I was a sinner and afraid: 
  I bowed me in the dust and prayed:—­

  “O Christ the Lord I end Thou my search,
  And lead me to the one true church!”

  Then spake He, not as man may speak: 
  “The one true church thou shalt not seek;

  “Behold, it is enough,” He said,
  “To find the one true Christ, its Head!”

  Then straight He vanished from my sight,
  And left me standing in the light.

UNDER THE PEAR-TREE.

PART II.

CHAPTER IV.

Two years passed; and Swan Day was to all appearance no nearer his return to the land of his birth than when he first trod the deck that bore him away from it.  He was still on the first round of the high ladder to fortune.  Thus far he had wrought diligently and successfully.  He had been sent hither and thither:  from Canton to Hong-Kong; from Macao to Ningpo and Shanghai.  He was clerk, supercargo, anything that the interest of the Company demanded.  He worked with a will.  His thoughts were full of tea, silks, and lacquered ware,—­of exquisite carved ivory and wonderful porcelains,—­of bamboos, umbrellas, and garden-chairs,—­of Hong-Hi, Ching-Ho, and Fi-Fo-Fum.

There were moments, between the despatch of one vessel and the lading of another, when his mind would follow the sun, as it blazed along down out of sight of China, and fast on its way towards the Fox farm,—­when an intense longing seized him to look once again on the shady nest of all his hopes and labors.  He hated the life he led.  He hated the noisy Tartar women that surrounded him,—­aquatic and disgusting as crawfish,—­brown, stupid, and leering.  He hated the feline yawling of their music.  He hated the yellow water, swarming with boats, and settled with junks.  He hated their pagodas, and their hideous effigies of their ancestors, looking like dumb idols.  Their bejewelled Buddhas, their incense-lamps, their night and day, were alike odious to him.

Stretched on a bamboo chair, in an interval of labor, and when the intense heat brought comparative stillness, before his closed eyes came often up his home among the New-Hampshire hills.  He thought of his dead mother in the burying-ground, and the slate stones standing in the desolate grass.  Then his thoughts ran eagerly back to the Fox farm, and the sweet, lonely figure that stood watching his return under the pear-tree,—­the warm kiss of happy meeting, life opening fair, and a long vista through which the sunlight peeped all the more brightly for the shadowing trees.