He must see it once more and renew his vows to God; so one day they wrapped him up in his great coat, and gave him his stick, and sent him forth alone to his first sanctuary. Feebly and slowly the old man made his way to the spot, and standing on the very ground, and with his hand upon the same old tree, he saw how the locality was altered. Men had been busy during these years, population had increased in the neighbourhood, houses were built in different places, and many changes had taken place. But there still remained the little running stream close by,--figure to him of the stream of Divine grace, that had never been cut off, never dried up in the drought of summer, never stopped by the chill of winter, never lost in the wild growth of the wilderness world; but on and on it flowed, down the incline of the moral world, winding and turning from side to side, as if to gladden all in its course, away down the hill among the gaps of the rocks, and over the gravelly ground of human life, until it finds its way again into the river of God's eternal love. And there too, stood the tree, the monument; but both man and tree bore unmistakable marks of age. The unwearying fingers of time had planted innumerable mosses against its bark; some of its old branches had withered, its foliage was scantier than of old; it was ripe, too; man and tree were both ripe and ready to fall. What a sympathy there was between them, what a friendship, what a secret! How many storms had both those old trees encountered since God first threw them together! The old elm had shaken, bent, and groaned under the violent grasp of the tempest, which hundreds of times had swept across that common. But it still stood, patiently and bravely waiting, amid the rolling years, for the end. Brave old elm! There is no sympathy in a tree, or this final meeting would have awakened it; but what matter? There is enough in man for the tree and himself too, enough to kindle regard in his heart for every square inch of timber in that old trunk; enough to make him see eyes in every joint--loving eyes, looking at him in mute affection; enough to transform every limb into strong arms stretched out to protect the old man in his feebleness, and enable him to see a smile in every wrinkling crack and fissure in thy hard, weather-beaten bark. Dear old elm, there needs no apology if a man love thee.