To Thorpe he accordingly went
--as pretty a rustic village as he had hoped to find it. He
took a room at the inn and went out for a long walk--"just to
see the place," he said to the landlord. He would make no
inquiries; he would find his home for himself; how could he
fail to recognize it? But he walked for hours in a widening
circle and saw no farm or other house, and no ground that
corresponded to the picture in his brain.
Troubled at his failure, he went back and questioned his
landlord, and, naturally, was asked for the name of the farm
he was seeking. He had forgotten the name--he even doubted
that he had ever heard it. But there was his family name to
go by--Dyson; did any one remember a farmer Dyson in the
village? He was told that it was not an uncommon name in that
part of the country. There were no Dysons now in Thorpe, but
some fifteen or twenty years ago one of that name had been the
tenant of Long Meadow Farm in the parish. The name of the
farm was unfamiliar, and when he visited the place he found it
was not the one he sought.
It was a grievous disappointment. A new sense of loneliness
oppressed him; for that bright image in his mind, with the
feeling about his home, had been a secret source of comfort
and happiness, and was like a companion, a dear human friend,
and now he appeared to be on the point of losing it. Could it
be that all that mental picture, with the details that seemed
so true to life, was purely imaginary? He could not believe
it; the old house had probably been pulled down, the big trees
felled, orchard and hedges grabbed up--all the old features
obliterated--and the land thrown into some larger neighbouring
farm.
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