When he touched the town at last, he did not wait a minute, but without noticing the townspeople, who regarded him curiously, he hastened on toward where had stood his home.
The sight that met him when he reached the place staggered him. He looked about him dazed, as one who sees with unseeing eyes. He could not understand. Something was wrong with his sight—his head, he told himself. Where once had stood the little flower-embowered home, there was nothing but a heap of broken planks and debris, the melancholy debris of a fallen house.
Snow was falling slowly and turning to water as it fell. The trees were leafless. Where the sunny, flowering bushes had stood about the tiny cottage, there were only the black stalks standing up in barren nakedness. Desolation and tragedy seemed heavy everywhere. He blundered forward a few steps, his hand to his eyes.
“A mistake somewhere,” he muttered, “I have lost my way. This is not the place—this is not—and yet!”
He uncovered his eyes and again cast them about, slowly. The surroundings were as familiar to him as the face of a mother, and over there, the length of an iris field away, there was the church—his church! He turned in its direction.
At the church door he fumbled with key to the lock. It turned easily enough, but when he pushed the door inward it did not move. Then he discovered the reason. The door was nailed to. Panic and frenzy swept over him in a flood. He began frantically pounding upon the door, shaking it by the handle, pushing against it with his shoulder, beating upon its panelling with his fists, and tearing at the hinges with his fingers. The blood was in his head. He could neither see nor hear. Only that sensation of horrible foreboding and certainty of disaster pervaded his whole being.
A temple bell began to tinkle, lazily, insistently. Small black birds, cawing as they flew, swept close over his head, hastening toward their night home in the woods. The rain descended heavily, noiselessly. The shadows darkened dully.
“What am I doing?” the minister suddenly asked himself, and paused in his efforts to break the church door. “She is not here! My fears are driving me mad. How do I know that harm has come to her? I must not trust to the phantoms of my imagination. God is good, good!” He walked out a few paces, thinking dazedly. Then with a sudden resolution to seek her in the village, he began to descend the hill. His step was more hopeful. He tried to keep up his courage, but as he made his way along his lips moved ceaselessly in prayer.