By this time California had a rival; gold had been found in Australia.  I was fond of gold; I jingled the twenty dollar gold pieces in my pocket, and resolved to look for more at the fountainhead, by way of my native land.  A railway from Chicago had just reached Joliet, and had been opened three days before.  It was an invitation to start, and I accepted it.

Nobody ever loved his native land better than I do when I am away from it.  I can call to mind its innumerable beauties, and in fancy saunter once more through the summer woods, among the bracken, the bluebells, and the foxglove.  I can wander by the banks of the Brock, where the sullen trout hide in the clear depths of the pools.  I can walk along the path—­the path to Paradise—­still lined with the blue-eyed speedwell and red campion; I know where the copse is carpeted with the bluebell and ragged robin, where grow the alders, and the hazels rich with brown nuts, the beeches and the oaks; where the flower of the yellow broom blazes like gold in the noontide sun; where the stockdove coos overhead in the ivy; where the kingfisher darts past like a shaft of sapphire, and the water ouzel flies up stream; where the pheasant glides out from his home in the wood to feed on the headland of the wheat field; where the partridge broods in the dust with her young; where the green lane is bordered by the guelder-rose or wayfaring tree, the raspberry, strawberry, and cherry, the wild garlic of starlike flowers, the woodruff, fragrant as new-mown hay; the yellow pimpernel on the hedge side.  I see in the fields and meadows the bird’s foot trefoil, the oxeye daisy, the lady smocks, sweet hemlock, butterbur, the stitchwort, and the orchis, the “long purpled” of Shakespeare.  By the margin of the pond the yellow iris hangs out its golden banners over which the dragon fly skims.  The hedgerows are gay with the full-blown dog-roses, the bells of the bilberries droop down along the wood-side, and the red-hipped bumble bees hum over them.  Out of the woodland and up Snaperake Lane I rise to the moorland, and then the sea coast comes in sight, and the longing to know what lies beyond it.

I have been twice to see what lies beyond it, and when I return once more my own land does not know me.  There is another sea coast in sight now, and when I sail away from it I hope to land on some one of the Isles of the Blest.

I called on my oldest living love; she looked, I thought, even younger than when we last parted.  She was sitting before the fire alone, pale and calm, but she gave me no greeting; she had forgotten me.  I took a chair, sat down beside her, and waited.  A strange lass with a fair face and strong bare arms came in and stared at me steadily for a minute or two, but went away without saying a word.  I looked around the old house room that I knew so well, with its floor of flags from Buckley Delph, scoured white with sandstone.  There stood, large and solid, the mealark of black oak, with the date, 1644,