Lindsay turned into the lane. What was his amazement when he saw not, as he expected, the well-known farm-house and its appurtenances!--It was no longer there. The dilapidated ruins of the chimney alone were standing, and round them lay a heap of rubbish. He stopped his horse and gazed long and sadly, on finding all his pleasant anticipations turned at once to disappointment. Finally he dismounted, and securing his bridle to a large nail which yet remained in the trunk of the old tree, having been placed there for that purpose, he proceeded to take a nearer view of what had once been the Oakland Farm-House. There were indications of the last fire that had ever gladdened the hearth, the charred remains of an immense backlog, now half hidden beneath a luxuriant growth of the dusky and ragged-leaved Jamestown weed. In a corner of the hearth grew a sumach that bid fair in a short time to overtop all that was left of the chimney. These corners had once been furnished with benches on which the children used to sit and amuse themselves with stories and riddles, in the cold autumnal evenings, when fires are doubly cheerful from being the first of the season. Of the long porch in which they had so often played by moonlight, nothing now remained but a few broken and decaying boards with grass and plantain-weeds growing among them; and some relics of the rough stone steps that had ascended to it, now displaced and fallen aside by the caving in of the earth behind. The well that had supplied the family with cold water for drinking, had lost its cover--the sweep had fallen down, and the bucket and chain were gone. The dark cool cellar was laid open to the light of day, and was now a deep square pit, overgrown with thistles and toad-flax. From the cracks of the old clay oven that had belonged to the chimney (and which was now half hidden in pokeberry plants), issued tufts of chick-weed; and when Lindsay looked into the place which he had so often seen filled with pies and rice-puddings, the glare of bright eyes and a rustling noise denoted that some wild animal had made its lair in the cavity. Suddenly a large gray fox sprung out of the oven-mouth, and ran fearfully past him into the thicket. Lindsay thought in a moment of the often-quoted lines of Ossian.