fficulties. By the time he had asked himself one or two questions, and
had answered them, such as, "Whether, all the conditions being changed,
I am to be held to my promise?" and the like, he had placed one foot
carefully up. Then, before conscience had time to trip him up, the other
foot followed, and he found himself firmly posted.

"I will write a note to-morrow,--put it into the post-office----No,
that won't do; in these places, nobody goes to the post-office once a
week;--I'll send a note to the house."

Here he warmed up.

"A note, asking her to meet me under the great pear-tree, as we
met----It is, by Jove! just fifteen years to-morrow night since I left
Walton! That's good! it will help on some"----

The little maid here interrupted his meditations by coming for the
relics of the supper; and Swan, weary with unwonted thought, dropped
the paper curtains, and plunged, body and soul, into fifty pounds of
live-geese feathers.

CHAPTER VI.

The great clock in the dining-room whirred out twelve strokes before
Swan opened his eyes. As soon as the eyes took in the principal features
of the apartment, which process his mental preoccupation had hindered
the night before, he was as much at home as if he had never left Walton.

The great beam across the low room,--the little window-panes,--the
rag-carpet, made of odds and ends patriotically arranged to represent
the American eagle holding stars and stripes in his firm and bounteous
claws, with an open beak that seemed saying,--"Here they be!--'cordin'
as you behave yourselves!--stars _or_ stripes!"--all within was more
familiar to his eye than household words, for it was the old room he had
occupied the year before he left America. He stepped quickly across the
chamber to a certain beam, where he had, fifteen years before, written
four initial letters, and intertwined them so curiously that the Gordian
knot was easy weaving in comparison. The Gordian one was cut;--and this
had been painted and effaced forever.

Swan returned to his trunk with a half-sigh. He selected a suit
of clothes which he had purchased in Boston, put aside his
travelling-dress, and looked out of the window occasionally as he
dressed. It was a warm, sunny day. The Indian summer had relented and
come back to take one more peep, before winter should shut the door on
all the glowing beauty of the year. A dozen persons were crossing the
street. He knew every one of them at sight. Of course ther