A wild clamor, which made his blood run cold, came from below.  He leaped out of bed and pulled on his trousers, hearing all the while, as in a dream, his mother’s voice shrilling higher and higher.  “Oh, Abel, Abel, Abel!  Oh, Abel!”

Elmira, with a shawl over her night-gown, bearing a flaring candle, rushed across the landing from her room.  “Oh,” she gasped, “what is it? what is it?”

“I guess mother has been dreaming again,” Jerome replied, hoarsely, but the thought was in his mind that his mother had gone mad.

“There’s—­cold air—­coming—­in,” Elmira said, in her straining voice.  “The front door is—­wide open.”

At that Jerome pushed her aside and rushed down the stairs and into the kitchen.

There stood his mother over an old man, seated in her rocking-chair.  There she stood, pressing his white head against her breast, calling over and over again in a tone through whose present jubilation sounded the wail of past woe, “Oh, Abel, Abel, Abel!”

Jerome looked at them.  He wondered, dazedly, if he were really there and awake, or asleep and dreaming up-stairs in his bed.  Elmira came close beside him and clutched his arm—­even that did not clear his bewildered perceptions into certainty.  It is always easier for the normal mind, when confronted by astonishing spectacles, to doubt its own accuracy rather than believe in them.  “Do you see him?” he whispered, sharply, to Elmira.

“Yes; who is it? Who is it?”

Then Jerome, in his utter bewilderment, spoke out the secret which he had kept since childhood.

“It can’t be father,” said he—­“it can’t be.  I found his hat on the shore of the Dead Hole.  Father drowned himself there.”

At the sound of his voice Ann turned around.  “It’s your father!” she cried out, sharply—­“it’s your father come home.  Abel, here’s the children.”

Jerome eyed a small japanned box, or trunk, on the floor, a stout stick, and a handkerchief parcel.  He noted then clots of melting snow where the old man had trod.  Somehow the sight of the snow did more to restore his faculties than anything else.  “For Heaven’s sake, let us go to work!” he cried to Elmira, “or he’ll die.  He’s exhausted with tramping through the snow.  Get some of that brandy in the cupboard, quick, while I start up the fire.”

“Is it father?  Oh, Jerome, is it father?”

“Mother says so.  Get the brandy, quick.”

Jerome stirred the fire into a blaze, and put on the kettle, then he went to his mother and laid his hand on her shoulder.  “Now, mother,” he said, “he must be put into a warm bed.”

“Yes, put him into his own bed—­his own bed!” shrieked his mother.  “Oh, Abel, dear soul, come and sleep in your own bed again, after all these years!  Poor man, poor man, you’ve got home to your own bed!”

Jerome gave his mother’s thin, vibrating shoulder a firm shake.  “Mother,” he said, “tell me—­you must tell me—­is this man father?”