As I looked about me that day I saw the difference that men had made slowly fading out of sight.  It was like a dam in a river; when it is once swept away the river goes on the same as before.  The old patient, sublime forces were there at work in their appointed way, but perhaps by and by, when the apple-trees are gone and the cellar is only a rough hollow in the woods, some one will again set aside these forces that have worked unhindered, and will bring this corner of the world into a new use and shape.  What if we could stop or change forever the working of these powers!  But Nature repossesses herself surely of what we boldly claim.  The pyramids stand yet, it happens, but where are all those cities that used also to stand in old Egypt, proud and strong, and dating back beyond men’s memories or traditions,—­turned into sand again and dust that is like all the rest of the desert, and blows about in the wind?  Yet there cannot be such a thing as life that is lost.  The tree falls and decays, in the dampness of the woods, and is part of the earth under foot, but another tree is growing out of it; perhaps it is part of its own life that is springing again from the part of it that died.  God must always be putting again to some use the life that is withdrawn; it must live, because it is Life.  There can be no confusion to God in this wonderful world, the new birth of the immortal, the new forms of the life that is from everlasting to everlasting, or the new way in which it comes.  But it is only God who can plan and order it all,—­who is a father to his children, and cares for the least of us.  I thought of his unbroken promises; the people who lived and died in that lonely place knew Him, and the chain of events was fitted to their thoughts and lives, for their development and education.  The world was made for them, and God keeps them yet; somewhere in his kingdom they are in their places,—­they are not lost; while the trees they left grow older, and the young trees spring up, and the fields they cleared are being covered over and turned into wild land again.

* * * * *

I had visited this farm of mine many times since that first day, but since the last time I had been there I had found out, luckily, something about its last tenant.  An old lady whom I knew in the village had told me that when she was a child she remembered another very old woman, who used to live here all alone, far from any neighbors, and that one afternoon she had come with her mother to see her.  She remembered the house very well; it was larger and better than most houses in the region.  Its owner was the last of her family; but why she lived alone, or what became of her at last, or of her money or her goods, or who were her relatives in the town, my friend did not know.  She was a thrifty, well-to-do old soul, a famous weaver and spinner, and she used to come to the meeting-house at the Old Fields every Sunday, and sit by herself in a square pew.  Since I knew