not dream of.

While he lay sound asleep in the shade, other people were wide-awake,
and passed to an fro, afoot, on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles,
along the sunny road by his bed-chamber. Some looked neither to the
right hand nor to the left, and knew not that he was there; some merely
glanced that way, without admitting the slumberer among their busy
thoughts; some laughed to see how soundly he slept; and several, whose
hearts were brimming full of scorn, ejected their venomous superfluity
upon David Swan. A middle-aged widow, when nobody else was near, thrust
her head a little way into the recess, and vowed that the young fellow
looked charming in his sleep. A temperance lecturer saw him, and wrought
poor David into the texture of his evening's discourse, as an awful
instance of dead-drunkenness by the road-side. But censure, praise,
merriment, scorn, and indifference, were all one, or rather all nothing,
to David Swan.

He had slept only a few moments when a brown carriage, drawn by a
handsome pair of horses, bowled easily along, and was brought to a
stand-still nearly in front of David's resting-place. A linch-pin had
fallen out, and permitted one of the wheels to slide off. The damage was
slight, and occasioned merely a momentary alarm to an elderly merchant
and his wife, who were returning to Boston in the carriage. While the
coachman and a servant were replacing the wheel, the lady and gentleman
sheltered themselves beneath the maple-trees, and there espied the
bubbling fountain, and David Swan asleep beside it. Impressed with the
awe which the humblest sleeper usually sheds around him, the merchant
trod as lightly as the gout would allow; and his spouse took good heed
not to rustle her silk gown, lest David should start up, all of a
sudden.

"How soundly he sleeps!" whispered the old gentleman. "From what a depth
he draws that easy breath! Such sleep as that, brought on without an
opiate, would be worth more to me than half my income, for it would
suppose health and an untroubled mind."

"And youth besides," said the lady. "Healthy and quiet age does not
sleep thus. Our slumber is no more like his than our wakefulness."

The longer they looked, the more did this elderly couple feel interested
in the unknown youth, to whom the wayside and the maple shade were as a
secret chamber, with the rich gloom of damask curtains brooding over
him. Perceiving that a stray sunbeam glimmered down upon his face,