But to-night, whether from his own
excited imagination, or because the early frosts had stripped it of
its leaves and so bereaved it of all that gave grace to its aspect, or
perhaps from the deepening twilight,--however it was, the old tree had a
different expression, and stretched forth two skeleton arms with a sort
of half-warning, half-mocking gesture, that sent a shudder over his
frame, already disturbed by the successive presence, in the last two or
three hours, of more emotions than he could comfortably sustain.
Swan was not an imaginative person. Yet the tree looked to him like
a living, sentient thing, dooming him and warning him. As in the
compression of the brain in drowning, it is said forgotten memories are
hustled uppermost, and the events of early life vividly written on
the consciousness,--so in this unwonted stir of past and present
associations, Swan found himself remembering, with a thrill of pleasure
that was chased by a spasm of pain, the last evening on which he had
parted from Dorcas. He remembered, as if it were but now, how he had
turned towards the pear-tree, when Dorcas had gone out of sight and he
dared not follow her, and that the pear-tree had seemed to hear, to see,
to sympathize with him,--that it had spread out great blessing arms on
the southern air, and had seemed to encourage and strengthen his hopes
of a happy return.
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