ling his thoughts from this uncomfortable track, he sent them over
forest, hill, and stream, and attempted to imagine how that evening of
ambiguity and weariness had been spent by his father's household. He
pictured them assembled at the door, beneath the tree, the great old
tree, which had been spared for its huge twisted trunk and venerable
shade, when a thousand leafy brethren fell. There, at the going down of
the summer sun, it was his father's custom to perform domestic worship
that the neighbors might come and join with him like brothers of the
family, and that the wayfaring man might pause to drink at that
fountain, and keep his heart pure by freshening the memory of home.
Robin distinguished the seat of every individual of the little
audience; he saw the good man in the midst, holding the Scriptures in
the golden light that fell from the western clouds; he beheld him close
the book and all rise up to pray. He heard the old thanksgivings for
daily mercies, the old supplications for their continuance to which he
had so often listened in weariness, but which were now among his dear
remembrances. He perceived the slight inequality of his father's voice
when he came to speak of the absent one; he noted how his mother turned
her face to the broad and knotted trunk; how his elder brother scorned,
because the beard was rough upon his upper lip, to permit his features
to be moved; how the younger sister drew down a low hanging branch
before her eyes; and how the little one of all, whose sports had
hitherto broken the decorum of the scene, understood the prayer for her
playmate, and burst into clamorous grief. Then he saw them go in at the
door; and when Robin would have entered also, the latch tinkled into
its place, and he was excluded from his home.

"Am I here, or there?" cried Robin, starting; for all at once, when his
thoughts had become visible and audible in a dream, the long, wide,
solitary street shone out before him.

He aroused himself, and endeavored to fix his attention steadily upon
the large edifice which he had surveyed before. But still his mind kept
vibrating between fancy and reality; by turns, the pillars of the
balcony lengthened into the tall, bare stems of pines, dwindled down to
human figures, settled again into their true shape and size, and then
commenced a new succession of changes. For a single moment, when he
deemed himself awake, he could have sworn that a visage--one which he
seemed to rem