I have had, lately, the experience of returning to a part of the world which I had not seen for many, many years, and where I had spent the drowsy long days of a long illness, and the dreamy sweet days of a longer convalescence. It made a day's journey, without any especial resting-place for the soles of my feet, and undertaken, I can scarcely tell why, with a little shyness and fear. I did not go to the house where I had lived, but to one in the neighbourhood, whither I had often been taken all those years ago; and I did not even take the precaution--or perhaps took the contrary one--of securing the presence of the owners. The ladies were out; gone to one of the little fishing towns which are strung all around the Forth, and they would not be back till teatime. But the benevolent Scottish housemaid, noticing perhaps a shadow of disappointment, suggested my going in and waiting.
The little old castle, which had got a little blurred in my recollection, seemed suddenly remembered and familiar, even as had been the case with the country I had driven along from the station; the undulating turnip-fields and fields of pale stooked corn, the reaping-machines and the women tying up the bean-straw, the white line of the Forth, and the whole pale, delicate country under the low, tender, _intimate_ northern sky. Even the smell, sweet and pungent, of the withered potatoes, bringing the sense of knowing it all, turnings of roads and of the land, so well. And similarly inside the castle, where I lingered on the pretext of writing a note to those ladies. It was all unchanged; the escutcheons in relief on the ceiling, the view of cornfield and thin beech belts, and distant sea from the windows, the lavender and _pot-pourri_ in the bowls, and almost the titles of the books, seemed quietly, at the touch of reality, to open out in remembrance. I did not stay till the return of the ladies, but went back to the station, and waited on the bridge for my train, which was a good half-hour late. I looked down from that bridge on the kind and gentle country in the veiled sunshine. The hill to the back of the house where I had lived, in the distance, the red roofs of the fishing villages, the little spire of the smallest of them barely projecting, as it always did, above the freshly reaped fields. And I felt, as I leaned against the parapet watching for my train's smoke coming towards me, not the loss, but rather the inestimable gain which a kindly past represents. Years gone by? Nay, rather years which make endurable, which furnish and warm the present, giving it sweetness and significance. How very poor we must be in our early youth, with no possessions like these; and how rich in our later life, with many years distilled into the essence of a single to-day!