These vagaries were of the spectral throng so apt to steal out of an unquiet heart.  They partly ceased to haunt me, on my arriving at a point whence, through the trees, I began to catch glimpses of the Blithedale farm.  That surely was something real.  There was hardly a square foot of all those acres on which I had not trodden heavily, in one or another kind of toil.  The curse of Adam’s posterity—­and, curse or blessing be it, it gives substance to the life around us—­had first come upon me there.  In the sweat of my brow I had there earned bread and eaten it, and so established my claim to be on earth, and my fellowship with all the sons of labor.  I could have knelt down, and have laid my breast against that soil.  The red clay of which my frame was moulded seemed nearer akin to those crumbling furrows than to any other portion of the world’s dust.  There was my home, and there might be my grave.

I felt an invincible reluctance, nevertheless, at the idea of presenting myself before my old associates, without first ascertaining the state in which they were.  A nameless foreboding weighed upon me.  Perhaps, should I know all the circumstances that had occurred, I might find it my wisest course to turn back, unrecognized, unseen, and never look at Blithedale more.  Had it been evening, I would have stolen softly to some lighted window of the old farmhouse, and peeped darkling in, to see all their well-known faces round the supper-board.  Then, were there a vacant seat, I might noiselessly unclose the door, glide in, and take my place among them, without a word.  My entrance might be so quiet, my aspect so familiar, that they would forget how long I had been away, and suffer me to melt into the scene, as a wreath of vapor melts into a larger cloud.  I dreaded a boisterous greeting.  Beholding me at table, Zenobia, as a matter of course, would send me a cup of tea, and Hollingsworth fill my plate from the great dish of pandowdy, and Priscilla, in her quiet way, would hand the cream, and others help me to the bread and butter.  Being one of them again, the knowledge of what had happened would come to me without a shock.  For still, at every turn of my shifting fantasies, the thought stared me in the face that some evil thing had befallen us, or was ready to befall.

Yielding to this ominous impression, I now turned aside into the woods, resolving to spy out the posture of the Community as craftily as the wild Indian before he makes his onset.  I would go wandering about the outskirts of the farm, and, perhaps, catching sight of a solitary acquaintance, would approach him amid the brown shadows of the trees (a kind of medium fit for spirits departed and revisitant, like myself), and entreat him to tell me how all things were.