these were all. And yet the sounds, though not heard for years, seemed
as familiar as the mother's lullaby that puts a child to sleep, and a
delicious sense of restfulness stole into his heart. The world in
which he had so greatly sinned and suffered might be another planet,
it seemed so far away. Could it be that in a few short hours he had
escaped out of the hurry and grind of New York into this sheltered
nook? Why had he not come before? Here was the remedy for soul and
body, if any existed.

Not a person was visible on the place, and it seemed that it might
thus have been awaiting him in all his absence, and that now he had
only to go and take possession.

"So our home in heaven awaits us, mother used to say," he thought,
"while we are such willing exiles from it. I would give all the world
to believe as she did."

He found that the place so inseparably associated with his mother
brought back her teachings, which he had so often tried to forget.

"I wish I might bury myself here, away from the world," he muttered,
"for it has only cheated and lied to me from first to last. Everything
deceived me, and turned out differently from what I expected. These
loved old scenes are true and unchanged, and smile upon me now as when
I was here a happy boy. Would to heaven I might never leave them
again!"

He was startled out of his revery by the sharp bark of a squirrel that
ran chattering and whisking its tail in great excitement from limb to
limb in a clump of chestnuts near. The crackling of a twig betrayed to