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thought, a pang of regret for his demerit seized him; he
remembered the things that were good and that he had
neglected, and the things that were evil and that he had
loved; and it was with a prayer upon his lips that he mounted
the steps and thrust the key into the key-hole.
He stepped into the lighted hall, shut the door softly behind
him, and stood there fixed in wonder. No surprise of
strangeness could equal the surprise of that complete
familiarity. There was the bust of Chalmers near the stair-
railings, there was the clothes-brush in the accustomed
place; and there, on the hat-stand, hung hats and coats that
must surely be the same as he remembered. Ten years dropped
from his life, as a pin may slip between the fingers; and the
ocean and the mountains, and the mines, and crowded marts and
mingled races of San Francisco, and his own fortune and his
own disgrace, became, for that one moment, the figures of a
dream that was over.
He took off his hat, and moved mechanically toward the stand;
and there he found a small change that was a great one to
him. The pin that had been his from boyhood, where he had
flung his balmoral when he loitered home from the Academy,
and his first hat when he came briskly back from college or
the office - his pin was occupied. 'They might have at least
respected my pin!' he thought, and he was moved as by a
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