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82 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.

&ldquo;Here is the change!&rdquo; sighed he, striking his hand upon his breast. &ldquo;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!&rdquo; And now Ralph Cranfield was at his mother&rsquo;s gate, in front of the small house where the old lady, with slender but sufficient means, had kept herself comfortable during her son&rsquo;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&rsquo;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&mdash;the Latin word &mdash; which he remembered to have carved in the bark of the tree, with a whole day&rsquo;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.