And we came into other countries that were full of people, and of cities great and small. A thousand strange faces were turned upon us as we shot past the open doors of houses wherein the table was spread for the domestic meal. We hailed the field-laborers and the town-artisans at their toil, and every hour plunged deeper and deeper into the old civilization of the East, which in some respects differs greatly from that of our breezy West. It was time to be thinking on my journey's end and its probable results. I seemed to read it all beforehand: Ellen would greet me at the gate of the parsonage on the edge of Heartsease, looking just as she looked when I parted with her long, long years before. Ellen had not changed with time: she had written me the same sweet, placid, sympathetic letters from the beginning, and the beginning was when, a mere child, I had worn out my heart with longing for home, and had at last been welcomed back over the two seas and across the slender chain of flowers that binds the two Americas together--back to the land I love, California. Ellen would lead me in all the old paths; we would see the garden in which, as a beautiful boy, I more than once sought her to confess some grief, knowing there was no ear so willing as hers, no heart tenderer, no counsel more comforting. We would row up the stream that runs under the hill by the willows, and strand in the same shallow nook, in honor of the festal Saturdays dead and gone. We would gather the old friends about us, and eat very large apples by the study-window; we would hunt nests in the hayloft and acorns in the wood; the school-room would take us back again, and all the half-obliterated memories of the past would glow with fresher color. A hundred hands would be stretched out to me, and I would recognize the clasp of each. Ah, happy day when I again returned to Heartsease and found the lost thread of my youth unbroken, and I had only to weave on and complete the fabric so long neglected!