ALMOST HOME.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 469, 19 August 1909, Page 4

ALMOST HOME.

A‘ liule winding railway in a southern'county in America converts two widely-paiallelled sysieu s and is known as the Lundies. The trains are small and meek when compared with the long aggregations of cars with which they connect at G. But to the old man who sat in one of the cramped, uncomfoitable coaches, such trifling defects were not apparent. For forty years liule ears like these had passed his door. Along this same road he and Maty had taken their wedding trip. How proud he was of her when he returned, and lie had taken her home, where his father and his father’s father had lived before him. There they had lived and laboured together, going on Saturdays to the village and on Sundays to the little church ; and there their son Tom had been born.

It seemed hard to realise that all this was long ago ; for so much had happened since then. No lusty boy would come running to meet him to-day. The rocking chair, where Tom’s mother used to sit, would be very slid. 'j he old man choked a little and wij.ed his eyes with his cotton handkerchief. He hud not known what all this meant to him until he had left bis old home. .After bis wife’s death, he had feit very lonely and Tom had persuaded him to go and live with him. But everything was so strange in this new place —so very little like what he had pictured it! He said nothing. They were all kind to him, and he didn’t wish to seem ungrateful. He would not admit, even to himself, that he wished to go lack. He grew so silent, while and still that, at length, his son, watching his sad, inwumlul face, \\as touched hy the look of wau wistfulness so apparent in his features. “Father,'’ s..id Tern one day, “am I uot your sou ? Tell me.” The old man answered humbly, almost penitently ; “Tom, I am old and getting childish, hut 1 do so want to go back. You know, Tom, I have never lived anywhere else belore, and —she is there Tom.” So, to-day, he was gi mg home, back to the bills and lues he knew so well and lovcel s !> much , each and all as ociatal with Ins dear, dead wile.. 1 u-das lie was going hack to Ins iI el house bark to the grave where lay Ins loved one’s remnant —back where she •had lelt him to wait until she had called him. The journey was almost done. The sutuhinc crept across the car, and the noise ol voices grew lower and lower. It was evening, and he was .coming home down the long lanes between the well --remembered fields. Over the hills came the musical tinkling of hells, as the cows came home to the milking. Here, it seemed to the lonely old man, who for a long time had lived in the past, still so flesh in his memory, that, running to meet him was little Tom, his (ace and fingers still marked with the led stains of berries. Over there by the gate stood Mary, the wife of his youth. He saw the warm love-light in her eye, just as bewitching as on their wedding morn. “I am late, darling,” he said, and tired.” “Come,” she said, ‘‘you will be at rest now. It is- only a step more.” Then came a long quivering sigh of relief —and once more he was at home with Mary. The little rough train went jolting along and reached the station at last. But when the conductor called to the old man that his station was reached, and got no reply, be concluded he had lal'ed asleep. Going ovir to hint he touched him gently, saying, “Wake up, old man. Von are at your destination.” But there was no tespouse. The spirit had taken its flight. The o d man had joined his Mary, to be with her for evermore, where partings wv u’d he nnki.i wn, and where there would be no mou Ua'sir mourning.

He w,as iiu longer lom-ly. Mary had called him and be had gone to her.