There was a bustling little lawyer in the village who lived in a large house, and who was the great man of that town and country—he had scarce changed at all; and he stepped into the church as briskly and promptly as he did ten years ago. But what struck me most was the change in a couple of pretty little white-haired girls that at the time I left were of that uncertain age when the mother lifts them on a Sunday and pounces them down one after the other upon the seat of the pew; these were now grown into blooming young ladies. And they swept by me in the vestibule of the church, with a flutter of robes and a grace of motion that fairly made my heart twitter in my bosom. I know nothing that brings home upon a man so quick the consciousness of increasing years as to find the little prattling girls, that were almost babies in his boyhood, become dashing ladies, and to find those whom he used to look on patronizingly and compassionately, thinking they were little girls, grown to such maturity that the mere rustle of their silk dresses will give him a twinge, and their eyes, if he looks at them, make him unaccountably shy. After service I strolled up by the school buildings; I traced the names that we had cut upon the fence; but the fence had grown brown with age, and was nearly rotted away. Upon the beech tree in the hollow behind the school the carvings were all overgrown. It must have been vacation, if indeed there was any school at all; for I could see only one old woman about the premises, and she was hanging out a dishcloth to dry in the sun. I passed on up the hill, beyond the buildings, where in the boy-days we built stone forts with bastions and turrets; but the farmers had put the bastions and turrets into their cobblestone walls. At the orchard fence I stopped and looked—from force, I believe, of old habit—to see if any one were watching—and then leaped over, and found my way to the early-apple tree; but the fruit had gone by. It seemed very daring in me, even then, to walk so boldly in the forbidden ground. But the old head-master who forbade it was dead, and Russell and Burgess, and I know not how many others, who in other times were culprits with me, were dead, too. When I passed back by the school I lingered to look up at the windows of that corner room, where I had slept the sound, healthful sleep of boyhood—and where, too, I had passed many, many wakeful hours, thinking of the absent Bella, and of my home. —How small, seemed now, the great griefs of boyhood! Light floating clouds will obscure the sun that is but half risen; but let him be up—mid-heaven, and the cloud that then darkens the land must be thick and heavy indeed. —The tears started from my eyes—was not such a cloud over me now? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] COLLEGE