The little maid here interrupted his meditations by coming for the relics of the supper; and Swan, weary with unwonted thought, dropped the paper curtains, and plunged, body and soul, into fifty pounds of live-geese feathers.

CHAPTER VI.

The great clock in the dining-room whirred out twelve strokes before Swan opened his eyes.  As soon as the eyes took in the principal features of the apartment, which process his mental preoccupation had hindered the night before, he was as much at home as if he had never left Walton.

The great beam across the low room,—­the little window-panes,—­the rag-carpet, made of odds and ends patriotically arranged to represent the American eagle holding stars and stripes in his firm and bounteous claws, with an open beak that seemed saying,—­“Here they be!—­’cordin’ as you behave yourselves!—­stars or stripes!”—­all within was more familiar to his eye than household words, for it was the old room he had occupied the year before he left America.  He stepped quickly across the chamber to a certain beam, where he had, fifteen years before, written four initial letters, and intertwined them so curiously that the Gordian knot was easy weaving in comparison.  The Gordian one was cut;—­and this had been painted and effaced forever.

Swan returned to his trunk with a half-sigh.  He selected a suit of clothes which he had purchased in Boston, put aside his travelling-dress, and looked out of the window occasionally as he dressed.  It was a warm, sunny day.  The Indian summer had relented and come back to take one more peep, before winter should shut the door on all the glowing beauty of the year.  A dozen persons were crossing the street.  He knew every one of them at sight.  Of course there was no forgetting old Dan Sears, with whom he had forty times gone a-fishing; nor Phil Sanborn, who had stood behind the counter with him two years at the old store.  Though Phil had grown stout, there was the same look.  There was the old store, too, looking exactly as it did when he went away, the sign a little more worn in the gilding.  He seemed to smell the mingled odors of rum, salt-fish, and liquorice, with which every beam and rafter was permeated.  And there was old Walsh going home drunk this minute! with a salt mackerel, as usual, for his family-dinner.

He wrote a short note as he dressed and shaved leisurely.  The note was to Dorcas, and only said,—­“Meet me under the old pear-tree before sunset tonight,”—­and was signed with his initials.  This note he at first placed on the little mantel-shelf in plain sight, so that he should not forget to take it down-stairs when he went to breakfast.  Afterwards he put it into his pocket-book.