And now Ralph Cranfield was at his mother’s gate, in front of the small house where the old lady, with slender but sufficient means, had kept herself comfortable during her son’s long absence. Admitting himself within the enclosure, he leaned against a great, old tree, trifling with his own impatience, as people often do in those intervals when years are summed into a moment. He took a minute survey of the dwelling,--its windows, brightened with the sky-gleans, its doorway, with the half of a mill-stone for a step, and the faintly traced path waving thence to the gate. He made friends again with his childhood’s friend, the old tree against which he leaned; and glancing his eye a-down its trunk, beheld something that excited a melancholy smile. It was a half-obliterated inscription--the Latin word EFFODE--which he remembered to have carved in the bark of the tree, with a whole day’s toil, when he had first begun to muse about his exalted destiny. It might be accounted a rather singular coincidence, that the bark, just above the inscription, had put forth an excrescence, shaped not unlike a hand, with the forefinger pointing obliquely at the word of fate. Such, at least, was its appearance in the dusky light. “Now a credulous man,” said Ralph Cranfield carelessly to himself, “might suppose that the treasure which I have sought round the world lies buried, after all, at the very door of my mother’s dwelling. That would be a jest indeed!” More he thought not about the matter; for now the door was opened, and an elderly woman appeared on the threshold, peering into the dusk to discover who it might be that had intruded on her premises, and was standing in the shadow of her tree. It was Ralph Cranfield’s mother. Pass we over their greeting, and leave the one to her joy and the other to his rest,--if quiet rest he found.