{"id":"01KG8AKG68DWWKGR9A2J6VXAW9","cid":"bafkreihr6pcdber4vzyt7vulwl6xedtiwhfzc3etpdvnqvyi4if5xtj35q","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":7475,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:05.594Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG89J1DKC9HHJRKY25JZBEXW","start_line":7411,"text":"vaguely remembered that his father had sometimes talked of planting\r\nsuch a grove, to defend the neighboring fields against the cold north\r\nwind; yet where precisely that grove was to have been, his shattered\r\nmind could not recall. But it seemed not unlikely that during his long\r\nexile, the walnut grove had been planted and harvested, as well as the\r\nannual crops preceding and succeeding it, on the very same soil.\r\n\r\nEre long, on the mountain side, he passed into an ancient natural wood,\r\nwhich seemed some way familiar, and midway in it, paused to contemplate\r\na strange, mouldy pile, resting at one end against a sturdy beech.\r\nThough wherever touched by his staff, however lightly, this pile would\r\ncrumble, yet here and there, even in powder, it preserved the exact\r\nlook, each irregularly defined line, of what it had originally\r\nbeen—namely, a half-cord of stout hemlock (one of the woods least\r\naffected by exposure to the air), in a foregoing generation chopped and\r\nstacked up on the spot, against sledging-time, but, as sometimes\r\nhappens in such cases, by subsequent oversight, abandoned to oblivious\r\ndecay—type now, as it stood there, of forever arrested intentions, and\r\na long life still rotting in early mishap.\r\n\r\n“Do I dream?” mused the bewildered old man, “or what is this vision\r\nthat comes to me of a cold, cloudy morning, long, long ago, and I\r\nheaving yon elbowed log against the beech, then a sapling? Nay, nay, I\r\ncannot be so old.”\r\n\r\n“Come away, father, from this dismal, damp wood,” said his son, and led\r\nhim forth.\r\n\r\nBlindly ranging to and fro, they next saw a man ploughing. Advancing\r\nslowly, the wanderer met him by a little heap of ruinous burnt masonry,\r\nlike a tumbled chimney, what seemed the jams of the fire- place, now\r\naridly stuck over here and there, with thin, clinging, round,\r\nprohibitory mosses, like executors’ wafers. Just as the oxen were bid\r\nstand, the stranger’s plough was hitched over sideways, by sudden\r\ncontact with some sunken stone at the ruin’s base.\r\n\r\n“There, this is the twentieth year my plough has struck this old\r\nhearthstone. Ah, old man,—sultry day, this.”\r\n\r\n“Whose house stood here, friend?” said the wanderer, touching the\r\nhalf-buried hearth with his staff, where a fresh furrow overlapped it.\r\n\r\n“Don’t know; forget the name; gone West, though, I believe. You know\r\n’em?”\r\n\r\nBut the wanderer made no response; his eye was now fixed on a curious\r\nnatural bend or wave in one of the bemossed stone jambs.\r\n\r\n“What are you looking at so, father?”\r\n\r\n“‘_Father_!’ Here,” raking with his staff, “_my_ father would sit, and\r\nhere, my mother, and here I, little infant, would totter between, even\r\nas now, once again, on the very same spot, but in the unroofed air, I\r\ndo. The ends meet. Plough away, friend.”\r\n\r\nBest followed now is this life, by hurrying, like itself, to a close.\r\n\r\nFew things remain.\r\n\r\nHe was repulsed in efforts after a pension by certain caprices of law.\r\nHis scars proved his only medals. He dictated a little book, the record\r\nof his fortunes. But long ago it faded out of print—himself out of\r\nbeing—his name out of memory. He died the same day that the oldest oak\r\non his native hills was blown down.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJJRW0X9WGP6T2MJ7WX66","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1DKC9HHJRKY25JZBEXW","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKG68V316SA6F4DX5KN0Y","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:06.344Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:19.059Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}