old paths; we would see the garden in which,
as a beautiful boy, I more than once sought her to confess some grief,
knowing there was no ear so willing as hers, no heart tenderer, no
counsel more comforting. We would row up the stream that runs under
the hill by the willows, and strand in the same shallow nook, in honor
of the festal Saturdays dead and gone. We would gather the old friends
about us, and eat very large apples by the study-window; we would
hunt nests in the hayloft and acorns in the wood; the school-room
would take us back again, and all the half-obliterated memories of the
past would glow with fresher color. A hundred hands would be stretched
out to me, and I would recognize the clasp of each. Ah, happy day when
I again returned to Heartsease and found the lost thread of my youth
unbroken, and I had only to weave on and complete the fabric so long
neglected!

There were a dozen trains to enter and get out of before I could be
whirled across the country to Heartsease. Now that Heartsease was
easily attainable, all the restless world would be fleeing thither,
and it would no longer be worthy of its name. I felt my way from town
to town, pausing an hour here, another hour there, in an impatient
mood, for the last train was behind time, and I feared I should not
arrive in the village at the moment of all others I most desired to.
Why should I not come at sunset to the parsonage--one from the land of
the sunset wearing, as it were, his colors on his heart? The hour is
so mysterious and pathetic--the very hour to step in upon the village,
for so you can gloat over it all night, before the sun has laid the
whole truth bare to you on the following morning. And moreover I had
not written Ellen of my intended visit: why should I, when she had
been looking for me these ten years at least? Why should I say, "At
last I am coming," when a thousand things might have prevented me? Was
it not better to walk up the long road from the station at twilight,
pass silently through the quiet, familiar streets, and then, as I
approached the gate of the parsonage, discover a form waiting there as
if expecting some one, but whom it was hard to say? Drawing nearer, I
would recognize the form, slender and graceful, and then the face,
placid and pale, with the soft hair drawn smoothly over the temples
and the thin hands folded in peace. Oh yes, it was much better thus.

At the last change of trains, ten miles from Heartsease, a heav