mbered chamber, on the pillow
where his infancy had slumbered, he had passed a wilder night than
ever in an Arab tent or when he had reposed his head in the ghastly
shades of a haunted forest. A shadowy maid had stolen to his bedside
and laid her finger on the scintillating heart; a hand of flame had
glowed amid the darkness, pointing downward to a mystery within the
earth; a hoary sage had waved his prophetic wand and beckoned the
dreamer onward to a chair of state. The same phantoms, though fainter
in the daylight, still flitted about, the cottage and mingled among
the crowd of familiar faces that were drawn thither by the news of
Ralph Cranfield's return to bid him welcome for his mother's sake.
There they found him, a tall, dark, stately man of foreign aspect,
courteous in demeanor and mild of speech, yet with an abstracted eye
which seemed often to snatch a glance at the invisible.

Meantime, the widow Cranfield went bustling about the house full of
joy that she again had somebody to love and be careful of, and for
whom she might vex and tease herself with the petty troubles of daily
life. It was nearly noon when she looked forth from the door and
descried three personages of note coming along the street through the
hot sunshine and the masses of elm-tree shade. At length they reached
her gate and undid the latch.

"See, Ralph!" exclaimed she, with maternal pride; "here is Squire
Hawkwood and the two other selectmen coming on purpose to see you.
Now, do tell them a good long story about what you have seen in
foreign parts."

The foremost of the three visitors, Squire Hawkwood, was a very
pompous but excellent old gentleman, the head and prime-mover in all
the affairs of the village, and universally acknowledged to be one of
the sagest men on earth. He wore, according to a fashion even then
becoming antiquated, a three-cornered hat, and carried a silver-headed
cane the use of which seemed to be rather for flourishing in the air
than for assisting the progress of his legs. His two companions were
elderly and respectable yeomen who, retaining an ante-Revolutionary
reverence for rank and hereditary wealth, kept a little in the
squire's rear.

As they approached along the pathway Ralph Cranfield sat in an oaken
elbow-chair half unconsciously gazing at the three visitors and
enveloping their homely figures in the misty romance that pervaded his
mental world. "Here," thought he, smiling at the conceit--"here come
th