egan to encroach upon my dreams. In those of the last night,
Hollingsworth and Zenobia, standing on either side of my bed, had bent
across it to exchange a kiss of passion. Priscilla, beholding
this,--for she seemed to be peeping in at the chamber window,--had
melted gradually away, and left only the sadness of her expression in
my heart. There it still lingered, after I awoke; one of those
unreasonable sadnesses that you know not how to deal with, because it
involves nothing for common-sense to clutch.

It was a gray and dripping forenoon; gloomy enough in town, and still
gloomier in the haunts to which my recollections persisted in
transporting me. For, in spite of my efforts to think of something
else, I thought how the gusty rain was drifting over the slopes and
valleys of our farm; how wet must be the foliage that overshadowed the
pulpit rock; how cheerless, in such a day, my hermitage--the
tree-solitude of my owl-like humors--in the vine-encircled heart of the
tall pine! It was a phase of homesickness. I had wrenched myself too
suddenly out of an accustomed sphere. There was no choice, now, but to
bear the pang of whatever heartstrings were snapt asunder, and that
illusive torment (like the ache of a limb long ago cut off) by which a
past mode of life prolongs itself into the succeeding one. I was full
of idle and shapeless regrets. The thought impressed itself upon me
that I had left duties unperformed. With the power, perhaps, to act in
the place of destiny and avert misfortune from my friends, I had
resigned them to their fate. That cold tendency, between instinct and
intellect, which made me pry with a speculative interest into people's
passions and impulses, appeared to have gone far towards unhumanizing
my heart.

But a man cannot always decide for himself whether his own heart is
cold or warm. It now impresses me that, if I erred at all in regard to
Hollingsworth, Zenobia, and Priscilla, it was through too much
sympathy, rather than too little.

To escape the irksomeness of these meditations, I resumed my post at
the window. At first sight, there was nothing new to be noticed. The
general aspect of affairs was the same as yesterday, except that the
more decided inclemency of to-day had driven the sparrows to shelter,
and kept the cat within doors; whence, however, she soon emerged,
pursued by the cook, and with what looked like the better half of a
roast chicken in her mouth. The young man in