The vague joys which had been surging through his soul became vivid and well-defined as the details of the landscape around his old home began gradually to be revealed.  At first he had recognized only the larger and more general features like the lines of hills, the valleys, the rivers; but now he began to distinguish well-known farms and houses, streams in which he had fished, groves in which he had hunted, roads over which he had driven; and the pleasure of reviving old memories and associations increased with every step of progress.  At last he began to ascend the high hill which hid the house of his childhood from view.  He reached the summit; there lay the village fast asleep in the spring sunshine.  He recognized it, but with astonishment, for it looked like a miniature of its former self.  The buildings that once appeared so grand had shrunk to playhouses.  The broad streets had contracted and looked like narrow lanes.  He rubbed his eyes to see if they were deceiving him.

An unreality brooded mysteriously over everything.  It was the same, yet not the same, and he paused a moment to permit his mind to become accustomed to these alterations; to ponder upon the reasons for this change; to realize the joy and sadness which mingled in his heart; and then he turned into a side road to escape any possible encounter with old acquaintances.

The route which he had chosen did not lead to the farm house, but to the cemetery where the body of his mother lay wrapped in her dreamless sleep; that neglected grave was drawing him to itself with a magnetic force.  He who, for a year, had thought of her scarcely at all, now thought of nothing else.  The last incident in her life, the face white with its intolerable pain of confession, the gasp for breath, the sudden fall, the quiet funeral, his own responsibility for this tragic death—­he lived it all over and over again in an instant of time as grief, regret, remorse, successively swept his heart.  Tying his horse outside the lonely burying ground, he threaded his way among the myrtle-covered graves to the low mound which marked her resting place, approached it, removed his hat and stood silently, reverently, by its side.

There come to us all hours or moments of sudden and unexpected disclosures of the hidden meaning of life.  Such an one came to David, there by that lowly grave.  He saw, as in the light of eternity, the grandeur and beauty of that character which the story of her sin and suffering had made him in his immaturity, misinterpret and despise!  He did not comprehend that tragic story when she told it; it was impossible that he should, for he had no knowledge or experience adequate to furnish him the clew.  Nothing is more inconceivable and impossible to a child than the possibility of his parents dying or doing wrong.  When he awakens to consciousness he finds around him eternal things,—­rocks, hills, rivers, stars, parents!  They all seem to belong to the same order