Nothing had ever made things different, and the great hope had died in him at last as the twenty seeds of which old Adam had spoken had died in the earth.

He remembered all the things he had wanted that he had never had--all the other things he had not wanted that had made up his life.

Never had a hope of his been fulfilled, never had an event fallen out as he had planned it, never had a prayer brought him the blessing for which he had prayed.

Nothing in all his seventy years had been just what he had wanted--not just what he would have chosen if the choice had been granted him--yet the sight of the birds in the apple trees stirred something in his heart to-day that was less an individual note of rejoicing than a share in the undivided movement of life which was pulsing around him.

Nothing that had ever happened to him as Reuben Merryweather would he care to live over; but he was glad at the end that he had been a part of the spring and had not missed seeing the little green leaves break out in the orchard.
And then while he sat there, half dreaming and half awake, the stillness grew suddenly full of the singing of blue birds.