It was about six o'clock as he caught sight of the dear broken line
of hills on which his baby eyes had looked thirty-five years ago. A
few minutes later and the train drew up at the grimy little station
set in at the hillside, and, giving him just time to leap off, plunged
on again toward the West. Howard felt a ridiculous weakness in
his legs as he stepped out upon the broiling hot splintery planks of
the station and faced the few idlers lounging about. He simply
stood and gazed with the same intensity and absorption one of the
idlers might show standing before the Brooklyn Bridge.
The town caught and held his eyes first. How poor and dull and
sleepy and squalid it seemed! The one main street ended at the
hillside at his left and stretched away to the north, between two
rows of the usual village stores, unrelieved by a tree or a touch of
beauty. An unpaved street, drab-colored, miserable, rotting
wooden buildings, with the inevitable battlements-the same, only
worse, was the town.
The same, only more beautiful still, was the majestic amphitheater
of green wooded hills that circled the horizon, and toward which
he lifted his eyes. He thrilled at the sight.
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