`` 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 . 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 morning broke , he arose with a troubled brow ; for his sleep and his wakefulness had alike been full of dreams . All the fervor was rekindled with which he had burned of yore to unravel the threefold mystery of his fate . The crowd of his early visions seemed to have awaited him beneath his mother 's roof , and thronged riotously around to welcome his return . In the well-remembered chamber -- on the pillow where his infancy had slumbered -- he had passed a wilder night than ever in an Arab tent , or when he had reposed his head in the ghastly shades of a haunted forest . A shadowy maid had stolen to his bedside , and laid her finger on the scintillating heart ; a hand of flame had glowed amid the darkness , pointing downward to a mystery within the earth ; a hoary sage had waved his prophetic wand , and beckoned the dreamer onward to a chair of state . The same phantoms , though fainter in the daylight , still flitted about the cottage , and mingled among the crowd of familiar faces that were drawn thither by the news of Ralph Cranfield 's return , to bid him welcome for his mother 's sake .
There they found him , a tall , dark , stately man , of foreign aspect , courteous in demeanor and mild of speech , yet with an abstracted eye , which seemed often XXXXX snatch a glance at the invisible .
In about above amid as into that though to within