a dream.

Upon our landing, I went as soon as possible home. How green the hedges
were, how sweet the scent of the violets, how soft the grass, how grand
the arching oaks and giant elms, as I journeyed along on foot. Surely I
have suffered enough, I said to myself, as I passed through meadow, and
copse, and lane, and over stiles, and to the old park at last. Surely I
have suffered enough, I said, as I came to the lodge gate, where the
keeper's wife looked curiously at my uniform and bronzed face, and the
crape on my arm, and then ran into the lodge to tell her husband that
here was Master Horace come back. Surely there was peace in that old
house, with its pointed gables, and moss-clad turrets, and ivied walls,
and little gothic windows--where the old butler grasped my hand; and the
maids came peeping out; and the old dog licked my face; where poor Lucy
wept upon my breast--wept for that I had come back alone; and then put
her little girl into my arms, to kiss dear Uncle Horace, come home once
more.

But, when I went to bed that night, in the same glass that showed me my
Enemy years before, I saw him looking at me, with his cruel smile,
shining out of my own eyes.

What more remains to be told? But little; for it was but the old story.
It is enough to say that I struggled on, hoping against hope; that I
cheated myself with the maddest hope of all--that she might be brought
to love me; that I one day prayed her to become my wife, and that she
broke from me with terror and loathing; that I fled her presence, and
was once more a wanderer over the earth; that my weary feet dragged me
over the snows of Siberia, where the furred noble and the chained serf
worked side by side; over the burning sands, where the brown Arab
careers along upon his steed, his white burnous fluttering in the hot
wind; over the broad prairies of America, where the Indian prowls with
his trusty rifle, waiting for the wild beast; over the paths of the
trackless deep; over the still wilder deserts and still more lonely
deeps of revelry and vice;--what more than that I have come back again;
that many guests are here to do honor to my return; that these are the
last words which I shall ever write!

PARTING

When 'mid the loud notes of the drum
And fife tones shrilling on the ear,
The music of our nation's hymns
Rose 'neath the elm trees loud and clear;
When on the Common's grassy plain
The city poured her countless t