APTER X.

THE CONCLUSION.

CHAPTER FIRST.

THE LANDSCAPE OF THE STORY.

I see old Sylvester Peabody--the head of the Peabody family--seated in
the porch of his country dwelling, like an ancient patriarch, in the
calm of the morning. His broad-brimmed hat lies on the bench at his
side, and his venerable white locks flow down his shoulders, which time
in one hundred seasons of battle and sorrow, of harvest and drouth, of
toil and death, in all his hardy wrestlings with old Sylvester, has not
been able to bend. The old man's form is erect and tall, and lifting up
his head to its height, he looks afar, down the country road which leads
from his rural door, towards the city. He has kept his gaze in that
direction for better than an hour, and a mist has gradually crept upon
his vision; objects begin to lose their distinctness; they grow dim or
soften away like ghosts or spirits; the whole landscape melts gently
into a pictured dew before him. Is old Sylvester, who has kept it clear
and bright so long, losing his sight at last, or is our common world,
already changing under the old patriarch's pure regard, into that
better, heavenly land?

It seemed indeed, on this very calm morning in November, as if angels
were busy about the Old Homestead, (which lies on the map, in the heart
of one of the early states of our dear American Union,) transforming all
the old familiar things into something better and purer, and touching
them gently with a music and radiance caught from the very sky itself.
As in the innocence of beauty, shrouded in sleep, dreams come to the
eyelids which are the realities of the day, with a strange
loveliness--the fair country lay as it were in a delicious dreamy
slumber. The trees did not stand forth boldly with every branch and
leaf, but rather seemed gentle pictures of trees; the sheep-bells from
the hills tinkled softly and as if whispering a secret to the wind; the
birds sailed slowly to and fro on the air; there was no harshness in the
low of the herds, no anger in the heat of the sun, not a sight nor a
sound, near by nor far off, which did not partake of the holy beauty of
the morning, nor sing, nor be silent, nor stand still, nor move, with
any other than a gliding sweetness and repose, or an under-tone which
might have been the echo here on earth, of a better sphere. There was a
tender sadness and wonder in the face of old Sylvester, when a voice
came stealing in upon the silence. It did