station to the cottage; but I found myself remembering it perfectly,
without a glance at the finger-posts. Rain had been falling heavily,
driving the late leaves off the trees; and everything looked rather
sodden and misty, though the sun was now shining. I had known this
landscape only in spring, summer, early autumn. Mary had held to a
theory that at other seasons I could not be acclimatised. But there were
groups of trees that I knew, even without their leaves; and farm-houses
and small stone bridges that had not at all changed. Only what mattered
was changed. Only what mattered was gone. Would what I had come to see
be there still? In comparison with what it had held, it was not much.
But I wished to see it, melancholy spectacle though it must be for me
if it were extant, and worse than melancholy if it held something new.
I began to be sure it had been demolished, built over. At the corner of
the lane that had led to it, I was almost minded to explore no further,
to turn back. But I went on, and suddenly I was at the four-barred iron
gate, that I remembered, between the laurels. It was rusty, and was
fastened with a rusty padlock, and beyond it there was grass where
a winding 'drive' had been. From the lane the cottage never had been
visible, even when these laurels were lower and sparser than they were
now. Was the cottage still standing? Presently, I climbed over the gate,
and walked through the long grass, and--yes, there was Mary's cottage;
still there; William's and Mary's cottage. Trite enough, I have no
doubt, were the thoughts that possessed me as I stood gazing. There is
nothing new to be thought about the evanescence of human things; but
there is always much to be felt about it by one who encounters in his
maturity some such intimate instance and reminder as confronted me, in
that cold sunshine, across that small wilderness of long rank wet grass
and weeds.

Incredibly woebegone and lonesome the house would have looked even to
one for whom it contained no memories; all the more because in its utter
dereliction it looked so durable. Some of the stucco had fallen off the
walls of the two wings; thick flakes of it lay on the discoloured roof
of the veranda, and thick flakes of it could be seen lying in the grass
below. Otherwise, there were few signs of actual decay. The sash-window
and the French window of each wing were shuttered, and, from where I was
standing, the cream-coloured paint of those shutters