Sitting up, he espied Bonaparte looking through one of the windows with a lighted candle in his hand.

“I’m about to depart, my dear boy, before my enemies arise; and I could not leave without coming to bid you farewell,” said Bonaparte.

Waldo looked at him.

“I shall always think of you with affection,” said Bonaparte. “And there’s that old hat of yours, if you could let me have it for a keepsake — ”

“Take it,” said Waldo.

“I thought you would say so, so I brought it with me,” said Bonaparte, putting it on. “The Lord bless you, my dear boy. You haven’t a few shillings — just a trifle you don’t need — have you?”

“Take the two shillings that are in the broken vase.”

“May the blessing of my God rest upon you, my dear child,” said Bonaparte; “may He guide and bless you. Give me your hand.”

Waldo folded his arms closely, and lay down.

“Farewell, adieu!” said Bonaparte. “May the blessing of my God and my father’s God rest on you, now and evermore.”

With these words the head and nose withdrew themselves, and the light vanished from the window.

After a few moments the boy, lying in the wagon, heard stealthy footsteps as they passed the wagon-house and made their way down the road. He listened as they grew fainter and fainter, and at last died away altogether! and from that night the footstep of Bonaparte Blenkins was heard no more at the old farm.

PART II

“And it was all play, and no one could tell what it had lived and worked for. A striving, and a striving, and an ending in nothing.”

CHAPTER I

TIMES AND SEASONS

WALDO lay on his stomach on the sand. Since he prayed and howled to his God in the fuel-house three years had passed.

They say that in the world to come time is not measured out by months and years. Neither is it here. The soul’s life has seasons of its own; periods not found in any calendar, times that years, and months will not scan, but which are as deftly and sharply cut off from one another as the smoothly arranged years which the earth’s motion yields us.

To stranger eyes these divisions are not evident; but each, looking back at the little track his consciousness illuminates, sees it cut into distinct portions whose boundaries are the termination of mental states.

As man differs from man, so differ these souls’ years. The most material life is not devoid of them; the story of the most spiritual is told in them. And it may chance that some, looking back, see the past cut out after this fashion:

I.

The year of infancy, where from the shadowy background of forgetfulness start out pictures of startling clearness, disconnected, but brightly colored, and indelibly printed in the mind. Much that follows fades, but the colors of those baby-pictures are permanent.

There rises, perhaps, a warm summer’s evening; we are seated on the door-step; we have yet the taste of the bread and milk in our mouth, and the red sunset is reflected in our basin.