scarcely more than if Ralph Cranfield had gone forth that very morning, and dreamed a day-dream till the twilight, and then turned back again. But his heart grew cold because the village did not remember him as he remembered the village.
“Here is the change!” sighed he, striking his hand upon his breast. “Who is this man of thought and care, weary with world-wandering and heavy with disappointed hopes? The youth returns not, who went forth so joyously!”
And now Ralph Cranfield was at his mother’s gate, in front of the small house where the old lady, with slender but sufficient means, had kept herself comfortable during her son’s long absence. Admitting himself within the enclosure, he leaned against a great, old tree, trifling with his own impatience, as people often do in those intervals when years are summed into a moment. He took a minute survey of the dwelling its windows brightened with the sky gleam, its doorway, with the half of a millstone for a step, and the faintly-traced path waving thence to the gate. He made friends again with his childhood’s friend, the old tree against which he leaned; and glancing his eye adown its trunk, beheld something that excited a melancholy smile. It was a half obliterated inscription—the Latin word Effode— which he remembered to have carved in the bark of the tree, with a whole day’s toil, when he had first begun to muse about his exalted destiny. It might be accounted a rather singular coincidence, that the bark just above the inscription, had put forth an excrescence, shaped not unlike a hand, with the forefinger pointing obliquely at the word of fate. Such, at least, was its appearance in the dusky light.
