He had come back , but only for a time , to lay aside the pilgrim 's staff , trusting that his weary manhood would regain somewhat of the elasticity of youth in the spot where his threefold fate had been foreshown him . There had been few changes in the village , for it was not one of those thriving places where a year 's prosperity makes more than the havoc of a century 's decay , but , like a gray hair in a young man 's head , an antiquated little town full of old maids and aged elms and moss-grown dwellings . Few seemed to be the changes here . The drooping elms , indeed , had a more majestic spread , the weather-blackened houses were adorned with a denser thatch of verdant moss , and doubtless there were a few more gravestones in the burial-ground inscribed with names that had once been familiar in the village street ; yet , summing up all the mischief that ten years had wrought , it seemed scarcely more than if Ralph Cranfield had gone forth that very morning and dreamed a day-dream till the twilight , and then turned back again . But his heart grew cold because the village did not remember him as he 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-gleam , its doorway with the half of a millstone 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 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 . That would be a jest indeed . '' More he thought not about the matter , for now the door was opened and an elderly woman appeared on the threshold , peering into the dusk to discover who it might be that had intruded on her premises and was standing in the shadow of her tree . It was Ralph Cranfield 's mother . Pass we over their greeting , and leave the one to her joy and the other to his rest -- if quiet rest he found .
But when XXXXX broke , he arose with a troubled brow , for his sleep and his wakefulness had alike been full of dreams .
Cranfield day first gravestones minute morning sky-gleam twilight world-wandering years