“It is they!” answered Phoebe. “Thank God! — thank God!”

And then, as if in sympathy with Phoebe’s whispered ejaculation, they heard Hepzibah’s voice more distinctly.

“Thank God, my brother, we are at home!”

“Well! — Yes! — thank God!” responded Clifford. “A dreary home, Hepzibah! But you have done well to bring me hither!

Stay! That parlor door is open. I cannot pass by it! Let me go and rest me in the arbor, where I used, — oh, very long ago, it seems to me, after what has befallen us, — where I used to be so happy with little Phoebe!”

But the house was not altogether so dreary as Clifford imagined it. They had not made many steps, —