone
so much suffering! No face of welcome, no look of forgiveness,
no house to receive, no hand to help him--and this too in the old
village.
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