He had wanted to plant a hedge that time before he went away, but he had not done so. Yet there was the hedge before him, just as he had meant it to be, and filling the night with fragrance. A broad, low gate divided its length, and over this he leaned and looked before him in amazement. There were no weeds as he had fancied; no trees except the scattered live oaks that he remembered.
Could that row of hardy fig trees, old, squat and gnarled, be the twigs that he himself had set one day into the ground? One raw December day when there was a fine, cold mist falling. The chill of it breathed again upon him; the memory was so real. The land did not look as if it ever had been plowed for a field. It was a smooth, green meadow, with cattle huddled upon the cool sward, or moving with slow, stately tread as they nibbled the tender shoots.
There was the house unchanged, gleaming white in the moon, seeming to invite him beneath its calm shelter. He wondered who dwelt within it now. Whoever it was he would not have them find him, like a prowler, there at the gate. But he would come again and again like this at nighttime, to gaze and refresh his spirit.
A hand had been laid upon M'sieur Michel's shoulder and some one called his name. Startled, he turned to see who accosted him.
"Duplan!"
The two men who had not exchanged speech for so many years stood facing each other for a long moment in silence.
"I knew you would come back some day, Michel. It was a long time to wait, but you have come home at last."
M'sieur Michel cowered instinctively and lifted his hands with expressive deprecatory gesture. "No, no; it's no place for me, Joe; no place!"
"Isn't a man's home a place for him, Michel?" It seemed less a question than an assertion, charged with gentle authority.
"Twenty-five years, Duplan; twenty-five years! It's no use; it's too late."
