d
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
down 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.

"Now, a credulous man," said Ralph Cranfield, carelessly, to himself,
"might suppose that the treasure which I have sought round the world
lies buried, after all, at the very door of my mother's dwelling. That
would be a jest indeed."

More he thought not about the matter, for now the door was opened and
an elderly woman appeared on the threshold, peering into the dusk to
discover who it might be that had intruded on her premises and was
standing in the shadow of her tree. It was Ralph Cranfield's mother.
Pass we over their greeting, and leave the one to her joy and the
other to his rest--if quiet rest he found.

But when morning broke, he arose with a troubled brow, for his sleep
and his wakefulness had alike been full of dreams. All the fervor was
rekindled with which he had burned of yore to unravel the threefold
mystery of his fate. The crowd of his early visions seemed to have
awaited him beneath his mother's roof and thronged riotously around to
welcome his return. In the well-reme