After a few more words the village dignitary and his companions took their leave.  But to Cranfield’s fancy their images were still present, and became more and more invested with the dim awfulness of figures which had first appeared to him in a dream, and afterward had shown themselves in his waking moments, assuming homely aspects among familiar things.  His mind dwelt upon the features of the squire till they grew confused with those of the visionary sage and one appeared but the shadow of the other.  The same visage, he now thought, had looked forth upon him from the Pyramid of Cheops; the same form had beckoned to him among the colonnades of the Alhambra; the same figure had mistily revealed itself through the ascending steam of the Great Geyser.  At every effort of his memory he recognized some trait of the dreamy messenger of destiny in this pompous, bustling, self-important, little-great man of the village.  Amid such musings Ralph Cranfield sat all day in the cottage, scarcely hearing and vaguely answering his mother’s thousand questions about his travels and adventures.  At sunset he roused himself to take a stroll, and, passing the aged elm tree, his eye was again caught by the semblance of a hand pointing downward at the half-obliterated inscription.

As Cranfield walked down the street of the village the level sunbeams threw his shadow far before him, and he fancied that, as his shadow walked among distant objects, so had there been a presentiment stalking in advance of him throughout his life.  And when he drew near each object over which his tall shadow had preceded him, still it proved to be one of the familiar recollections of his infancy and youth.  Every crook in the pathway was remembered.  Even the more transitory characteristics of the scene were the same as in by-gone days.  A company of cows were grazing on the grassy roadside, and refreshed him with their fragrant breath.  “It is sweeter,” thought he, “than the perfume which was wafted to our ship from the Spice Islands.”  The round little figure of a child rolled from a doorway and lay laughing almost beneath Cranfield’s feet.  The dark and stately man stooped down, and, lifting the infant, restored him to his mother’s arms.  “The children,” said he to himself, and sighed and smiled—­“the children are to be my charge.”  And while a flow of natural feeling gushed like a well-spring in his heart he came to a dwelling which he could nowise forbear to enter.  A sweet voice which seemed to come from a deep and tender soul was warbling a plaintive little air within.  He bent his head and passed through the lowly door.  As his foot sounded upon the threshold a young woman advanced from the dusky interior of the house, at first hastily, and then with a more uncertain step, till they met face to face.  There was a singular contrast in their two figures—­he dark and picturesque, one who had battled with the world, whom all suns had shone upon and whom all winds had blown on a varied course; she neat, comely and quiet—­quiet even in her agitation—­as if all her emotions had been subdued to the peaceful tenor of her life.  Yet their faces, all unlike as they were, had an expression that seemed not so alien—­a glow of kindred feeling flashing upward anew from half-extinguished embers.