remembered the village.

"Here is the change!" sighed he, striking his hand upon his breast.
"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!"

And now Ralph Cranfield was at his mother's gate, in front of the
small house where the old lady, with slender but sufficient means, had
kept herself comfortable during her son'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-gleans,
its doorway, with the half of a mill-stone for a step, and the faintly
traced path waving thence to the gate. He made friends again with his
childhood's friend, the old tree against which he leaned; and glancing
his eye a-down its trunk, beheld something that excited a melancholy
smile. It was a half-obliterated inscription--the Latin word EFFODE--
which he remembered to have carved in the bark of the tree, with a
whole day'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.

"Now a credulous man," said Ralph Cranfield carelessly to himself,
"might suppose that the treasure which I have sought round the world
lies buried, after all, at the very door of my mother's dwelling.