First impressions are, I suppose, always the most generous ones; and however great might have been the relief at any other moment to know that the means of subsistence were no longer to depend upon the caprice of Fortune, the intelligence afforded me but little consolation, when coupled with the death of my poor friend. I was very, very sad. The last earthly tie between myself and my poor Louise seemed gone; and all the painful memories connected with the last days of her life, revived as darkly and gloomily as ever. I took no steps in regard to the property. I did not even answer the notary’s letter; but day after day I walked out over the curious broken ground, and cedar-covered hills to the south and west of Boston, meditating sadly upon the past. At the face of nature I used to look from time to time, finding I know not what, of similarity between the fading aspect of the autumn-woods and the withering away of my own hopes and happiness. But I looked little at man when he fell in my way, and many a time felt half angry when a fellow walker on the same road gave me good day, or stopped to ask me the hour. There were very few human habitations in that direction at the time; and one solitary public house, about four miles from the city, I used to pass with my eyes always bent upon the ground. I know not what induced me to raise my eyes toward it one day, as I was walking along, somewhat more slowly than usual—for the weather had become suddenly sultry, in what they call the Indian Summer. Perhaps it was that my eye caught an indistinct sight of some one sitting under the veranda—an old man, very shabbily dressed in brown. I could not see his features, for I was at the distance of more than a hundred yards, and I only took a casual glance. But as I returned by the same road, the old man was still sitting there; and a young girl of twelve or thirteen years of age was standing by, talking to him, and offering him something in a cup. In my morose selfishness, I was going on without any further notice, when suddenly he took the girl’s arm, and rose up feebly, looking straight toward me. A strange feeling of recognition instantly seized upon me, and I turned sharply toward the house, with doubt in my mind, but certainty in my heart—a contrast that takes place more often than people imagine.