INTO PARADISE.

I cannot tell whether it was fancy merely, but the morning light which
streamed into his room seemed more familiar and home-like to him than
it had ever done in Switzerland. He was awakened by one of those sounds
which dwell longest in the memory--the chiming of the church bells
nearest home, which in childhood had so often called to him to shake off
his slumbers, and which spoke to him now in sweet and friendly tones, as
if he was still an innocent child. The tempest-tossed, sinful man lay
listening to them for a minute or two, half asleep yet. He had been
dreaming that he was in truth dead, but that the task assigned to him
was that of an invisible guardian and defender to those who had lost
him. He had been present all these years with his wife, and mother, and
children, going out and coming in with them, hearing all their
conversation, and sharing their family life, but himself unseen and
unheard, felt only by the spiritual influence he could exercise over
them. It had been a blissful dream, such as had never visited him in his
exile; and as the familiar chiming of the bells, high up in the belfry
not far from his attic, fell upon his ear, the dream for a brief moment
gathered a stronger sense of reality.

It was with a strange feeling, as if he was himself a phantom mingling
with creatures of flesh and blood, that he went out into the streets.
His whole former life lay unrolled before him, but there was no point at
which he could touch it. Every object and every spot was commonplace,
yet invested with a singular and intense significance. Many a man among
the townsfolk he knew by name and history, whose eyes glanced at him as
a stranger, with no surprise at his appearance, and no show of suspicion
or of welcome. Certainly he was nothing but a ghost revisiting the
scenes of a life to which there was no possible return. Yet how he
longed to stretch out his hand and grasp those of these old towns-people
of his! Even the least interesting of the shopkeepers in the streets,
bestirring themselves to meet the business of a new day, seemed to him
one of the most desirable of companions.

His heart was drawing him to Whitefriars Road, to that spot on earth of
all others most his own, but his resolution failed him whenever he
turned his face that way. He rambled into the ancient market square,
where stood a statue of his Felicita's great uncle, the first Baron
Riversdale. The long shadow of it fell across