to summon the good old pastor, no temerity now dared to touch.
Heavens! what if the figure in the mouldy portrait should peer, in
answer, over the eaves, and shake solemnly its decaying surplice! Nay,
what if the mysterious man himself should answer the summons and come
to the door! It is easy to summon spirits--but if they come?
Collective Concord, moving in the river meadows, embraced the better
part of valor and left the knocker untouched. A cloud of romance
suddenly fell out of the heaven of fancy and enveloped the Old Manse:

"In among the bearded barley
The reaper reaping late and early"

did not glance more wistfully towards the island of Shalott and its
mysterious lady than the reapers of Concord rye looked at the Old
Manse and wondered over its inmate.

Sometimes in the forenoon a darkly clad figure was seen in the little
garden-plot putting in corn or melon seed, and gravely hoeing. It was
a brief apparition. The farmer passing towards town and seeing the
solitary cultivator, lost his faith in the fact and believed he had
dreamed when, upon returning, he saw no sign of life, except,
possibly, upon some Monday, the ghostly skirt of a shirt flapping
spectrally in the distant orchard. Day dawned and darkened over the
lonely house. Summer with "buds and bird-voices" came singing in from
the South, and clad the old ash-trees in deeper green, the Old Manse
in profounder mystery. Gorgeous autumn came to visit the story-teller
in his little western study, and, departing, wept rainbows among his
trees. Winter impatiently swept down the hill opposite, rifling the
trees of each last clinging bit of summer, as if thrusting aside
opposing barriers and determined to search the mystery. But his white