L. THE GOSPEL OF LOVE

LI. THE RETURN

LII. FINAL DREAM LAND




CHAPTER I.

A FAILURE.


He could see from the top of the hill, down which the road wound to
the river, that the bridge was gone, and he paused for a moment
with an involuntary feeling that it was useless to go forward; but
remembering that his way led across, at all events, he walked down to
the bank. There it ran, broad, rapid, and in places apparently deep.
He looked up and down in vain: no lodged drift-wood; no fallen trees;
no raft or wreck; a recent freshet had swept all clear to high-water
mark, and the stream rolled, and foamed, and boiled, and gurgled, and
murmured in the afternoon August sun as gleefully and mockingly as if
its very purpose was to baffle the wearied youth who looked into and
over its changing tide.

In coming from Cleveland that morning he had taken a wrong road, and
now, at mid-afternoon, he found his progress stayed with half his
day's journey still before him. It would have been but a moment's task