And had he found them ? Alas ! it was not with the aspect of a triumphant man , who had achieved a nobler destiny than all his fellows , but rather with the gloom of one struggling against peculiar and continual adversity , that he now passed homeward to his mother 's cottage . 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 daydream 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-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 XXXXX 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 .
Cranfield EFFODE century day excrescence gravestones minute sky-gleans twilight years