At first there was
quite a company; but as they went their several ways to their home,
at last Little Darby and his mother were left alone in the piney path,
and made the last part of their way alone. Now and then the old woman's eyes
were on him, and often his eyes were on her, but they did not speak;
they just walked on in silence till they reached home.
It was but a poor, little house even when the wistaria vine covered it,
wall and roof, and the bees hummed among its clusters of violet blossoms;
but now the wistaria bush was only a tangle of twisted wires hung upon it,
and the little weather-stained cabin looked bare and poor enough.
As the young fellow stood in the door looking out with the evening light
upon him, his tall, straight figure filled it as if it had been a frame.
He stood perfectly motionless for some minutes, gazing across
the gum thickets before him.
The sun had set only about a half-hour and the light was still lingering
on the under edges of the clouds in the west and made a sort of glow
in the little yard before him, as it did in front of the cabin
on the other hill. His eye first swept the well-known horizon,
taking in the thickets below him and the heavy pines on either side
where it was already dusk, and then rested on the little cabin opposite.
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