I was surprised to see how the face of things had altered, when, in the course of the day, I hunted up the two playmates with whom I had formerly been most intimate. I met a cold reception. We could not find our way back to the old ground, the old innocent relation. As for Launa Probana, I did not so much as inquire for her. Time and change had not yet made her distinct and dear. After this I enjoyed myself very well for a few days, excusing my prank with the notion that it was a vacation. We went fishing, but the pickerel would not come from their hiding places. In the evenings Uncle Lyman and his wife at their several sides of the fireplace, she with her knitting, and he with his pipe, and I in a corner of the settle, talked of the days when my father was alive, and of the labors they underwent to make a good farm, clearing the brush and stones and building the fences. They told me of my birth and my father's joy at having a son. Then when I inquired for Nahum, their son, whom I remembered as a young man, when I was a child, a sudden silence fell over the great kitchen. There was no reply and the mother's head drooped over her work and tears fell upon it. I wondered, but did not dare to speak, and shortly I climbed the attic stairs to my bed. The next day Uncle Lyman cautioned me not to mention Nahum again before his wife. He said he had run away, and they knew not where he was. A guilty pang struck my heart; I became conscious of what I had done, and thought perhaps at that very moment my sister might be weeping for me. Nothing was now wanting to complete the failure of my escapade, and I was as eager to run back as I had been to run away. Memories, touched by imagination, had come to naught in contact with reality. I learned my first lesson in keeping it and ideals in their proper place. A bird in the bush is worth two in the hand! Utopia is a far country, toward which to travel is better than to arrive. It was some years before I restored the Bellingham of my imagination. If experience be nothing but suffering then I had experienced; over this transaction therefore I grant an act of oblivion.