stretched him--the cross of enforced idleness--the cross of _nothing
to do_.

It is not strange that in his lonely suffering the man sought to
escape by the only way open to him--the way that led to his
Yesterdays. There was a welcome for him there. There was a place for
him. He was wanted there. There his life was held of value. It is not
at all strange that he went back. As one flees from a desolate,
burning, desert waste, to a land of shady groves and fruitful gardens,
of cool waters and companionable friends, so this man fled from his
days that were into his days that were gone--so he went back into his
Yesterdays.

It may have been the soft dusk of the twilight hour that did it: or it
may have been the loneliness of his heart: or, perhaps, it was the
picture he found in his trunk as he searched among his few things
trying to decide what next he should take to the pawn shop. Whatever
it was that brought it about, the man was a boy again in the boyhood
world of his Yesterdays.

And it happened that the day in his Yesterdays to which the man went
back was one of those days when the boy could find nothing to do.
Every game that he had ever played was played out. Every source of
amusement he had exhausted. There was in all his boyhood world
nothing, nothing, for him to do.

The orchard was not a trackless forest inhabited by fierce, wild
beasts; nor an enchanted wood with lords and ladies imprisoned in the
trees; it was only an orchard--a commonplace old orchard--nothing
more. Indians and robbers were stupid creatures of no importance