Chapter X…

Chapter X

Cam. Be advised. Flo. I am; and by my fancy: if my reason Will thereto he obedient, I have reason; If not, my senses, better pleased with madness, Do bid it welcome. WINTER'S TALE.

The young ladies' summering in the country had begun with good promise; there was no danger they would tire of it. Mr. Haye gave it as his judgment that his daughter had come to the right place; and he was willing to spare no pains to keep her in the same mind. He brought up a little boat with him the next time he came, and a delicate pair of oars; and Elizabeth took to boating with great zeal. She asked for very little teaching; she had used her eyes, and now she patiently exercised her arms, till her eyes were satisfied; and after that the "Merry-go-round" had very soon earned a right to its name. Her father sent her a horse; and near every morning her blue habit was fluttering along the roads, to the great admiration of the country people who had never seen a long skirt before. And every afternoon, as soon as the sun hid himself behind the great western mountain, her little white boat stole out from the rocks and coasted about under the point or lay in the bay, wandering through sunshine and shade; loitering where the north wind blew softly, or resting with poised oars when the sun was sending royal messages to earth via the clouds. On horseback or in the boat, -- Miss Elizabeth would not take exercise in so common a way as walking, -- she did honour to the nurture of the fresh air. The thin cheek rounded out; and sallow and pale gave place to the clear rich colour of health.

Asahel was her general companion in the boat. Sometimes her cousin condescended to enjoy a sail of a summer's evening, but for the most part Asahel and Elizabeth went alone. Miss Cadwallader would neither row nor ride, and was very apt to eschew walking, unless a party were going along.

Over her books Elizabeth luxuriated all the rest of the time. Morning, noon, and night. The labour of talking she left to her cousin, who took to it kindly, and speedily made herself very popular. And there was certainly something very pleasant in her bright smile, always ready, and in her lovely face; and something pleasant too in her exceeding dainty and pretty manner of dressing. She fascinated the children's eyes, and if truth be told, more than the children. She seemed to have a universal spirit of good-humour. She never was so fast in a book but she would leave it to talk to the old or play with the young; and her politeness was unfailing. Elizabeth gave no trouble, but she seemed to have as little notion of giving pleasure; except to herself. That she did perfectly and without stop. For the rest, half the time she hardly seemed to know what was going on with the rest of the world.

So the summer wore on, with great comfort to most parties. Perhaps Winthrop was an exception. He had given comfort, if he had not found it. He had been his mother's secret stand-by; he had been her fishmonger, her gamekeeper, her head gardener, her man-at-need in all manner of occasions. His own darling objects meanwhile were laid upon the shelf. He did his best. But after a day's work in the harvest field, and fishing for eels off the rocks till nine o'clock at night, what time was there for Virgil or Graeca Minora? Sometimes he must draw up his nets in the morning before he went to the field; and the fish must be cleaned after they were taken. Sometimes a half day must be spent in going after fruit. And whenever the farm could spare him for a longer time, he was off to the woods with his gun; to fetch home rabbits at least, if no other game was to be had. But all the while his own ground lay waste. To whomsoever the summer was good, he reckoned it a fruitless summer to him.

In the multitude of their enjoyments of out-door things, the girls took very naturally to the unwonted ways and usages of the country household. The farm living and the farm hours seemed to have no disgust for them. In the hot weather the doors often all stood open; and they sat in the keeping-room, and in the kitchen, and in their own room, and seemed to find all pleasant.

So one night Elizabeth and Mrs. Landholm were alone in the kitchen. It was a cool evening, though in midsummer, and they had gathered round the kitchen fire as being the most agreeable place. The children were long gone to bed; the rest of the family had at length followed them; Elizabeth and Mrs. Landholm alone kept their place. The one was darning some desperate-looking socks; the other, as usual, deep in a book. They had been very still and busy for a long time; and then as Elizabeth looked up for a moment and glanced at the stocking- covered hand of her neighbour, Mrs. Landholm looked up; their eyes met. Mrs. Landholm smiled.

"Do you like anything so well as reading, Miss Elizabeth?"

"Nothing in the world! What are you doing, Mrs. Landholm?"

"Mending -- some of the boys' socks," she said cheerfully; "farmers are hard upon their feet."

"Mending -- that?" said Elizabeth. "What an endless work!"

"No, not endless," said the mother quietly. "Thick shoes and a great deal of stepping about, make pretty hard work with stockings."

"But, Mrs. Landholm! -- it would be better to buy new ones, than to try to mend such holes."

Mrs. Landholm smiled again -- a smile of grave and sweet life- wisdom.

"Did it ever happen to you to want anything you could not have, Miss Elizabeth?"

"No -- never," said Elizabeth slowly.

"You have a lesson to learn yet."

"I hope I sha'n't learn it," said Elizabeth.

"It must be learned," said Mrs. Landholm gently. "Life would not be life without it. It is not a bad lesson either."

"It isn't a very pleasant one, Mrs. Landholm," said Elizabeth. And she went back to her reading.

"You don't read my book, Miss Elizabeth," the other remarked presently.

"What is that?"

Mrs. Landholm looked up again, and the look caught Elizabeth's eye, as she answered,

"The Bible."

"The Bible! -- no, I don't read it much," said Elizabeth. "Why, Mrs. Landholm?"

"Why, my dear? -- I hope you will know some day why," she answered, her voice a little changed.

"But that is not exactly an answer, Mrs. Landholm," said Elizabeth with some curiosity.

Mrs. Landholm dropped her hands and her stocking into her lap, and looked at the face opposite her. It was an honest and intelligent face, very innocent in its ignorance of life and life-work.

"What should we do without the Bible?" she asked.

"Do without it! Why I have done without it all my days, Mrs. Landholm."

"You are mistaken even in that," she said; "but, Miss Elizabeth, do you think you have lived a blameless life all your life till now? -- have you never done wrong?"

"Why no, I don't think that, -- of course I have," Elizabeth answered gravely, and not without a shade of displeasure at the question.

"Do you know that for every one of those wrong doings your life is forfeit?"

"Why no!"

"And that you are living and sitting there, only because Jesus Christ paid his blood for your life? -- Your time is bought time; -- and he has written the Bible to tell you what to do with it."

"Am I not to do what I like with my own time?" thought Elizabeth. The thought was exceeding disagreeable; but before she or anybody had spoken again, the door of the big bed-room opened gently, and Miss Cadwallader's pretty face peeped out.

"Are they all gone to bed? -- are they all gone to bed?" she said; -- "may I come, Mrs Landholm?"

She was in her dressing-gown, and tripping across the floor with the prettiest little bare feet in the world, she took a chair in the corner of the fireplace.

"They got so cold," she said, -- "I thought I would come out and warm them. How cosy and delightful you do look here. Dear Mrs. Landholm, do stop working. What are you talking about?"

There was a minute's hesitation, and then Elizabeth said,

"Of reading the Bible."

"The Bible! oh why should one read the Bible?" she said, huddling herself up in the corner. "It's very tiresome!"

"Do you ever read it, Miss Rose?"

"I? -- no, indeed I don't. I am sorry, I dare say you will think me very wrong, Mrs. Landholm."

"Then how do you know it is tiresome?"

"O I know it is -- I have read it; and one hears it read, you know; but I never want to."

Her words grated, perhaps on both her hearers; but neither of them answered.

"There was a man once," said Mrs. Landholm, "who read it a great deal; and he said that it was sweeter than honey and the honey-comb."

"Who was that?"

"You may read about him if you wish to," said Mrs. Landholm.

"But Mrs. Landholm," said Elizabeth, "do you think it is an interesting book?"

"Not to those who are not interested in the things, Miss Elizabeth."

"What things?"

Mrs. Landholm paused a bit.

"A friend to go with you through life's journey -- a sure friend and a strong one; a home ready at the journey's end; the name and the love of forgiven children, instead of the banishment of offenders; a clean heart and a right spirit in place of this sickly and sin-stricken nature! -- a Saviour and a Father instead of a Judge."

It was impossible to forget the reddening eyes and trembling lips which kept the words company. Elizabeth found her own quivering for sympathy; why, she could not imagine. But there was so much in that face, -- of patience and gladness, of strength and weakness, -- it was no wonder it touched her. Mrs. Landholm's eyes fell to her work and she took up her stocking again and went on darning; but there was a quick motion of her needle that told how the spirits were moving.

Elizabeth sat still and did not look at her book. Miss Cadwallader hugged herself in her wrapper and muttered under her breath something about "stupid."

"Are your feet warm?" said Elizabeth.

"Yes."

"Then come! --"

Within their own room, she shut the door and without speaking went about with a certain quick energy which she accompanied with more than her usual dignified isolation.

"Who are you angry with now?" said her cousin.

"Nobody."

"Yes you are, you are angry with me."

"It is of no sort of use to be angry with you."

"Why?"

"Because I believe you could not be wise if you were to try."

"I think it is my place to be angry now," said Miss Rose; giving no other indication of it however than a very slight pouting of her under lip. "And all because I said 'stupid!' Well I don't care -- they are all stupid --Rufus was as stupid this afternoon as he could be; and there is no need, for he can be anything else. He was as stupid as he could be."

"What have you to do with Rufus?" said Elizabeth stamping slightly.

"Just what you have to do with Winthrop -- amuse myself."

"You know I don't!" said Elizabeth. "How dare you say it! I do not choose to have such things said to me. You know, if that was all, that Winthrop does not amuse anybody -- nobody ever sees him from meal-time to meal-time. You find Rufus very amusing, and he can talk very well, considering; but nobody knows whether the other one can be amusing, for ho never tried, so far as I know."

"I know," said her cousin; "they are a stupid set, all of them."

"They are not a stupid set," said Elizabeth; "there is not a stupid one of them, from the father down. They are anything but stupid."

"What does Winthrop do with himself? Rufus isn't so busy."

"I don't know," said Elizabeth; "and I am sure I don't care. He goes for eels, I think, every other night. He has been after them to-night. He is always after birds or fish or rabbits, when he isn't on the farm."

"I wonder what people find so much to do on a farm. I should think they'd grow stupid. -- It is funny," said Miss Cadwallader as she got into bed, "how people in the country always think you must read the Bible."

Elizabeth lay a little while thinking about it and then fell asleep. She had slept, by the mind's unconscious measurement, a good while, when she awoke again. It startled her to see that a light came flickering through the cracks of her door from the kitchen. She slipped out of bed and softly and quickly lifted the latch. But it was not the house on fire. The light came from Mrs. Landholm's candle dying in its socket; beyond the candle, on the hearth, was the mistress of the house on her knees. Elizabeth would have doubted even then what she was about, but for the soft whisper of words which came to her ear. She shut the door as softly and quickly again, and got into bed with a kind of awe upon her. She had certainly heard people stand up in the pulpit and make prayers, and it seemed suitable that other people should bend upon cushions and bow heads while they did so; but that in a common-roofed house, on no particular occasion, anybody should kneel down to pray when he was alone and for his own sake, was something that had never come under her knowledge; and it gave her a disagreeable sort of shock. She lay awake and watched to see how soon Mrs. Landholm's light would go away; it died, the faint moonlight stole in through the window unhindered; and still there was no stir in the next room. Elizabeth watched and wondered; till after a long half hour she heard a light step in the kitchen and then a very light fall of the latch. She sprang up to look at the moon; it had but little risen; she calculated the time of its rising for several nights back, and made up her mind that it must be long past twelve. And this a woman who was tired every day with her day's work and had been particularly tired to-night! for Elizabeth had noticed it. It made her uncomfortable. Why should she spend her tired minutes in praying, after the whole house was asleep? and why was it that Elizabeth could not set her down as a fool for her pains? And on the contrary there grew up in her mind, on the instant, a respect for the whole family that wrapped them about like a halo.

One morning when Elizabeth came through the kitchen to mount her horse, Mrs. Landholm was doing some fine ironing. The blue habit stopped a moment by the ironing-table.

"How dreadfully busy you are, Mrs. Landholm."

"Not so busy that I shall not come out and see you start," she answered. "I always love to do that."

"Winnie," said Elizabeth putting a bank bill into the little girl's hand, "I shall make you my messenger. Will you give that to the man who takes care of my horse, for I never see him, and tell him I say he does his work beautifully."

Winifred blushed and hesitated, and handing the note back said that she had rather not.

"Won't you give it to him!"

The little girl coloured still more. "He don't want it."

"Keep your money, my dear," said Mrs. Landholm; "there is no necessity for your giving him anything."

"But why shouldn't I give it to him if I like it?" said Elizabeth in great wonderment.

"It is a boy that works for my father, Miss Haye," said Winthrop gravely; "your money would be thrown away upon him."

"But in this he works for me."

"He don't know that."

"If he don't -- Money isn't thrown away upon anybody, that ever I heard of," said Elizabeth; "and besides, what if I choose to throw it away?"

"You can. Only that it is doubtful whether it would be picked up."

"You think he wouldn't take it?"

"I think it is very likely."

"What a fool! -- Then I shall send away my horse!" said Elizabeth; "for either he must be under obligation to me, or I to him; and I don't choose the latter."

"Do you expect to get through the world without being under obligation to anybody?" said Winthrop smiling.

But Elizabeth had turned, and marching out of the house did not make any reply.

"What's the objection to being under obligation, Miss Elizabeth?" said Mrs. Landholm. Elizabeth was mounting her horse, in which operation Winthrop assisted her.

"It don't suit me!"

"Fortune's suits do not always fit," said Winthrop. "But then --"

"Then what?" --

"She never alters them."

Elizabeth's eyes fired, and an answer was on her lip, but meeting the very composed face of the last speaker, as he put her foot in the stirrup, she thought better of it. She looked at him and asked,

"What if one does not choose to wear them?"

"Nothing for it but to fight Fortune," said Winthrop smiling; -- "or go without any."

"I would rather go anyhow!" said Elizabeth, -- "than be obliged to anybody, -- of course except to my father."

"How if you had a husband?" inquired Mrs. Landholm with a good-humoured face.

It was a turn Elizabeth did not like; she did not answer Mrs. Landholm as she would have answered her cousin. She hesitated.

"I never talk about that, Mrs. Landholm," she said a little haughtily, with a very pretty tinge upon her cheek; -- "I would not be obliged to anybody but my father; -- never."

"Why?" said Mrs. Landholm. "I don't understand."

"Don't you see, Mrs. Landholm, -- the person under obligation is always the inferior."

"I never felt it so," she replied.

Her guest could not feel, what her son did, the strong contrast they made. One little head was held as if certainly the neck had never been bowed under any sort of pressure; the other, in its meek dignity, spoke the mind of too noble a level to be either raised or lowered by an accident.

"It is another meaning of the word, mother, from that you arc accustomed to," Winthrop said.

Elizabeth looked at him, but nothing was to be gained from his face.

"Will you have the goodness to hand me my riding-whip," she said shortly.

"You will have to be obliged to me for that," he said as he picked it up.

"Yes," said Elizabeth; "but I pay for this obligation with a 'thank you'!"

So she did, and with a bow at once a little haughty and not a little graceful. It was the pure grace of nature, the very speaking of her mind at the moment. Turning her horse's head she trotted off, her blue habit fluttering and her little head carried very gracefully to the wind and her horse's motion. They stood and looked after her.

"Poor child!" said Mrs. Landholm, -- "she has something to learn. There is good in her too."

"Ay," said her son, "and there is gold in the earth; but it wants hands."

"Yes," said Mrs. Landholm, -- "if she only fell into good hands --"

It might have been tempting, to a certain class of minds, to look at that pretty little figure flying off at full trot in all the riot of self-guidance, and to know that it only wanted good hands to train her into something really fine. But Mrs. Landholm went back to her ironing, and Winthrop to drive his oxen a field.

Elizabeth trotted till she had left them out of sight; and then walked her horse slowly while she thought what had been meant by that queer speech of Winthrop's. Then she reminded herself that it was of no sort of consequence what had been meant by it, and she trotted on again.

Asahel as usual came out to hold her bridle when she returned.

"Asahel, who takes care of my horse?" she said as she was dismounting.

"Ain't it handsomely done?" said Asahel.

"Yes, -- beautifully. Who does it?"

"It's somebody that always does things so," said Asahel oracularly, a little in doubt how he should answer.

"Well, who?"

"Don't you know?"

"Of course I don't! Who is it?"

"It's Winthrop."

"Winthrop!" --

"Yes. He does it."

Elizabeth's cheeks burnt.

"Where's that man of yours -- why don't he do it?"

"Sam? -- O he don't know -- I guess he ain't up to it."

Asahel led away the horse, and Elizabeth went into the house, ready to cry with vexation. But it was not generally her fashion to vent vexation so.

"What's the matter now?" said her cousin. "What adventure have you met with this morning?"

"Nothing at all."

"Well, what's the matter?"

"Nothing -- only I want to lay my whip about somebody's shoulders, -- if I could find the right person."

"Well 'taint me," said Rose shrinking. "Look here -- I've got a delicious plan in my head -- I'm going to make them take us in the boat round the bay, after huckleberries."

"Absurd!"

"What's absurd?"

"That."

"Why?"

"Who'll take you?"

"No matter -- somebody, I don't know who; -- Rufus. But you'll go?"

"Indeed I won't."

"Why?"

"The best reason in the world. I don't want to."

"But I want you to go -- for my sake, Lizzie."

"I won't do it for anybody's sake. And Rose -- I think you take a great deal too much of Rufus's time. I don't believe he does his duty on the farm, and he can't, if you will call upon him so much."

"He's not obliged to do what I ask him," said Rose pouting; "and I'm not going to stay here if I can't amuse myself. But come! -- you'll go in the bay after huckleberries?"

"I shall not stir. You must make up your mind to go without me."

Which Rose declared was very disagreeable of her cousin, and she even shed a few tears; but a rock could not have received them with more stony indifference, and they were soon dried.

The huckleberry expedition was agreed upon at dinner, Mr. Landholm being, as he always was when he could, very agreeable. In the mean time Winthrop took the boat and went out on the bay to catch some fish.

It was near the time for him to be back again, and the whole party were gathered in the keeping-room and in the door-way; Elizabeth and Mrs. Landholm with their respective books and work, the others, children and all, rather on the expecting order and not doing much of any thing; when a quick springy footstep came round the house corner. Not Winthrop's, they all knew; his step was slower and more firm; and Winthrop's features were very little like the round good-humoured handsome face which presented itself at the front door.

"Mr. Herder!" cried the children. But Rose was first in his way.

"Miss Cadval-lader!" said the gentleman, -- "I did not expect -- Mrs. Landholm, how do you do? -- Miss Elisabet' I did not look for this pleasure. Who would have expect' to see you here!"

"Nobody I suppose," said Elizabeth. "Isn't it pleasant, Mr. Herder?"

There was a great laughing and shaking of hands between them; and then Mr. Herder went again to Mrs. Landholm, and gave the children his cordial greeting. And was made to know Rufus.

"But where is Wint'rop?" said Mr. Herder, after they had done a great deal of talking in ten minutes.

"Winthrop is gone a fishing. We expect him home soon."

"Where is he? Tell me where he is gone and I will go after him and bring him back. I know de country. I did not come to see you, Miss Elisabet' -- I have come to see my friend Wint'rop. And I do not want to stay in de house, never, while it is so pleasant wizout."

"But we are going in the bay after huckleberries," said Rose, -- "won't you go with us, Mr. Herder?"

"After huckle-berry -- I do not know what is that -- yes, I will go wiz you, and I will go find Wint'rop and bring him home to go too."

"He is out on the bay," said Elizabeth; "I'll take you to him in my boat. Come Mr. Herder, -- I don't want you, Rose; I'll take nobody but Mr. Herder; -- we'll go after him."

She ran for her bonnet, seized her oars, and drew Mr. Herder with her down to the rocks.

It was a soft grey day; pleasant boating at that or at any hour, the sun was so obscured with light clouds. Elizabeth seated Mr. Herder in the stern of the 'Merry-go-round,' and pulled out lightly into the bay; he very much amused with her water-craft.

They presently caught sight of the other boat, moored a little distance out from the land, behind a point.

"There he is!" -- said Mr. Herder. "But what is he doing? He is not fishing. Row your boat soft, Miss Elisabet' -- hush! -- do not speak wiz your -- what is it you call? -- We will catch him -- we have the wind -- unless he be like a wild duck --"

Winthrop's boat lay still upon the sleepy water, -- his fishing rod dipped its end lazily in, -- the cork floated at rest; and the fisher seated in his boat, was giving his whole attention seemingly to something in his boat. Very softly and pretty skilfully they stole up.

He had something of the wild duck about him; for before they could get more than near at hand, he had looked up, looked round, and risen to greet them. By his help the boats were laid close alongside of each other; and while Winthrop and Mr. Herder were shaking hands across them, Elizabeth quietly leaned over into the stern of the fishing-boat and took up one or two books which lay there. The first proved to be an ill- bound, ill printed, Greek and Latin dictionary; the other was a Homer! Elizabeth laid them down again greatly amazed, and wondering what kind of people she had got among.

"What brings you here now, Mr. Herder?" said Winthrop. "Have you come to look after the American Eagle?"

"Ha! -- no -- I have not come to look after no eagle; -- and yet I do not know -- I have come to see you, and I do not know what you will turn to be --the eagle flies high, you know."

Winthrop was preparing to tie the two boats together, and did not answer. Mr. Herder stepped from the one he was in and took a seat in Winthrop's. Elizabeth would not leave her own, though she permitted Winthrop to attach it to his and to do the rowing for both; she sat afar off among her cushions, alone.

"I am not very gallant, Miss Elisabet'," said the naturalist; "but if you will not come, I will not come back to you. I did not come to see you this time -- I want to speak to this young American Eagle."

And he settled himself comfortably with his back to Elizabeth, and turned to talk to Winthrop, as answering to his strong arm the two boats began to fly over the water.

"You see," he said, "I have stopped here just to see you. You have not change your mind, I hope, about going to de Université?"

"No sir."

"Goot. In de Université where I am, there is a foundation -- I mean by that, the College has monies, that she is in right to spend to help those students that are not quite rich enough -- if they have a leetle, she gives them a leetle more, till they can get through and come out wiz their studies. This Université has a foundation; and it is full; but the President is my friend, and he knows that I have a friend; and he said to me that he would make room for one more, though we are very full, and take you in; so that it will cost you very little. I speak that, for I know that you could not wish to spend so much as some."

It was a golden chance -- if it could but be given to Rufus! That was not possible; and still less was it possible that Winthrop should take it and so make his brother's case hopeless, by swallowing up all the little means that of right must go to set him forward first. There was a strong heaving of motives against each other in Winthrop's bosom. But his face did not shew it; there was no change in his cool grey eye; after a minute's hesitation he answered, lying on his oars,

"I thank you very much Mr. Herder -- I would do it gladly -- but I am so tied at home that it is impossible. I cannot go."

"You can not?" said the naturalist.

"I cannot -- not at present -- my duty keeps me at home. You will see me in Mannahatta by and by," he added with a faint smile and beginning to row again; -- "but I don't know when."

"I wish it would be soon," said the naturalist. "I should like to have you there wiz me. But you must not give up for difficulties. You must come?"

"I shall come," said Winthrop.

"How would you like this?" said Mr. Herder after pondering a little. "I have a friend who is an excellent -- what you call him? -- bookseller -- Would you like a place wiz him, to keep his books and attend to his business, for a while, and so get up by degrees? I could get you a place wiz him."

"No, sir," said Winthrop smiling; -- "the eagle never begins by being something else."

"Dat is true," said the naturalist. "Well -- I wish I could do you some goot, but you will not let me; -- and I trust you that you are right."

"You are a good friend, sir," said Winthrop gratefully.

"Well -- I mean to be," said the other, nodding his good- humoured head.

Elizabeth was too far off to hear any of this dialogue; and she was a little astonished again when they reached the land to see her boatman grasp her friend's hand and give it a very hearty shake.

"I shall never forget it, sir," she heard Winthrop say.

"I do not wish that," said the naturalist. "What for should you remember it? it is good for nozing."

"Is that boy studying Latin and Greek?" said Elizabeth as she and Mr. Herder walked up to the house together.

"That boy? That boy is a very smart boy."

"But is he studying Greek?"

"What makes you ask so?"

"Because there was a Greek book and a dictionary there in the boat with him."

"Then I suppose he is studying it," said Mr. Herder.

Elizabeth changed her mind and agreed to go with the huckle- berry party; but she carried a book with her and sat in a corner with it, seldom giving her eyes to anything beside.

Yet there was enough on every hand to call them away. The soft grey sky and grey water, the deep heavy-green foliage of the banks, and the fine quiet outlines of the further mountains, set off by no brilliant points of light and shade, -- made a picture rare in its kind of beauty. Its colouring was not the cold grey of the autumn, only a soft mellow chastening of summer's gorgeousness. A little ripple on the water, -- a little fleckiness in the cloud, -- a quiet air; it was one of summer's choice days, when she escapes from the sun's fierce watch and sits down to rest herself. But Elizabeth's eyes, if they wavered at all, were called off by some burst of the noisy sociability of the party, in which she deigned not to share. Her cousin, Mr. Herder, Rufus, Asahel, and Winifred, were in full cry after pleasure; and a cheery hunt they made of it.

"Miss Elisabet' does look grave at us," said the naturalist, -- "she is the only one wise of us all; she does nothing but read. What are you reading, Miss Elisabet'?"

"Something you don't know, Mr. Herder."

"O it's only a novel," said her cousin; "she reads nothing but novels."

"That's not true, Rose Cadwallader, and you know it."

"A novel!" said Mr. Herder. "Ah! -- yes -- that is what the ladies read -- they do not trouble themselves wiz ugly big dictionaries -- they have easy times."

He did not mean any reproof; but Elizabeth's cheek coloured exceedingly and for several minutes kept its glow; and though her eyes still held to the book, her mind had lost it.

The boat coasted along the shore, down to the head of the bay, where the huckleberry region began; and then drew as close in to the bank as possible. No more was necessary to get at the fruit, for the bushes grew down to the very water's edge and hung over, black with berries, though us Asahel remarked, a great many of them were blue. Everybody had baskets, and now the fun was to hold the baskets under and fill them from the overhanging bunches as fast as they could; though in the case of one or two of the party the more summary way of carrying the bushes off bodily seemed to be preferred.

"And this is huckle-berry," said Mr. Herder, with a bush in his hand and a berry in his mouth. "Well -- it is sweet -- a little; -- it is not goot for much."

"Why Mr. Herder!" said Rose; -- "They make excellent pies, and Mrs. Landholm has promised to make us some, if we get enough."

"Pies!" said the naturalist, -- "let us get a great many huckleberry then -- but I am very sorry I shall not be here to eat the pies wiz you. Pull us a little, Wint'rop -- we have picked everything. Stop! -- I see, -- I will get you some pies! --"

He jumped from the boat and away he went up the bank, through a thick growth of young wood and undergrowth of alder and dogwood and buckthorn and maple and huckleberry bushes. He scrambled on up hill, and in a little while came down again with a load of fruity branches, which he threw into the boat. While the others were gathering them up, he stood still near the edge of the water, looking abroad over the scene. The whole little bay, with its high green border, the further river-channel with Diver's Rock setting out into it, and above, below, and over against him the high broken horizon line of the mountains; the flecked grey cloud and the ripply grey water.

"This is a pretty place!" said the naturalist. "I have seen no such pretty place in America. I should love to live here. I should be a happy man! -- But one does not live for to be happy," he said with half a sigh.

"One doesn't live to be happy, Mr. Herder!" said Elizabeth. "What does one live for, then? I am sure I live to be happy."

"And I am sure I do," said Rose.

"Ah, yes -- you, -- you may," said the naturalist good- humouredly.

"When happiness can be found so near the surface," said Rufus with a satiric glance at the cover of Elizabeth's book, -- "it would be folly to go further."

"What do you live for, Mr. Herder?" said Elizabeth, giving Rufus's words a cool go-by.

"I? -- O I live to do my work," said the naturalist.

"And what is that?"

"I live to find out the truth -- to get at de truth. It is for that I spend my days and my nights. I have found out some -- I will find out more."

"And what is the purpose of finding out this truth, Mr. Herder?" said Rufus; -- "what is that for? doesn't that make you happy?"

"No," said the naturalist with a serious air, -- "it does not make me happy. I must find it out -- since it is there -- and I could not be happy if I did not find it; -- but if dere was no truth to be found, I could make myself more happy in some ozer way."

The fine corners of the young man's mouth shewed that he thought Mr. Herder was a little confused in his philosophy.

"You think one ought to live to be happy, don't you, Mr. Rufus?" said Miss Rose.

"No!" said Rufus, with a fire in his eye and lip, and making at the same time an energetic effort after a difficult branch of huckleberries, -- "no! -- not in the ordinary way!"

"In what way then?" said the young lady with her favourite pout.

"He has just shewed you, Miss Rose," said Winthrop; -- "in getting the highest huckleberry bush. It don't make him happy -- only he had rather have that than another."

"Let us have your sense of the matter, then," said his brother.

"But Mr. Herder," said Elizabeth, "why do you want to find out truth? -- what is it for?"

"For science -- for knowledge; -- that is what will do goot to the world and make ozer happy. It is not to live like a man to live for himself."

"Then what should one live for," said Elizabeth a little impatiently, -- "if it isn't to be happy?"

"I would rather not live at all," said Rose, her pretty lips black with huckleberries, which indeed was the case with the whole party.

"You yourself, Mr. Herder, that is your happiness -- to find out truth, as you say -- to advance science and learning and do good to other people; you find your own pleasure in it."

"Yes, Mr. Herder," chimed in Rose, -- "don't you love flowers and stones and birds and fishes, and beetles, and animals -- don't you love them as much as we do dogs and horses? -- don't you love that little black monkey you shewed us the other day?"

"No, Miss Rose," said the naturalist, -- "no, I do not love them -- I do not care for them; -- I love what is back of those things; dat is what I want."

"And that is your pleasure, Mr. Herder?"

"I do not know," said the puzzled naturalist, -- "maybe it is -- if I could speak German, I would tell you; -- Wint'rop, you do say nozing; and you are not eating huckleberries neizer; -- what do you live for?"

"I am at cross-purposes with life, just now, sir."

"Cross?" -- said the naturalist.

"Winthrop is never cross," responded Asahel from behind a thick branch of huckleberry.

"Dat is to the point!" said Mr. Herder.

"Well, speak to the point," said Rufus.

"I think the point is now -- or will be presently -- to get home."

"But to the first point -- what should a man live for?"

"It's against the law to commit suicide."

"Pish!" said Rufus.

"Come tell us what you think, Wint'rop," said Mr. Herder.

"I think, sir, I should live to be happy."

"You do!" said the naturalist.

"And I think happiness should be sought in doing all one can, first for oneself, and then for other people."

"That will do," said Mr. Herder. "I agree wiz you."

"You are not apt to do first for yourself," said Rufus, with a tender sort of admission-making.

"I am not sure that first for oneself," said the naturalist musing.

"Yes sir -- or could one ever do much for the world?"

"Dat is true; you are right!"

"Then at any rate one is to put other people's happiness before one's own?" said Elizabeth with a mixed expression of incredulity and discontent.

"It does not seem just reason, does it?" said Mr. Herder.

"It's what nobody acts up to," said Rose.

"O Miss Cadwallader," said Asahel, -- "mother does it always!"

For which he was rewarded with an inexpressible glance, which lit upon nothing, however, but the huckleberries.

"Is that your doctrine, Mr. Winthrop?" said Elizabeth.

"No," he said smiling, -- "not mine. Will you sit a little more in the corner, Miss Elizabeth? --"

Elizabeth took up her book again, and gave no token of attention to anything else, good or bad, till the boat neared the rocks of the landing at Shahweetah.

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Chapter XI

Thou art a dew-drop which the morn brings forth, Ill fitted to sustain unkindly shocks, Or to be trailed along the soiling earth. WORDSWORTH.

One day in September it chanced that the house was left entirely to the womenkind. Even Asahel had been taken off by his father to help in some light matter which his strength was equal to. Rufus and Winthrop were on the upland, busy with the fall ploughing; and it fell to little Winifred to carry them their dinner.

The doors stood open, as usual, for it was still warm weather, and the rest of the family were all scattered at their several occupations. Miss Cadwallader on the bed, asleep; Karen somewhere in her distant premises out of hearing; Elizabeth sat with her book in the little passage-way by the open front door, screened however by another open door from the keeping- room where Mrs. Landholm sat alone at her sewing. By and by came in Winifred, through the kitchen. She came in and stood by the fireplace silent.

"Well, dear," said the mother looking up from her work, -- "did you find them?"

The child's answer was to spring to her side, throw her arms round her neck, and burst into convulsive tears.

"Winifred!" -- said Mrs. Landholm, putting an arm round the trembling child, and dropping her work, -- "what ails you, dear? -- tell me."

The little girl only clung closer to her neck and shook in a passion of feeling, speechless; till the mother's tone became alarmed and imperative.

"It's nothing, mother, it's nothing," she said, clasping her hard, -- "only -- only --"

The words were lost again in what seemed to be uncontrollable weeping.

"Only what, dear? -- what?"

"Winthrop was crying."

And having said that, scarce audibly, Winifred gave way and cried aloud.

"Winthrop crying! -- Nonsense, dear, -- you were mistaken."

"I wasn't -- I saw him."

"What was the matter?"

"I don't know."

"What made you think he was crying?"

"I saw him!" cried the child, who seemed as if she could hardly bear the question and answer.

"You were mistaken, daughter; -- he would not have let you see him."

"He didn't -- he didn't know I was there."

"Where were you?"

"I was behind the fence --I stopped to look at him -- he didn't see me."

"Where was he?"

"He was ploughing."

"What did you see, Winifred?"

"I saw him -- oh mamma! -- I saw him put his hand to his eyes, -- and I saw the tears fall --"

Her little head was pressed against her mother's bosom, and many more tears fell for his than his had been.

Mrs. Landholm was silent a minute or two, stroking Winifred's head and kissing her.

"And when you went into the field, Winifred, -- how was he then?"

"Just as always."

"Where was Rufus?"

"He was on the other side."

Again Mrs. Landholm was silent.

"Cheer up, daughter," she said tenderly; -- "I think I know what was the matter with Winthrop, and it's nothing so very bad -- it'll be set right by and by, I hope. Don't cry any more about it."

"What is the matter with him, mamma?" said the child looking up with eyes of great anxiety and intentness.

"He wants to read and to learn, and I think it troubles him that he can't do that."

"Is that it? But mamma, can't he?" said his sister with a face not at all lightened of its care.

"He can't just now very well --you know he must help papa on the farm."

"But can't he by and by, mamma?"

"I hope so; -- we will try to have him," said the mother, while tears gathered now in her grave eyes as her little daughter's were dried. "But you know, dear Winnie, that God knows best what is good for dear Governor, and for us; and we must just ask him to do that, and not what we fancy."

"But mother," said the little girl, "isn't it right for me to ask him to let Winthrop go to school and learn, as he wants to?"

"Yes, daughter," said the mother, bending forward till her face rested on the little brow upturned to her, and the gathered tears falling, -- "let us thank God that we may ask him anything -- we have that comfort -- 'In everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving,' we may make our requests known unto him -- only we must be willing after all to have him judge and choose for us."

The child clasped her mother's neck and kissed her again and again.

"Then I won't cry any more, mamma, now that I know what the matter is."

But Elizabeth noticed when Winthrop came in at night, how his little sister attached herself to his side, and with what a loving lip and longing eye.

"Your little sister is very fond of you," she could not help saying, one moment when Winifred had run off.

"Too fond," he said.

"She has a most sensitive organization," said Rufus. "She is too fond of everything that she loves."

"She is not too fond of you," thought Elizabeth, as Winifred came back to her other brother, with some little matter which she thought concerned her and him. "'Sensitive organization!' What queer people these are!"

They were so queer, that Elizabeth thought she would like to see what was the farming work with which their hands were filled and which swallowed up the daily life of these people; and the next day she proposed to go with Winifred when she went the rounds again with her baskets of dinner. Miss Cadwallader was glad of any thing that promised a little variety, so she very willingly made one.

It was a pleasant September day, the great heats gone, a gentler state of the air and the light; summer was just falling gracefully into her place behind the advancing autumn. It was exceeding pleasant walking, through the still air, and Elizabeth and her cousin enjoyed it. But little Winifred was loaded down with two baskets, one in each hand. They went so for some time.

"Winnie," said Elizabeth at last, "give me one of those -- I'll carry it."

"O no!" said the little girl looking up in some surprise, -- "they're not very heavy -- I don't want any help."

"Give it to me; you shan't carry 'em both."

"Then take the other one," said Winifred, -- "thank you, Miss Elizabeth -- I'm just going to take this in to father, in the field here."

"In the field where? I don't see anybody."

"O because the corn is so high. You'll see 'em directly. This is the bend-meadow lot. Father's getting in the corn."

A few more steps accordingly brought them to a cleared part of the field, where the tall and thick cornstalks were laid on the ground. There, at some distance, they saw the group of workers, picking and husking the yellow corn, the farm wagon standing by. Little Winifred crept under the fence and went to them with her basket, and her companions stood at the fence looking. There were Mr. Landholm, and Asahel, Mr. Doolittle and another man, seen here and there through the rows of corn. Asahel sat by a heap, husking; Mr. Landholm was cutting down stalks; and bushel baskets stood about, empty, or with their yellow burden shewing above the top.

"I should think farmer's work would be pleasant enough," Rose remarked, as they stood leaning over the fence.

"It looks pretty," said Elizabeth. "But I shouldn't like to pull corn from morning to night; and I don't believe you would."

"O, but men have to work, you know," said Miss Cadwallader.

Winifred came back to them and they went on their way, but Elizabeth would not let her take the basket again. It was a pretty way; past the spring where Sam Doolittle had pushed Winthrop in and Rufus had avenged him; and then up the rather steep woody road that led to the plain of the tableland. The trees stood thick, but the ascent was so rapid that they could only in places hinder the view; and as the travellers went up, the river spread itself out more broad, and Shahweetah lay below them, its boundaries traced out as on a map. A more commanding view of the opposite shore, a new sight of the southern mountains, a deeper draught from nature's free cup, they gained as they went up higher and higher. Elizabeth had seen it often before; she looked and drank in silence; though to-day September was peeping between the hills and shaking his sunny hair in the vallies; -- not crowned like the receding summer with insupportable brilliants.

"I am sorry papa is coming so soon!" said Elizabeth, after she had stood awhile near the top, looking.

"Why I thought you wanted to go home," said her cousin.

"So I do; -- but I don't want to go away from here."

"What do you want to stay for?"

"It is so lovely! --"

"What is so lovely?" asked Miss Cadwallader with a tone of mischief.

Elizabeth turned away and began to walk on, an expression of great disgust upon her face.

"I wish I was blessed with a companion who had three grains of wit!" she said.

Miss Cadwallader's light cloud of ill-humour, it seldom looked more, came on at this; and she pouted till they reached the fence of the ploughed field where the young men were at work. Here Elizabeth gave up her basket to Winifred; and creeping through the bars they all made for the nearest plough. It happened to be Winthrop's.

"What's the matter?" said he as they came up. "Am I wanted for guard or for oarsman?"

"Neither -- for nothing," said Elizabeth. "Go on, won't you? I want to see what you are doing."

"Ploughing?" said he. "Have you never seen it?"

He went on and they walked beside him; Winifred laughing, while the others watched, at least Elizabeth did minutely, the process of the share in turning up the soil.

"Is it hard work?" she asked.

"No, not here; not when the business is understood."

"Like rowing, I suppose there is a sleight in it?"

"A good deal so."

"What has been growing here?"

"Corn."

"And now when you get to the fence you must just turn about and make another ridge close along by this one?"

"Yes."

"Goodness! -- What's going to be sown here?"

"Wheat."

"And all this work is just to make the ground soft for the seeds!"

"Why wouldn't it do just as well to make holes in the ground and put the seeds in?" said Miss Cadwallader; -- "without taking so much trouble?"

"It is not merely to make the ground soft," said Winthrop gravely, while Elizabeth's bright eye glanced at him to mark his behaviour. "The soil might be broken without being so thoroughly turned. If you see, Miss Elizabeth, -- the slice taken off by the share is laid bottom upwards."

"I see -- well, what is that for?"

"To give it the benefit of the air."

"The benefit of the air! --"

"The air has a sort of enriching and quickening influence upon the soil; -- if the land has time and chance, it can get back from the air a great deal of what it lost in the growing of crops."

"The soil loses, then?"

"Certainly; it loses a great deal to some crops."

"What, for instance?"

"Wheat is a great feeder," said Winthrop; "so is Indian corn."

"By its being 'a great feeder', you mean that it takes a great deal of the nourishing quality of the soil?"

"Yes."

"How many things I do not know!" said Elizabeth wistfully.

In the little pause which ensued, Winifred took her chance to say,

"Here's your dinner, Governor."

"Then when the ground is ploughed, is there anything else to be done before it is ready for the wheat?"

"Only harrowing."

Elizabeth mused a little while.

"And how much will the wheat be worth, Winthrop, from all this field?"

"Perhaps two hundred dollars; or two hundred and fifty."

"Two hundred and fifty. -- And then the expenses are something."

"Less to us," said Winthrop, "because we do so much of the labour ourselves."

"Here's your dinner, Winthrop," said Winifred; -- "shall I set it under the tree?"

"Yes -- no, Winifred, -- you may leave it here."

"Then stop and eat it now, Governor, won't you? -- don't wait any longer."

He gave his little sister a look and a little smile, that told of an entirely other page of his life, folded in with the ploughing experience; a word and look very different from any he had given his questioners. Other indications Elizabeth's eye had caught under 'the tree,' -- a single large beech tree which stood by the fence some distance off. Two or three books lay there.

"Do you find time for reading here in the midst of your ploughing, Mr. Winthrop?"

"Not much -- sometimes a little in the noon-spell," he answered, colouring slightly.

They left him and walked on to visit Rufus. Elizabeth led near enough to the tree to make sure, what her keen eye knew pretty well already, that one of the books was the very identical old brown-covered Greek and Latin dictionary that she had seen in the boat. She passed on and stood silent by Rufus's plough.

"Well, we've come to see you, Rufus," said Miss Cadwallader.

"I thought you had come to see my brother," said he.

"I didn't come to see either one or the other," said Elizabeth. "I came to see what you are doing."

"I hope you are gratified," said the young man a little tartly.

"What's the use of taking so much trouble to break up the ground?" said Rose.

"Because, unfortunately, there is no way of doing it without trouble," said Rufus, looking unspoken bright things into the furrow at his feet.

"But why couldn't you just make holes in the ground and put the seed in?"

"For a reason that you will appreciate, Miss Rose, if you will put on your bonnet the wrong way, with the front precisely where the back should be."

"I don't understand," -- said the young lady, with something of an inclination to pout, Will's face was so full of understanding.

"It isn't necessary that you should understand such a business," he said, becoming grave. "It is our fortune to do it, and it is yours to have nothing to do with it, -- which is much better."

"I have the happiness to disagree with you, Mr. Rufus," said Elizabeth.

"In what?"

"In thinking that we have nothing to do with it, or that it is not necessary we should understand it."

"I don't see the happiness, Miss Elizabeth; for your disagreement imposes upon you a necessity which I should think better avoided."

"Which ploughs the best, Rufus?" said Rose; -- "you or Winthrop?"

"There is one kind of ploughing," said Rufus biting his lip, "which Winthrop doesn't understand at all."

"And you understand them all, I suppose?"

He didn't answer.

"What is the kind he does not understand, Mr. Rufus?" said Elizabeth.

"Ploughing with another man's heifer."

"Why, what's that, Rufus? I don't know what you mean," said Miss Cadwallader.

No more did Elizabeth, and she had no mind to engage the speaker on unequal terms. She called her cousin off and took the road home, leaving Winifred to speak to her brother and follow at her leisure.

"How different those two people are," she remarked.

"Which one do you like best?"

"Winthrop, a great deal."

"I know you like him the best," said her cousin wilfully.

"Of course you do, for I tell you."

"I don't. I like the other a great deal the best."

"He wasn't very glad to see us," said Elizabeth.

"Why wasn't he? Yes he was. He was as glad as the other one."

"The other one didn't care twopence about it."

"And what did this one care?"

"He cared, --" said Elizabeth.

"Well, I like he should -- the other one don't care about anything."

"Yes he does," said Elizabeth.

"I shall give Mr. Haye a hint --that he had better not send you here another summer," said Rose wittily; -- "there is no telling what anybody will care for. I wouldn't have thought it of you."

"Can't you be sensible about anything!" said Elizabeth, with a sort of contemptuous impatience. "If I had anybody else to talk to, I would not give you the benefit of my thoughts. I tell them to you because I have nobody else; and I really wish you could make up your mind to answer me as I deserve; -- or not at all."

"You are a strange girl," said Miss Cadwallader, when they had walked in company with ill-humour as far as the brow of the hill.

"I am glad you think so."

"You are a great deal too old for your age."

"I am not!" said Elizabeth, who shading her eyes with her hand had again stopped to look over the landscape. "I should be very sorry to think that. You are two years older, Rose, in body, than I am; and ten years older in spirit, this minute."

"Does the spirit grow old faster than the body?" said Rose laughing.

"Yes -- sometimes. -- How pretty all that is!"

'That' meant the wide view, below and before them, of river and hill and meadow. It was said with a little breath of a sigh, and Elizabeth turned away and began to go down the road.

Winifred gave it as her opinion to her mother privately, after they got home, that Miss Haye was a very ill-behaved young lady.

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Chapter XII

The thing we long for, that we are, For one transcendent moment, Before the Present, poor and bare, Can make its sneering comment. Still through our paltry stir and strife Glows down the wished Ideal, And Longing moulds in clay what Life Carves in the marble Real. LOWELL.

Mr. Haye came the latter part of September to fetch his daughter and his charge home; and spent a day or two in going over the farm and making himself acquainted with the river. He was a handsome man, and very comfortable in face and figure. The wave of prosperity had risen up to his very lips, and its ripples were forever breaking there in a succession of easy smiles. He made himself readily at home in the family; with a well-mannered sort of good-humour, which seemed to belong to his fine broadcloth and beautifully plaited ruffles. Mr. Landholm was not the only one who enjoyed his company. Between him and Rufus and Miss Cadwallader and Mr. Haye, the round game of society was kept up with great spirit.

One morning Mr. Haye was resting himself with a book in his daughter's room; he had had a long tramp with the farmer. Rose went out in search of something more amusing. Elizabeth sat over her book for awhile, then looked up.

"Father," she said, "I wish you could do something to help that young man."

"What young man?"

"Winthrop Landholm."

"What does he want help for?"

"He is trying to get an education -- trying hard, I fancy," said Elizabeth, putting down her book and looking at her father, -- "he wants to make himself something more than a farmer."

"Why should he want to make himself anything more than a farmer?" said Mr. Haye without looking off his book.

"Why would you, sir?"

"I would just as lief be a farmer as anything else," said Mr. Haye, "if I had happened to be born in that line. It's as good a way of life as any other."

"Why, father! -- You would rather be what you are now?"

"Well -- I wasn't born a farmer," said Mr. Haye conclusively.

"Then you would have everybody stay where he happens to be!"

"I wouldn't have anything about it," said Mr. Haye. "That's what I want for myself --let other people do what they will."

"But some people can't do what they will."

"Well --Be thankful you're not one of 'em."

"Father, if I can have what I will, I would have you help this young man."

"I don't know how to help him, child; -- he's not in my way. If he wanted to go into business, there would be something in it, but I have nothing to do with schools and Colleges."

Elizabeth's cheek lit up with one of the prettiest colours a woman's cheek ever wears, -- the light of generous indignation.

"I wish I had the means!" she said.

"What would you do with it?"

"I would help him, somehow."

"My dear, you could not do it; they would not let you; their pride would stand in the way of everything of the kind."

"I don't believe it," said Elizabeth, the fire of her eye shining now through drops that made it brighter; -- "I am sure something could be done."

"It's just as well undone," said Mr. Haye calmly.

"Why, sir?" -- his daughter asked almost fiercely.

"What put this young fellow's head upon Colleges, and all that?"

"I don't know, sir! -- how should I?"

"It won't last -- it's just a freak to be a great man and get out of hob-nailed shoes -- he'll get over it; and much better he should. It's much better he should stay here and help his father, and that's what he's made for. He'll never be anything else."

Mr. Haye threw down his book and left the room; and his daughter stood at the window with her heart swelling.

"He will be something else, and he'll not get over it," she said to herself, while her eyes were too full to let her see a single thing outside the window. "He is fit for something else, and he will have it, hard or easy, short or long; and I hope he will! -- and oh, I wish father had done what would be for his honour in this thing! --"

There was a bitter taste to the last sentence, and tears would not wash it out. Elizabeth was more superb than ordinary that night at supper, and had neither smiles nor words for anybody.

A day or two after they were going away.

"Winthrop," she said at parting, (not at all by familiarity, but because she did not in common grant them a right to any title whatsoever) -- "may I leave you my little Merry-go-round? -- and will you let nobody have the charge of it except yourself?"

He smiled and thanked her.

"'Tisn't much thanks," she said; meaning thanks' worth. "It is I who have to thank you."

For she felt that she could not send any money to the boy who had taken care of her horse.

The family party gathered that night round the supper-table with a feeling of relief upon several of them. Mr. Landholm's face looked satisfied, as of a man who had got a difficult job well over; Mrs. Landholm's took time to be tired; Winthrop's was as usual, though remembering with some comfort that there would not be so many wantings of fish, nor so many calls upon his strength of arm for boat exercise. Rufus was serious and thoughtful; the children disposed to be congratulatory.

"It's good I can sit somewhere but on the corner," said Asahel, -- "and be by ourselves."

"It's good I can have my old place again," said Winifred, "and sit by Governor."

Her brother rewarded her by drawing up her chair and drawing it closer.

"I am glad they are gone, for your sake, mamma," he said.

"Well, we haven't made a bad summer of it," said Mr. Landholm.

His wife thought in her secret soul it had been a busy one. Winthrop thought it had been a barren one. Rufus -- was not ready to say quite that.

"Not a bad summer," repeated Mr. Landholm. "The next thing is to see what we will do with the winter."

"Or what the winter will do with us," said Rufus after a moment.

"If you like it so," said his father; "but I prefer the other mode of putting it. I'd keep the upper hand of time always; -- I speak it reverently."

Winthrop thought how completely the summer had got the better of him.

"My friend Haye is a good fellow -- a good fellow. I like him. He and I were always together in the legislature. He's a sensible man."

"He is a gentleman," said Rufus.

"Ay -- Well, he has money enough to be. That don't always do it, though. A man and his coat aren't always off the same piece. Those are nice girls of his, too; -- pretty girls. That Rose is a pretty creature! -- I don't know but I like t'other one as well in the long run though, -- come to know her."

"I do -- better," said Mrs. Landholm. "There is good in her."

"A sound stock, only grown a little too rank," said Winthrop.

"Yes, that's it. She's a little overtopping. Well, there will come a drought by and by that will cure that."

"Why sir?" said Rufus.

"The odds are that way," said his father. "'Taint a stand- still world, this; what's up to-day is down to-morrow. Mr. Haye may hold his own, though; and I am sure I hope he will -- for his sake and her sake, both."

"He is a good business man, isn't he, sir?"

"There aint a better business man, I'll engage, than he is, in the whole city of Mannahatta; and that numbers now, -- sixty odd thousand, by the last census. He knows how to take care of himself, as well as any man I ever saw."

"Then he bids fair to stand?"

"I don't believe anybody bids fairer. He was trying to make a business man of you, wa'n't he, the other day?"

"He was saying something about it."

"Would you like that?"

"Not in the first place, sir."

"No. Ah well -- we'll see, -- we'll see," said Mr. Landholm rising up; -- "we'll try and do the best we can."

What was that? A question much mooted, by different people and in very different moods; but perhaps most anxiously and carefully by the father and mother. And the end was, that he would borrow money of somebody, -- say of Mr. Haye, -- and they would let both the boys go that fall to College. If this were not the best, it was the only thing they could do; so it seemed to them, and so they spoke of it. How the young men were to be kept at College, no mortal knew; the father and mother did not; but the pressure of necessity and the strength of will took and carried the whole burden. The boys must go; they should go; and go they did.

In a strong yearning that the minds of their children should not lack bread, in the self-denying love that would risk any hardship to give it them, -- the father and mother found their way plain if not easy before them. If his sons were to mount to a higher scale of existence and fit themselves for nobler work in life than he had done, his shoulders must thenceforth bear a double burden; but they were willing to bear it. She must lose, not only, the nurtured joys of her hearthstone, but strain every long-strained nerve afresh to keep them where she could not see and could but dimly enjoy them; but she was willing. There were no words of regret; and thoughts of sorrow lay with thoughts of love at the bottom of their hearts, too fast-bound together and too mighty to shew themselves except in action.

The money was borrowed easily, upon a mortgage of the farm. President Tuttle was written to, and a favourable answer received. There was a foundation at Shagarack, as well as at Mannahatta; and Will and Winthrop could be admitted there on somewhat easier terms than were granted to those who could afford better. Some additions were made to their scanty wardrobe from Mr. Cowslip's store; and at home unwearied days and nights were given to making up the new, and renewing and refurbishing the old and the worn. Old socks were re-toed and refooted; old trousers patched so that the patch could not be seen; the time-telling edges of collars and wristbands done over, so that they would last awhile yet; mittens knitted, and shirts made. It was a little wardrobe when all was done; yet how much time and care had been needed to bring it together. It was a dear one too, though it had cost little money; for it might almost be said to have been made of the heart's gold. Poor Winifred's love was less wise than her mother's, for it could not keep sorrow down. As yet she did not know that it was not better to sit at her father's board end than at either end of the highest form at Shagarack. She knitted, socks and stockings, all the day long, when her mother did not want her; but into them she dropped so many tears that the wool was sometimes wet with them; and as Karen said, half mournfully and half to hide her mourning, "they wouldn't want shrinking." Winthrop came in one day and found her crying in the chimney corner, and taking the half-knit stocking from her hand he felt her tears in it.

"My little Winnie! --" he said, in that voice with which he sometimes spoke his whole heart.

Winifred sprang to his neck and closing her arms there, wept as if she would weep her life away. And Rufus who had followed Winthrop in, stood beside them, tear after tear falling quietly on the hearth. Winthrop's tears nobody knew but Winifred, and even in the bitterness of her distress she felt and tasted them all.

The November days seemed to grow short and drear with deeper shadows than common, as the last were to see the boys go off for Shagarack. The fingers that knitted grew more tremulous, and the eyes that wrought early and late were dim with more than weariness; but neither fingers nor eyes gave themselves any holiday. The work was done at last; the boxes were packed; those poor little boxes! They were but little, and they had seen service already. Of themselves they told a story. And they held now, safely packed up, the College fit-out of the two young men.

"I wonder if Shagarack is a very smart place, mamma?" said Winifred, as she crouched beside the boxes watching the packing.

"Why?"

Winifred was silent and looked thoughtfully into the box.

"Rufus and Governor will not care if it is."

"They needn't care," said Asahel, who was also at the box- side. "They can bear to be not quite so smart as other folks. Mr. Haye said he never saw such a pair of young men; and I guess he didn't."

Winifred sighed and still looked into the box, with a face that said plainly she would like to have them smart.

"O well, mamma," she said presently, "I guess they will look pretty nice, with all those new things; and the socks are nice, aren't they? If it was only summer -- nobody can look nicer than Winthrop when he has his white clothes on."

"It will be summer by and by," said Mrs. Landholm.

The evening came at last; the supper was over; and the whole family drew together round the fire. It was not a very talkative evening. They looked at each other more than they spoke; and they looked at the fire more than they did either. At last Mr. Landholm went off, recommending to all of them to go to bed. Asahel, who had been in good spirits on the matter all along, followed his father. The mother and daughter and the two boys were left alone round the kitchen fire.

They were more silent than ever then, for a good space; and four pair of eyes were bent diligently on the rising and falling flames. Only Winifred's sometimes wandered to the face of one or the other of her brothers, but they never could abide long. It was Mrs. Landholm's gentle voice that broke the silence.

"What mark are you aiming at, boys? -- what are you setting before you as the object of life?"

"What mark, mother?" said Rufus after an instant's pause.

"Yes."

"To make something of myself!" he said rising, and with that fire-flashing nostril and lip that spoke his whole soul at work. "I have a chance now, and it will go hard but I will accomplish it."

The mother's eye turned to her other son.

"I believe I must say the same, mother," he replied gravely. "I have perhaps some notion of doing, afterwards; but the first thing is to be myself what I can be. I am not, I feel, a tithe of that now."

"I agree with you -- you are right, so far," answered the mother, turning her face again to the fire; -- "but in the end, what is it you would do, and would be?"

"Profession, do you mean, mamma?" said Rufus.

"No," she said; and he needed not to ask any more.

"I mean, what is all this for? -- what purpose lies behind all this?"

"To distinguish myself!" said Rufus, -- "if I can, -- in some way."

"I am afraid it is no better than that with me, mother," said Winthrop; "though perhaps I should rather say my desire is to be distinguished."

"What's the difference?" said his brother.

"I don't know. I think I feel a difference."

"I am not going to preach to you now," said Mrs. Landholm, and yet the slight failing of her voice did it -- how lastingly! -- "I cannot, -- and I need not. Only one word. If you sow and reap a crop that will perish in the using, what will you do when it is gone? -- and remember it is said of the redeemed, that their works do follow them. Remember that. -- One word more," she said after a pause. "Let me have it to say in that day, -- 'Of all which thou gavest me have I lost none'! --"

Not preach to them? And what was her hidden face and bowed head? -- a preaching the like of which they were never to hear from mortal voices. But not a word, not a lisp, fell from one of them. Winifred had run off; the rest hardly stirred; till Mrs. Landholm rose up, and gravely kissing one and the other prepared to leave the room.

"Where is Winifred?" said her brother suddenly missing her.

"I don't know. I am sure she is somewhere praying for you."

They said no more, even to each other, that night.

Nor much the next day. It was the time for doing, not thinking. There was not indeed much to do, except to get off; but that seemed a great deal. It was done at last. Mrs. Landholm from the window of the kitchen watched them get into the wagon and drive off; and then she sat down by the window to cry.

Asahel had gone to ride as far as the mountain's foot with his father and brothers; and Winifred knelt down beside her mother to lean her head upon her; they could not get near enough just then. It was only to help each other weep, for neither could comfort the other nor be comforted, for a time. Yet the feeling of the two, like as it seemed outwardly, was far unlike within. In the child it was the spring flood of a little brook, bringing, to be sure, momentary desolation; in the mother it was the flow of the great sea, still and mighty. And when it grew outwardly quiet, the same depth was there.

They got into each other's arms at last, and pressed cheek to cheek and kissed each other many times; but the first word was Mrs. Landholm's, saying,

"Come -- we had better go and get tea -- Asahel will be back directly."

Asahel came back in good spirits, having had his cry on the road, and they all took tea with what cheerfulness they might. But after tea Winifred sat in the chimney corner gazing into the fire, very still and pale and worn-looking; her sober blue eyes intently fixed on something that was not there. Very intently, so that it troubled her mother; for Winifred had not strength of frame to bear strong mind-working. She watched her.

"What, mamma?" said the little girl with a half start, as a hand was laid gently and remindingly upon her shoulder.

"I should rather ask you what," said her mother tenderly. "Rest, daughter, can't you?"

"I wasn't worrying, mamma."

"Wa'n't you?"

"I was thinking of 'They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'"

"Why, dear?"

"I am so glad I can wash mine, mother."

"Yes -- Why, my dear child?"

"There are so many spots on them."

Her mother stooped down beside her and spoke cheerfully.

"What are you thinking of now, Winnie?"

"Only, mamma, I am glad to think of it," she said, nestling her sunny little head in her mother's neck. "I wanted yesterday that Will and Governor should have better clothes."

"Well, Winnie, I wanted it too -- I would have given them better if I had had them."

"But mamma, ought I to have wished that?"

"Why yes, dear Winnie; it is a pleasant thing to have comfortable clothes, and it is right to wish for them, provided we can be patient when we don't get them. But still I think dear Governor and Will will be pretty comfortable this winter. We will try to make them so."

"Yes mamma, --but I wanted them to be smart."

"It is right to be smart, Winnie, if we aren't too smart."

"I wish I could be always just right, mamma."

"The rightest thing will be for you to go to sleep," said her mother, kissing her eyes and cheeks. "I'll be through my work directly and then you shall sit in my lap and rest -- I don't want to sew to-night. Winnie, the good Shepherd will gather my little lamb with his arm and carry her in his bosom, if she minds his voice; and then he will bring her by and by where she shall walk with him in white, and there will be no spots on the white any more."

"I know. Make haste, mother, and let us sit down together and talk."

So they did, with Asahel at their feet; but they didn't talk much. They kept each other silent and soft companionship, till Winifred's breathing told that she had lost her troubles in sleep on her mother's bosom.

"Poor little soul! she takes it hard," said Karen. "She's 'most as old as her mother now."

"You must get her to play with you, Asahel, as much as you can," Mrs. Landholm said in a whisper.

"Why mamma? aint she well?"

"I don't know -- I'm afraid she wont keep so."

"She's too good to be well," said Karen.

Which was something like true. Not in the vulgar prejudice, as Karen understood it. It was not Winifred's goodness which threatened her well-being; but the very delicate spirits which answered too promptly and strongly every touch; too strong in their acting for a bodily frame in like manner delicate.

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Chapter XIII

Mess. -- He hath indeed, better bettered expectation, than you must expect me to tell you how. Leon. -- He hath an uncle here in Messina will be very much glad of it. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

Mr. Landholm came back in excellent spirits from Shagarack. The boys were well entered, Will Junior and Winthrop Sophomore, and with very good credit to themselves. This had been their hope and intention, with the view of escaping the cost of one and two years of a college life. President Tuttle had received them very kindly, and everything was promising; the boys in good heart, and their father a proud man.

"Aint it queer, now," he said that evening of his return, as he sat warming his hands before the blaze, "aint it queer that those two fellows should go in like that -- one Junior and t'other Sophomore, and when they've had no chance at all beforehand, you may say. Will has been a little better, to be sure; but how on earth Winthrop ever prepared himself I can't imagine. Why the fellow read off Greek there, and I didn't know he had ever seen a word of it."

"He used to learn up in his room o' nights, father," said Asahel.

"He used to carry his books to the field and study while the oxen were resting," said Winifred.

"He did! -- Well, he'll get along. I aint afeard of him. He won't be the last man in the College, I guess."

"I guess not, father," said Asahel.

And now the months sped along with slow step, bringing toil- work for every day. It was cheerfully taken, and patiently wrought through; both at Shagarack and in the little valley at home; but those were doing for themselves, and these were truly doing love's work, for them. All was for them. The crops were grown and the sheep sheared, that Rufus and Winthrop might, not eat and be clothed, -- that was a trifle, -- but have the full good of a College education. The burden and the joy of the toilers was the same. There were delightful speculations round the fireside about the professions the young men would choose; what profound lawyers, what brilliant ministers, should come forth from the learned groves of Shagarack; perhaps, the father hinted, -- statesmen. There were letters from both the boys, to be read and re-read, and loved and prided in, as once those of Rufus. And clothes came home to mend, and new and nice knitted socks went now and then to replace the worn ones; but that commerce was not frequent nor large; where there was so little to make, it was of necessity that there should not be too much to mend; and alas! if shirt- bosoms gave out, the boys buttoned their coats over them and studied the harder. There were wants they did not tell; those that were guessed at, they knew, cost many a strain at home; and were not all met then. But they had not gone to Shagarack to be' smart,' -- except mentally. That they were.

They were favourites, notwithstanding. Their superiors delighted in their intellectual prominence; their fellows forgave it. Quietly and irresistibly they had won to the head of their respective portions of the establishment, and stayed there; but the brilliancy and fire of Rufus and the manliness and temper of his brother gained them the general good-will, and general consent to the place from which it was impossible to dislodge them. Admiration first followed elder brother, and liking the younger; till it was found that Winthrop was as unconquerable as he was unassuming; as sure to be ready as to be right; and a very thorough and large respect presently fell into the train of his deservings. The faculty confided in him; his mates looked up to him. There was happily no danger of any affront to Winthrop which might have called Rufus's fire disagreeably into play. And for himself, he was too universally popular. If he was always in the foreground, everybody knew it was because he could not be anywhere else. If Winthrop was often brought into the foreground, on great occasions, every soul of them knew it was because no other would have dignified it so well. And besides, neither Winthrop nor Rufus forgot or seemed to forget the grand business for which he was there. With all their diversity of manner and disposition, each was intent on the same thing, -- to do what he had come there to do. Lasting eminence, not momentary pre- eminence, was what they sought; and that was an ambition which most of their compeers had no care to dispute with them.

"Poor fellows!" said a gay young money-purser; "they are working hard, I suppose, to get themselves a place in the eye of the world."

"Yes sir," said the President, who overheard this speech; -- "and they will by and by be where you can't see them."

They came home for a few weeks in the summer, to the unspeakable rejoicing of the whole family; but it was a break of light in a cloudy day; the clouds closed again. Only now and then a stray sunbeam of a letter found its way through.

One year had gone since the boys went to College, and it was late in the fall again. Mr. Underhill, who had been on a journey back into the country, came over one morning to Mr. Landholm's.

"Good morning!" said the farmer. "Well, you've got back from your journey into the interior."

"Yes," said Mr. Underhill, -- "I've got back."

"How did you find things looking, out there?"

"Middling; -- their winter crops are higher up than yours and mine be."

"Ay. I suppose they've a little the start of us with the sun. Did you come through Shagarack?"

"Yes -- I stopped there a night."

"Did you see my boys?"

"Yes -- I see 'em."

"Well -- what did they say?" said the father, with his eye alive.

"Well -- not much," said Mr. Underhill.

"They were well, I suppose?"

"First-rate -- only Winthrop looked to me as if he was workin' pretty hard. He's poorer, by some pounds, I guess, than he was when he was to hum last August."

"Didn't he look as usual?" said the father with a smothered anxiety.

"There wa'n't no other change in him, that I could see, of no kind. I didn't know as Rufus was going to know who I was, at first."

"He hasn't seen much of you for some time."

"No; and folks lose their memory," said Mr. Underhill. "I saw the -- what do you call him? -- the boss of the concern -- president! -- President Tuttle. I saw him and had quite a talk with him."

"The president! How came you to see him?"

"Well, 'taint much to see a man, I s'pose, -- is it? I took a notion I'd see him. I wanted to ask him how Will and Winthrop was a getting along. I told him I was a friend o' yourn."

"Well, did you ask him?"

"Yes I did."

"What did he say?" said Mr. Landholm, half laughing.

"I asked him how they were getting along."

"Ay, and what did he answer to that?"

"He wanted to know if Mr. Landholm had any more sons?"

"Was that all?" said the farmer, laughing quite.

"That was the hull he said, with a kind of kink of his eye that wa'n't too big a sum for me to cast up. He didn't give me no more satisfaction than that."

"And what did you tell him -- to his question?"

"I? -- I told him that two such plants took a mighty sight of room to grow, and that the hull county was clean used up."

"You did!" said Mr. Landholm laughing heartily. "Pretty well! -- pretty good! -- Have some tobacco, neighbour?"

"How is it?" said Mr. Underhill taking a bunch gravely.

"First-rate, -- I think. Try."

Which Mr. Underhill did, with slow and careful consideration. Mr. Landholm watched him complacently.

"I've seen worse," he remarked dryly at length. "Where did you get it, squire?"

"Nowhere short of the great city, neighbour. It came from Mannahatta."

"Did, hey? Well, I reckon it might. Will you trade?"

"With what?" said Mr. Landholm.

"Some of this here."

"With you?"

"Yes."

"Well -- let's hear," said the farmer.

"Don't you think the post ought to be paid?" said Mr. Underhill, diving into some far-down pockets.

"Why, are you the post?"

"Don't you think that two sealed letters, now, would be worth a leetle box o' that 'ere?"

"Have you brought letters from the boys?"

"Well I don't know who writ 'em," said Mr. Underhill; -- "they guv 'em to me."

Mr. Landholm took the letters, and with a very willing face went for a 'little box,' which he filled with the Mannahatta tobacco.

"Old Cowslip don't keep anything like this," Mr. Underhill said as he received it and stowed it coolly away in his pocket. "I mean to shew it to him."

"Will you stay to dinner, neighbour?"

"No thank 'ee -- I've got to get over the river; and my little woman'll have something cooked for me; and if I wa'n't there to eat it I shouldn't hear the last of my wastefulness."

"Ay? is that the way she does?" said Mr. Landholm laughing.

"Something like it. A tight grip, I tell ye!"

And with these words Mr. Underhill took himself out of the house.

"Where's your mother, Asahel? call her and tell her what's here," said Mr. Landholm, as he broke one of the seals.

"Shagarack, Dec. 3, 1810.

"My dear parents,

"I take the opportunity of friend Underhill's going home to send you a word -- I can't write much more than a word, I'm so busy. I never drove my plough at home half so industriously as now I am trying to break up and sow the barren fields of mind. But oh, this is sweeter labour than that. How shall I ever repay you, my dear father and dear mother, for the efforts you are making -- and enduring -- to give me this blessing. I feel them to my very heart -- I know them much better than from your words. And perhaps this poor return of words is all I shall ever be able to make you, -- when it seems to me sometimes as if I could spill my very heart to thank you. But if success can thank you, you shall be thanked. I feel that within me which says I shall have it. Tell mother the box came safe, and was gladly received. The socks &c. are as nice as possible, and very comfortable this weather; and the mittens, tell Winnie, are like no other mittens that ever were knit; but I wish I could have hold of the dear little hands that knit them for a minute instead -- she knows what would come next.

"You bid me say if I want anything -- sometimes I think I want nothing but to hear from you a little oftener -- or to see you! -- that would be too pleasant. But I am doing very well, though I do want to know that ma is not working so hard. I shall relieve pa from any further charge of me after this. I consulted the President; and he has given me a form in the grammar school to take care of -- I believe pa knows there is a grammar school connected with the Institution. This will pay my bills, and to my great joy relieve my father from doing so any more. This arrangement leaves me but half of the usual study hours (by day) for myself; so you see I have not much leisure to write letters, and must close.

"Your affectionate son,

"Winthrop Landholm.

"I don't forget Asahel, though I haven't said a word of him; and give my love to Karen."

Mr. and Mrs. Landholm looked up with pleasant faces at each other and exchanged letters. She took Winthrop's and her husband began upon the other, which was from Rufus. Asahel and Winifred were standing anxiously by.

"What do they say?"

"You shall hear directly."

"Does he say any thing about me?" said Winifred.

But father and mother were deep in the precious despatches, and the answer had to be waited for.

"Shagarack College, Dec. 1810.

"My dear friends at home,

"This funny little man says he will take letters to you; -- so as it is a pity not to cultivate any good disposition, Governor and I have determined to favour him. But really there is not much to write about. Our prospects are as bare as your garden in November -- nothing but roots above ground or under -- some thrown together, and some, alas! to be dug for; only ours are not parsnips and carrots but a particularly tasteless kind called Greek roots; with a variety denominated algebraic, of which there are quantities. At these roots, or at some branches from the same, Governor and I are tugging as for dear life, so it is no wonder if our very hands smell of them. I am sure I eat them every day with my dinner, and ruminate upon them afterwards. In the midst of all this we are as well as usual. Governor is getting along splendidly; and I am not much amiss; at least so they say. The weather is pretty stinging these few days, and I find father's old cloak very useful. I think Winthrop wants something of the sort, though he is as stiff as a pine tree, bodily and mentally, and won't own that he wants any thing. He won't want any thing long, that he can get. He is working confoundedly hard. I beg mamma's pardon -- I wouldn't have said that if I had thought of her -- and I would write over my letter now, if I were not short of time, and to tell truth, of paper. This is my last sheet, and a villainous bad one it is; but I can't get any better at the little storekeeper's here, and that at a horridly high price.

"As Governor is writing to you, he will give you all the sense, so it is less matter that there is absolutely nothing in this epistle. Only believe me, my dear father and mother and Winnie and Asahel, ever your most dutiful, grateful, and affectionate son and brother,

"Will. Rufus Landholm.

"My dear mother, the box was most acceptable."

After being once read in private, the letters were given aloud to the children; and then studied over and again by the father and mother to themselves. Winifred was satisfied with the mention of her name; notwithstanding which, she sat with a very wistful face the rest of the afternoon. She was longing for her brother's hand and kiss.

"Have your brothers' letters made you feel sober, Winnie?" said her mother.

"I want to see him, mamma! --"

"Who?"

"Governor. --"

It was the utmost word Winifred's lips could speak.

"But dear Winnie," said her mother sorrowfully, "it is for their good and their pleasure they are away."

"I know it, mamma, -- I know I am very selfish --"

"I don't think you are," said her mother. "Winnie, remember that they are getting knowledge and fitting themselves to be better and stronger men than they could be if they lived here and learnt nothing."

"Mamma," said Winifred looking up as if defining her position, "I don't think it is right, but I can't always help it."

"We have one friend never far off."

"Oh mamma, I remember that all the while."

"Then can't you look happy?"

"Not always, mamma," said the little girl covering her face quickly. The mother stooped down and put her arms round her.

"You must ask him, and he will teach you to be happy always."

"But I can't, mamma, unless I could be right always," said poor Winifred.

Mrs. Landholm was silent, but kissed her with those soft motherly kisses which had comfort and love in every touch of them. Soon answered, for Winifred lifted up her head and kissed her again.

"How much longer must they be there, mamma?" she asked more cheerfully.

"Two years," Mrs. Landholm answered, with a sigh that belonged to what was not spoken.

"Mamma," said Winifred again presently, trying not to shew from how deep her question came, "aint you afraid Winthrop wants something more to wear?"

And Mrs. Landholm did not shew how deep the question went, but she said lightly,

"We'll see about it. We'll get papa to write and make him tell us what he wants."

"Maybe he won't tell," said Winifred thoughtfully. "I wish I could write."

"Then why don't you set to and learn? Nothing would please Governor so much."

"Would it!" said Winifred with a brightened face.

"Asahel," she said, as Asahel came in a few minutes after, "mamma says Governor would like nothing so well as to have me learn to write."

"I knew that before," said Asahel coolly. "He was talking to me last summer about learning you."

"Was he! Then will you Asahel? Do you know yourself?"

"I know how to begin," said Asahel.

And after that many a sorrowful feeling was wrought into trammels and pothooks.

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Chapter XIV

Bard. On, on, on, on, on! to the breach, to the breach! Nym. Pray thee, corporal, stay; the knocks are too hot; and for mine own part, I have not a case of lives: the humour of it is too hot, that is the very plain-song of it. KING HENRY V.

"To Mr. Winthrop Landholm, Shagarack College.

"Dec. 10, 1810.

"My dear son,

"We received yours of the third, per Mr. Underhill, which was very gratifying to your mother and myself, as also Will's of the same date. We cannot help wishing we could hear a little oftener, as these are the first we have had for several weeks. But we remember your occupations, and I assure you make due allowances; yet we cannot help thinking a little more time might be given to pa and ma. This is a burdensome world, and every one must bear their own burdens; yet I think it must be conceded it is right for every individual to do what may be in his power towards making the lot of others pleasanter. This I am sure you believe, for you act upon it; and you know that nothing so lightens our load as to know that Will and Governor are doing well. It is a world of uncertainties; and we cannot know this unless you will tell us.

"My dear sons, I do not mean to chide you, and I have said more on this subject than I had any intention to do. But it is very natural, when a subject lies so near the heart, that I should exceed the allotted bounds.

"Winthrop, your mother is afraid, from something in Will's letter, that you are in want of an overcoat. Tell us if you are, and we will do our best to endeavour to supply the deficiency. I thought you had one; but I suppose it must be pretty old by this time. My dear son, we have all one interest; if you want anything, let us know, and if it can be had you know enough of us to know you shall not want it. We have not much to spare certainly, but necessaries we will try to procure; and so long as we need not groan about the present it is not my way to grumble about the future. We shall get along, somehow, I trust.

"I shall send this by post, as I do not know of any opportunity, and do not think it best to wait for one."

"Your loving father,

"W. Landholm.

"Winthrop and Will."

"My dear boys,

"It is very late to-night, and I shall not have any time in the morning, so must scratch a word as well as I can tonight -- you know my fingers are not very well accustomed to handling the pen. It gives me the greatest pleasure I can have in this world when I hear that you are getting along so well -- except I could hear one other thing of you, -- and that would be a pleasure beyond anything in this world. Let us know everything you want -- and we will try to send it to you, and if we can't we will all want it together. -- We are all well -- Winifred mourns for you all the while, in spite of trying not to do it. What the rest of us do is no matter. I shall send a box, if I can, before New Year, with some cakes and apples -- write us before that, in time, all you want.

Your mother."

This double letter, being duly put in the post according to Mr. Landholm's promise, in the course of time and the post came safe to the Shagarack post-office; from whence it was drawn one evening by its owner, and carried to a little upper room where Rufus sat, or rather stood, at his books. There was not a great deal there beside Rufus and the books; a little iron stove looked as if it disdained to make anybody comfortable, and hinted that much persuasion was not tried with it; a bed was in one corner, and a deal table in the middle of the floor, at which Winthrop sat down and read his letters.

He was longer over them than was necessary to read them, by a good deal. So Rufus thought, and glanced at him sundry times, though he did not think fit to interrupt him. He lifted his head at last and passing them over coolly to Rufus, drew his book near and opened his dictionary. He did not look up while Rufus read, nor when after reading he began to walk with thoughtful large strides up and down the little room.

"Governor!" said Rufus suddenly and without looking at him, "sometimes I am half tempted to think I will take Mr. Haye's offer."

"Did he make you an offer?"

"He said what was near enough to it."

"What tempts you, Will?"

"Poverty. It is only, after all, taking a short road instead of a long one to the same end."

"The end of what?" said Winthrop.

"Of painstaking and struggling."

There was silence, during which Rufus continued his strides through the room, and the leaves of Winthrop's books ever and anon turned and rustled.

"What do you think of it?"

"Nothing."

"Why?"

"I don't believe in drinking of a roiled stream because it happens to be the first one you come to."

"Not if you are dry?"

"No, -- not unless everything else is, too."

"But merchandise is a very honourable pursuit," said Rufus, walking and studying the floor.

"Certainly. -- Twelve feet is a good growth for dogwood, isn't it?" said Winthrop gravely, looking up and meeting his cool grey eye with that of his brother.

Rufus first stared, and then answered, and then burst into a fit of laughter. Then he grew quite grave again and went on walking up and down.

"The fact is," he said a little while after, -- "I don't know exactly what I am fittest for."

"You would be fit for anything if you did," answered his brother.

"Why?"

"You would be an uncommonly wise man."

"You might be that with very little trouble, for you are the fittest for everything of anybody I know."

Winthrop studied his books, and Rufus walked perseveringly.

"You hold to taking up law?"

"I will, when I begin it," said Winthrop.

"Where?"

"Where what?"

"Where will you take it up?"

"In Mannahatta."

"And then you will rise to the top of the tree!" said his brother half admiringly, half sadly.

"That I may catch a glimpse of you in the top of some other tree," said Winthrop.

"But this want of money is such a confounded drag!" said Rufus after a few minutes.

"Let it drag you up hill, then. A loaded arrow flies best against the wind."

"Winthrop, I wonder what you are made of!" said Rufus stopping short and looking at him and his books. "The toughest, the sturdiest --"

But Winthrop lifted up his face and gave his brother one of those smiles, which were somewhat as if the sturdy young ash to which he likened him had of a sudden put forth its flowers and made one forget its strength in its beauty. Rufus stopped, and smiled a little himself.

"My choice would be engineering," he said doubtfully.

"Stick to your choice," said Winthrop.

"That's a very good business for making money," Rufus went on, beginning to walk again; -- "and there is a variety about it I should like."

"Are you in correspondence with Mr. Haye?"

"No. Why?"

"You seem to be adopting his end of life."

"I tell you, Winthrop," said Rufus stopping short again, "whatever else you may have is of very little consequence if you haven't money with it! You may raise your head like Mont Blanc, above the rest of the world; and if you have nothing to shew but your eminence, people will look at you, and go and live somewhere else."

"You don't see the snow yet, do you?" said Winthrop, so dryly that Rufus laughed again, and drawing to him his book sat down and left his brother to study in peace.

The peace was not of long lasting, for at the end of half or three quarters of an hour Winthrop had another interruption. The door opened briskly and there came in a young man, -- hardly that, -- a boy, but manly, well grown, fine and fresh featured, all alive in spirits and intellect. He came in with a rush, acknowledged Rufus's presence slightly, and drawing a stool close by Winthrop, bent his head in yet closer neighbourhood. The colloquy which followed was carried on half under breath, on his part, but with great eagerness.

"Governor, I want you to go home with me Christmas."

"I can't, Bob."

"Why?"

Winthrop answered with soft whistling.

"Why?"

"I must work."

"You can work there."

"No I can't."

"Why not?"

"I must work here."

"You can work afterwards."

"Yes, I expect to."

"But Governor, what have you got to keep you?"

"Some old gentlemen who lived in learned times a great while ago, are very pressing in their desires to be acquainted with me -- one Plato, one Thucydides, and one Mr. Tacitus, for instance."

"You'll see enough of them, Governor; -- you don't like them better than me, do you?"

"Yes, Bob, -- I expect they'll do more for me than ever you will."

"I'll do a great deal for you, Governor, -- I want you to come with me to Coldstream -- I want you to see them all at home; we'll have a good time. -- Come!" --

"How do you suppose that old heathen ever got hold of such a thought as this?" -- said Winthrop composedly; and he read, without minding his auditors --

"tis d'oiden, ei to zên men êi to katthanein, to katthanein de zên ;" * [* Bunyan used to say, "The Latin I borrow." I must follow so illustrious an example and confess, The Greek is lent.] "Who knows if to live is not to die, and dying but to live."

"I should think he had a bad time in this world," said Bob; "and maybe he thought Apollo would make interest for his verses in the land of shades."

"But Plato echoes the sentiment, -- look here, -- and he was no believer in the old system. Where do you suppose he got his light on the subject?"

"Out of a dark lantern. I say, Winthrop, I want light on my subject -- Will you come to Coldstream?"

"I don't see any light that way, Bob; -- I must stick fast by my dark lantern."

"Are you going to stay in Shagarack?"

"Yes."

"It's a deuced shame! --"

"What do you make of this sentence, Mr. Cool? --"

But Bob declined to construe, and took himself off, with a hearty slap on Winthrop's shoulder, and a hearty shake of his hand.

"He's so strong, there's no use in trying to fight him into reason," he remarked to Rufus as he went off.

"What do you suppose Bob Cool would make of your Platonic quotation?" said Rufus.

"What do you make of it?" said Winthrop after a slight pause.

"Eremitical philosophy! -- Do you admire it?"

"I was thinking mamma would," said Winthrop.

That year came to its end, not only the solar but the collegiate. Rufus took his degree brilliantly; was loaded with compliments; went to spend a while at home, and then went to Mannahatta; to make some preparatory arrangements for entering upon a piece of employment to which President Tuttle had kindly opened him a way. Winthrop changed his form in the grammar school for the Junior Greek class, which happened to be left without any teacher by the removal of the Greek professor to the headship of another College. To this charge he proved himself fully competent. It made the same breaches upon his time, and gave him rather more amends than his form in the grammar school. And amid his various occupations, Winthrop probably kept himself warm without a new overcoat; for he had none.

It was difficult at home, by this time, to do more than make ends meet. They hardly did that. The borrowed hundreds were of necessity yet unpaid; there was interest on them that must be kept down; and the failure of Rufus and Winthrop from the farm duty told severely upon the profits of the farm; and that after it had told upon the energies and strength of the whole little family that were left behind to do all that was done. There was never a complaint nor a regret, even to each other; much less to those for whom they toiled; but often there was a shadowed look, a breath of weariness and care, that spoke from husband to wife, from parent to child, and nerved -- or unnerved them. Still, Rufus had graduated; he was a splendid young man; all, as well as the parents' hearts, knew that; and Winthrop, -- he was never thought of, their minds and speech never went out to him, but the brows unbent, the lips relaxed, and their eyes said that their hearts sat down to rest. Winthrop? He never could do anything but well; he never had since he was a child. He would take his degree now in a few months and he would take it honourably; and then he would be off to the great city -- that was said with a throe of pain and joy! -- and there he would certainly rise to be the greatest of all. To their eyes could he ever be anything else? But they were as certain of it as Winthrop himself; and Winthrop was not without his share of that quality which Dr. Johnson declared to be the first requisite to great undertakings; though to do him justice the matter always lay in his mind without the use of comparatives or superlatives. And while they sat round the fire talking of him, and of Rufus, the images of their coming success quite displaced the images of weary days and careful nights with which that success had been bought.

It was not however to be quite so speedily attained as they had looked for.

The time of examination came, and Winthrop passed through it, as President Tuttle told his father, "as well as a man could;" and took honours and distinctions with a calm matter-of-fact manner, that somehow rather damped the ardour of congratulation.

"He takes everything as if he had a right to it," observed a gentleman of the company who had been making some flattering speeches which seemed to hit no particular mark.

"I don't know who has a better right," said the President.

"He's not so brilliant as his brother," the gentleman went on.

"Do you think so? That can only have been because you did not understand him," said the President equivocally. "He will never flash in the pan, I promise you."

"But dang it, sir!" cried the other, "it is a little extraordinary to see two brothers, out of the same family, for two years running, take the first honours over the head of the whole College. What is a man to think, sir?"

"That the College has not graduated two young men with more honour to herself and them in any two years of my Presidency, sir. Allow me to introduce you to the fortunate father of these young gentlemen -- Mr. Landholm."

This story Mr. Landholm used afterwards often to repeat, with infinite delight and exultation.

Rufus was not at Shagarack at this time. Instead thereof came a letter.

"Mannahatta, Aug. 26, 1812.

"My dear Governor,

"It has cost me more than I can tell you, that I have not been able to witness your triumph. Nothing could hinder my sharing it. I shared it even before I heard a word of it. I shared it all last week, while the scenes were enacting; but when papa's letter came, it made an old boy of me -- I would have thrown off my hat and hurrahed, if I had not been afraid to trust four walls with my feelings; and I finally took up with the safer indulgence of some very sweet tears. I told you it cost me a great deal to stay away from Shagarack. My sole reason for staying was, that it would have cost me more to go. The fact is, I had not the wherewithal -- a most stupid reason, but for that very cause, a reason that you cannot argue with. I am just clearing for the North -- but not, alas! your way -- and I could not take out of my little funds what would carry me to Shagarack and back; and back I should have had to come. So I have lost what would have been one of the rare joys of my life. But I shall have another chance. -- This is but your first degree, Governor; -- your initial step towards great things; and you are not one to lag by the way.

"As for me, I am off to the regions of wildness, to see what I can do with the rocks and the hills of rude Nature -- or what they will do with me, which is perhaps nearer the truth. Not very inviting, after this gay and brilliant city, where certainly the society is very bewitching. I have happened to see a good deal, and some of the best of it. Mr. Haye has been very attentive to me, and I believe would really like to renew his old offer. He lives here en prince; with every thing to make his house attractive besides the two little princesses who tenant it; and who make it I think the pleasantest house in Mannahatta. Your friend is amazingly improved, though she is rather more of a Queen than a princess; but the other is the most splendid little creature I ever saw. They were very gracious to your humble servant. I have seen a good deal of them and like them better and better. Herder is charming. He has introduced me to a capital set -- men really worth knowing -- they have also been very kind to me, and I have enjoyed them greatly; -- but from all this I am obliged to break away, -- and from you; for I have no more room. I will write you when I get to the N. W. L.

"P. S. When you come hither, take up your quarters with my landlord, George Inchbald -- cor. Beaver and Little South Sts. He loves me and will welcome you. Inchbald is an Englishman, with a heart larger than his means, and a very kind widowed sister."

Winthrop read this letter gravely through, folded it up, and took hold of the next business in hand.

He could not go yet to the great city. The future rising steps to which Rufus looked forward so confidently, were yet far away. He owed a bill at the tailor's; and had besides one or two other little accounts unsettled, which it had been impossible to avoid, and was now impossible to leave. Therefore he must not leave Shagarack. The first thing to do was to clear these hindrances from his way. So he entered his name as law-reader at the little office of Mr. Shamminy, to save time, and took a tutorship in the College to earn money. He had the tutorship of the Junior Greek class, which his father loved to tell he carried further than ever a class had been carried before; but that was not all; he had a number of other recitations to attend which left him, with the necessary studies, scant time for reading law. That little was made the most of and the year was gained.

All the year was needed to free himself from these cobweb bindings that held him fast at Shagarack. Another Commencement over, his debts paid, he went home; to make a little pause on that landing-place of life's journey before taking his last start from it.

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Chapter XV

I turn to go: my feet are set To leave the pleasant fields and farms: They mix in one another's arms To one pure image of regret. TENNYSON.

That little space of time was an exceeding sweet one. Governor was at home again, -- and Governor was going away again. If anything had been needed to enhance his preciousness, those two little facts would have done it. Such an idea entered nobody's head. He was the very same Winthrop, they all said, that had left them four years ago; only taller, and stronger, and handsomer.

"He's a beautiful strong man!" said Karen, stopping in the act of rolling her cakes, to peer at him out of the kitchen window. "Aint he a handsome feller, Mis' Landholm?"

"Handsome is that handsome does, Karen."

"Don't he do handsome?" said Karen, flouring her roller. "His mother knows he does, I wish I knowed my shortcake'd be arter the same pattern."

Winthrop pulled off his coat and went into the fields as heartily as if he had done nothing but farming all his days; and harvests that autumn came cheerily in. The corn seemed yellower and the apples redder than they had been for a long time. Asahel, now a fine boy of fifteen, was good aid in whatever was going on, without or within doors. Rufus wrote cheerfully from the North, where he still was; and there was hardly a drawback to the enjoyment of the little family at home.

There was one; and as often happens it had grown out of the family's greatest delight. Winifred was not the Winifred of former days. The rosy-cheeked, fat, laughing little roll-about of five years old, had changed by degrees into a slim, pale, very delicate-looking child of twelve. Great nervous irritability, and weakness, they feared of the spine, had displaced the jocund health and sweet spirits which never knew a cloud. It was a burden to them all, the change; and yet -- so strangely things are tempered -- the affections mustered round the family hearth to hide or repair the damage disease had done there, till it could scarcely be said to be poorer or worse off than before. There did come a pang to every heart but Winifred's own, when they looked upon her; but with that rose so sweet and rare charities, blessing both the giver and the receiver, that neither perhaps was less blessed than of old. Winthrop's face never shewed that there was anything at home to trouble him, unless at times when Winifred was not near; his voice never changed from its cool cheerfulness; and yet his voice had a great deal to say to her, and his face Winifred lived upon all the while he was at home. He never seemed to know that she was weaker than she used to be; but his arm was always round her, or it might be under her, whenever need was; and to be helped by his strength was more pleasant to Winifred than to have strength of her own.

She was sitting on his knee one day, and they were picking out nuts together; when she looked up and spoke, as if the words could not be kept in.

"What shall I do when you are gone!"

"Help mother, and keep Asahel in spirits."

Winifred could not help laughing a little at this idea.

"I wonder if anything could trouble Asahel much," she said.

"I suppose he has his weak point -- like the rest of us," said Winthrop.

"You haven't."

"How do you know?"

"I don't know, but I think so," said Winifred, touching her hand to his cheek, and then kissing him.

"What's your weak point?"

"They're all over," said Winifred, with a little change of voice; "I haven't a bit of strength about anything. I don't think anybody's weak but me."

"Nobody ought to be weak but you," said her brother, with no change in his.

"I oughtn't to be weak," said Winifred; "but I can't help it."

"It doesn't matter, Winnie," said her brother; "you shall have the advantage of the strength of all the rest."

"That wouldn't be enough," said Winifred, gently leaning her head upon the broad breast which she knew was hers for strength and defence.

"Not, Winnie? -- What will you have?"

"I'll have the Bible," said the child, her thin intelligent face looking at him with all its intelligence.

"The Bible, Winnie?" said Winthrop cheerfully.

"Yes, because there I can get strength that isn't my own, and that is better than yours, or anybody's."

"That's true, Winnie; but what do you want so much strength for?" he said coolly.

She looked at him again, a look very hard indeed to bear.

"O I know, Winthrop," she said; -- "I want it. -- I want it now for your going away."

Her voice was a little checked, and again she leaned forward upon him, this time so as to hide her face.

Winthrop set down the nuts and drew her more close, and his lips kissed the little blue and white temple which was all of her face he could get at.

"It's best I should go, Winnie," he said.

"O I know you must."

"I will have a house one of these days and you shall come and keep it for me."

She sat up and shook away a tear or two, and laughed, but her speech was not as jocular as she meant it to be.

"What a funny housekeeper I should make!"

"The best in the world. You shall study, and I will knit the socks."

"O Governor! What do you know about knitting socks?"

"I know who has knit mine ever since I have been at Shagarack."

"Did mamma tell you?" said the child with a bright sharp glance.

"I found it out."

"And were they all right? Because I am going to keep on doing it, Governor."

"Till you come to be my housekeeper."

"I don't believe that'll ever be," said Winifred.

"Why not?"

"It seems so funny, to think of your ever having a house in Mannahatta!"

"Will you come, Winnie?"

"O Governor! -- I dont know," she said, her face full of a world of uncertainties.

"What don't you know?"

"I don't know any thing; and you don't. O Governor" -- and she flung her arms round his neck, and spoke words coined out of her heart, -- "I wish you were a Christian! --"

For a minute only he did not speak; and then he said calmly in her ear,

"I shall be -- I mean to be one, Winnie."

Her little head lay very still and silent a few minutes more; and when she lifted it she did not carry on the subject; unless the kisses she gave him, only too strong in their meaning, might be interpreted.

"I should feel so much better if you knew somebody in Mannahatta," she said presently.

"I do. I know Mr. Herder."

"O yes; but I mean more than that; somebody where you could stay and be nice."

"I shall not stay where I cannot be nice."

"I know that," said Winifred; "but you don't know anywhere to go, do you?"

"Yes. Uncle Forriner's."

"Uncle Forriner. -- You don't know him, do you?"

"Not yet."

"Did you ever see him?"

"No."

"Maybe you won't like him."

"Then it will matter the less about his liking me."

"He can't help that," said Winifred.

"You think so?"

"But Rufus didn't stay with him?"

"No -- Mr. Forriner only moved to Mannahatta about a year ago."

"Have you ever seen Aunt Forriner?"

"Yes -- once."

"Well -- is she good?"

"I hope so."

"You don't know, Governor?"

"I don't know, Winnie."

Winifred waited a little.

"What are you going to do, Governor, when you first get there?"

"I suppose the first thing will be to go and examine Uncle Forriner and see if I like him."

Winifred laughed.

"No, no, but I mean business -- what you are going to Mannahatta for -- what will be the first thing?"

"To shew myself to Mr. De Wort."

"Who's he?"

"He is a lawyer in Mannahatta."

"Do you know where he lives?"

"No, Winnie; but other people do."

"What are you going to see him for, Governor?"

"To ask him if he will let me read law in his office."

"Will he want to be paid for it?"

"I don't know."

"Suppose he should, Governor?"

"Then I will pay him, Winifred."

"How can you?"

Her brother smiled a little. "My eyes are not far-sighted enough to tell you, Winnie. I can only give you the fact."

Winifred smiled too, but in her heart believed him.

"Did you ever see Mr. De Wort?"

"Never."

"Then what makes you choose him?"

"Because he is said to be the best lawyer in the city."

Winifred put her fingers thoughtfully through and through the short dark wavy brown hair which graced her brother's broad brow, and wondered with herself whether there would not be a better lawyer in the city before long. And then in a sweet kind of security laid her head down again upon his breast.

"I'll have a house for you there, by and by, Winnie," he said, as his arm drew round her.

"O I couldn't leave mother, you know," she answered.

Her mother called her at this instant, and she ran off, leaving him alone.

He had spoken to her all the while with no change on his wonted calm brow and lip; but when she left the room he left it; and wandering down to some hiding place on the rocky shore, where only the silent cedars stood witnesses, he wept there till his strong frame shook, with what he no more than the rocks would shew anywhere else. It never was shewn. He was just as he had been. Nobody guessed, unless his mother, the feeling that had wrought and was working within him; and she only from general knowledge of his nature. But the purpose of life had grown yet stronger and struck yet deeper roots instead of being shaken by this storm. The day of his setting off for Mannahatta was not once changed after it had been once fixed upon.

And it came. Almost at the end of November; a true child of the month; it was dark, chill, gloomy. The wind bore little foretokens of rain in every puff that made its way up the river, slowly, as if the sea had charged it too heavily, or as if it came through the fringe of the low grey cloud which hung upon the tops of the mountains. But nobody spoke of Winthrop's staying his journey. Perhaps everybody thought, that the day before, and the night before, and so much of the morning, it were better not to go over again.

"Hi!" sighed old Karen, as she took the coffee-pot off the hearth and wiped the ashes from it, -- "it's a heavy place for our feet, just this here; -- I wonder why the Lord sends 'em. He knows."

"Why he sends what, Karen?" said Winifred, taking the coffee- pot from her, and waiting to hear the answer.

"Oh go 'long, dear," said the old woman; -- "I was quarrelling with the Lord's doings, that's all."

"He knows!" repeated Winnie, turning away and bending her face down till hot tears fell on the cover of the coffee-pot. She stopped at the door of the keeping-room and fought the tears with her little hand desperately, for they were too ready to come; once and again the hand was passed hard over cheeks and eyes, before it would do and she could open the door.

"Well, mother," said Mr. Landholm, coming back from a look at the weather, -- "let's see what comfort can be got out of breakfast!"

None, that morning. It was but a sham, the biscuits and coffee. They were all feeding on the fruits of life-trials, struggles and cares, past and coming; and though some wild grown flowers of hope mingled their sweetness with the harsh things, they could not hide nor smother the taste of them. That taste was in Mr. Landholm's coffee; the way in which he set down the cup and put the spoon in, said so; it was in Winthrop's biscuit, for they were broken and not eaten; it seemed to be in the very light, to Winifred's eyes, by the wistful unmarking look she gave to everything the light shined upon.

It was over; and Mrs. Landholm had risen from the tea-board and stood by the window. There Winthrop parted from her, after some tremulous kisses, and with only the low, short, "Good bye, mother!" He turned to meet the arms of his little sister, which held him like some precious thing that they might not hold. It was hard to bear, but he bore it; till she snatched her arms away from his neck and ran out of the room. Yet she had not bid him good bye and he stood in doubt, looking after her. Then remembered Karen.

He went into the kitchen and shook the old shrivelled hand which was associated in his memory with many an old act of kindness, many a time of help in days of need.

"Good bye, Karen."

"Well -- good bye, --" said the old woman slowly, and holding his hand. "I sometimes wonder what ever you were brought into the world for, Mr. Winthrop."

"Why, Karen?"

"Because I aint much better than a fool," she said, putting her other hand to her eyes. "But ye're one of the Lord's precious ones, Governor; he will have service of ye, wherever ye be."

Winthrop wrung her hand. Quitting her, he saw his sister waiting for him at the kitchen door. She let him come within it, and then holding up her Bible which had hung in one hand, she pointed with her finger to these words where she had it open; --

"God now commandeth all men everywhere to repent."

Her finger was under the word 'now.' She added nothing, except with her eyes, which went wistfully, searchingly, beggingly, into his; till a film of tears gathered, and the book fell, and her arms went round him again and her face was hid.

"I know, dear Winnie," he said softly, stooping to her after the silent embrace had lasted a minute. -- "I must go -- kiss me."

There was a great deal in her kiss, of hope and despair; and then he was gone; and she stood at the window looking after him as long as a bit of him could be seen; clearing away the tears from her eyes that she might watch the little black speck of the boat, as it grew less and less, further and further off down the river. Little speck as it was, he was in it.

The world seemed to grow dark as she looked, -- in two ways. The heavy rain clouds that covered the sky stooped lower down and hung their grey drapery on the mountains more thick and dark. But it did not rain yet, nor till Winifred turned wearily away from the window, saying that "they had got there;" -- meaning that the little black speck on the water had reached the little white and brown spot on the shore which marked the place of Cowslip's Mill. Then the clouds began to fringe themselves off into rain, and Cowslip's Mill was soon hid, and river and hills were all grey under their thick watery veil. "But Governor will be in the stage, mamma," said Winifred. "He won't mind it."

Poor Winifred! Poor Governor! -- He was not in the stage. There was no room for him. His only choice was to take a seat beside the driver, unless he would wait another day; and he never thought of waiting. He mounted up to the box, and the stage- coach went away with him; while more slowly and soberly the little boat set its head homewards and pulled up through the driving rain.

It rained steadily, and all things soon owned the domination of the watery clouds. The horses, the roads, the rocks, the stage-coach, and the two outsiders, who submitted for a long distance in like silence and quiet; though with the one it was the quiet of habit and with the other the quiet of necessity. Or it might be of abstraction; for Winthrop's mind took little heed to the condition of his body.

It was busy with many greater things. And among them the little word to which his sister's finger had pointed, lodged itself whether he would or no, and often when he would not. Now NOW, -- "God NOW commandeth all men everywhere to repent." It was at the back of Winthrop's thoughts, wherever they might be; it hung over his mental landscape like the rain-cloud; he could look at nothing, as it were, but across the gentle shadows of that truth falling upon his conscience. The rain- drops dimpled it into the water, when the road lay by the river-side; and the bare tree-stems they were passing, that said so much of the past and the future, said also quietly and soberly, "NOW." The very stage-coach reminded him he was on a journey to the end of which the stage-coach could not bring him, and for the end of which he had no plans nor no preparations made. And the sweet images of home said, "now -- make them." And yet all this, though true and real in his spirit, was so still and so softly defined, that, -- like the reflection of the hills in the smooth water of the river, -- he noted without noting, he saw without dwelling upon it. It was the depth of the picture, and his mind chose the stronger outlines. And then the water ruffled, and the reflection was lost.

The ride was in dull silence, till after some hours the coachman stopped to give his horses water; though he remarked, "it was contrary in them to want it." But after that his tongue seemed loosed.

"Dampish!" he remarked to his fellow-traveller, as he climbed up to his place again and took the reins.

"Can you stand it?" said Winthrop.

"Stand what?"

"Being wet through at this rate?"

"Don't signify whether a man's killed one way or another," was the somewhat unhopeful answer. "Come to the same thing in the long run, I expect."

"Might as well make as long a run as you can of it. Why don't you wear some sort of an overcoat?"

"I keep it -- same way you do yourn. -- No use to spoil a thing for nothing. There's no good of an overcoat but to hold so much heft of water, and a man goes lighter without it. As long as you've got to be soaked through, what's the odds?"

"I didn't lay my account with this sort of thing when I set out," said Winthrop.

"O I did. I have it about a third of the time, I guess. This and March is the plaguiest months in the hull year. They do use up a man."

Some thread of association brought his little sister's open book and pointed finger on the sudden before Winthrop, and for a moment he was silent.

"Yours is rather bad business this time of year," he remarked.

"Like all other business," said the man; "aint much choice. There's a wet and a dry to most things. What's yourn? if I may ask."

"Wet," said Winthrop.

"How? --" said the man.

"You need only look at me to see," said Winthrop.

"Well -- I thought --" said his companion, looking at him again -- "Be you a dominie?"

"No."

"Going to be? -- Hum! -- Get ap! --" said the driver touching up one of his horses.

"What makes you think so?" said Winthrop.

"Can't tell -- took a notion. I can mostly tell folks, whether they are one thing or another."

"But you are wrong about me," said Winthrop; "I am neither one thing nor the other."

"I'll be shot if you aint, then," said his friend after taking another look at him. "Ben't you? -- You're either a dominie or a lawyer -- one of the six."

"I should like to know what you judge from. Are clergymen and lawyers so much alike?"

"I guess I aint fur wrong," said the man, with again a glance, a very benign one, of curiosity. "I should say, your eye was a lawyer and your mouth a clergyman."

"You can't tell what a man is when he is as wet as I am," said Winthrop.

"Can't tell what he's goin' to be, nother. Well, if the rain don't stop, we will, that's one thing."

The rain did not stop; and though the coach did, it was not till evening had set in. And that was too late. The wet and cold had wrought for more days than one; they brought on disease from which even Winthrop's strong frame and spirit could not immediately free him. He lay miserably ill all the next day and the next night, and yet another twelve hours; and then finding that his dues paid would leave him but one dollar unbroken, Winthrop dragged himself as he might out of bed and got into the stage-coach for Mannahatta which set off that same evening.

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Chapter XVI

I reckon this always -- that a man is never undone till he be hanged; nor never welcome to a place, till some certain shot be paid, and the hostess say, welcome. TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.

What a journey that was, of weariness and pain and strong will. Unfit, and almost unable to travel, empty of means and resources almost alike, he would go, -- and he was going; and sheer determination stood in the place and filled the want of all things beside. It was means and resources both; for both are at the command of him who knows how to command them. But though the will stand firm, it may stand very bare of cheering or helping thoughts; and so did Winthrop's that live-long night. There was no wavering, but there was some sadness that kept him company.

The morning broke as cheerless as his mood. It had rained during the night and was still raining, or sleeting, and freezing as fast as it fell. The sky was a leaden grey; the drops that came down only went to thicken the sheet of ice that lay upon everything. No face of the outer world could be more unpromising than that which slowly greeted him, as the night withdrew her veil and the stealthy steps of the dawn said that no bright day was chasing her forward. Fast enough it lighted up the slippery way, the glistening fences, the falling sleet which sheathed fields and houses with glare ice. And the city, when they came to it, was no better. It was worse; for the dolefulness was positive here, which before in the broad open country was only negative. The icy sheath was now upon things less pure than itself. The sleet fell where cold and cheerlessness seemed to be the natural state of things. Few people ventured into the streets, and those few looked and moved as if they felt it a sad morning, which probably they did. The very horses stumbled along their way, and here and there a poor creature had lost footing entirely and gone down on the ice. Slowly and carefully picking its way along, the stage-coach drew up at last at its pace in Court St.

The disease had spent itself, or Winthrop's excellent constitution had made good its rights; for he got out of the coach feeling free from pain, though weak and unsteady as if he had been much longer ill. It would have been pleasant to take the refreshment of brushes and cold water, for his first step; but it must have been a pleasure paid for; so he did not go into the house. For the same reason he did not agree to the offer of the stage-driver to carry him and his baggage to the end of his journey. He looked about for some more humble way of getting his trunk thither, meaning to take the humblest of all for himself. But porters seemed all to have gone off to breakfast or to have despaired of a job. None were in sight. Only a man was shuffling along on the other side of the way, looking over at the stage-coach.

"Here, Jem -- Tom -- Patrick!" -- cried the stage-driver, -- "can't you take the gentleman's trunk for him?"

"Michael, at your service, and if it's all one t' ye," said the person called, coming over. "I'm the boy! Will this be the box?"

"That is it; but how will you take it?" said Winthrop.

"Sure I'll carry it -- asy -- some kind of a way," said Michael, handling the trunk about in an unsettled fashion and seeming to meditate a hoist of it to his shoulders. "Where will it go, sir-r?"

"Stop, -- that won't do -- that handle won't hold," said the trunk's master. "Haven't you a wheelbarrow here?"

"Well that's a fact," said Michael, letting the end of the trunk down into the street with a force that threatened its frail constitution; -- "if the handle wouldn't hould, there'd be no hoult onto it, at all. Here! -- can't you let us have a barrow, some one amongst ye? -- I'll be back with it afore you'll be wanting it, I'll engage."

Winthrop seconded the application; and the wheelbarrow after a little delay came forth. The trunk was bestowed on it by the united efforts of the Irishman and the ostler.

"Now, don't let it run away from you, Pat," said the latter.

"It'll not run away from Michael, I'll engage," said that personage with a capable air, pulling up first his trowsers band and then the wheelbarrow handles, to be ready for a start. "Which way, then, sir, will I turn?"

Winthrop silently motioned him on, for in spite of weakness of body and weariness of spirit he felt too nervously inclined to laugh, to trust his mouth with any demonstrations. Michael and the wheelbarrow went on ahead and he followed, both taking the middle of the street where the ice was somewhat broken up, for on the sidewalk there was no safety for anybody. Indeed safety anywhere needed to be cared for. And every now and then some involuntary movement of Michael and the barrow, together with some equally unlooked-for exclamation of the former, by way of comment or explanation, startled Winthrop's eye and ear, and kept up the odd contrast of the light with the heavy in his mind's musings. It had ceased to rain, but the sky was as leaden grey as ever, and still left its own dull look on all below it. Winthrop's walk along the streets was a poor emblem of his mind's travelling at the time; -- a painful picking the way among difficulties, a struggle to secure a footing where foothold there was not; the uncertain touch and feeling of a cold and slippery world. All true, -- not more literally than figuratively. And upon this would come, with a momentary stop and push forward of the wheelbarrow, --

"'Faith, it's asier going backwards nor for'ards! -- Which way will I turn, yer honour? is it up or down?"

"Straight ahead."

"Och, but I'd rather the heaviest wheeling that ever was invinted, sooner nor this little slide of a place. -- Here we go! -- Och, stop us! -- Och, but the little carriage has taken me to itself intirely. It was all I could do to run ahint and keep up wid the same. Would there be much more of the hills to go down, yer honour, the way we're going?"

"I don't know. Keep in the middle of the street."

"Sure I'm blessed if I can keep any place!" said Michael, whose movements were truly so erratic and uncertain that Winthrop's mood of thoughtfulness was more than once run down by them. -- "The trunk's too weighty for me, yer honour, -- it will have its own way and me after it -- here we go! -- Och, it wouldn't turn out if it was for an angel itself. Maybe yer honour wouldn't go ahead and stop it?"

"No chance, I'm afraid," said Winthrop, whose mouth was twitching at the trot of the Irishman's feet after the wheelbarrow.

"Och, but we'll never get down there!" he said as he paused at the top of a long slope. "Then I never knew before what a hard time the carriage has to go after the horses! We'll never get down there, yer honour?"

"Never's a great word, Michael."

"It is, sir!"

"I think you can get down there if you try."

"Very well, sir! -- I suppose I will."

But he muttered Irish blessings or cursings to himself as he took up his trowsers and wheelbarrow handles again.

"Yer honour, do ye think we'll ever keep on our feet till the bottom?"

"If you don't come down the wheelbarrow won't, I think, Michael."

"Then I suppose we'll both be to come," said the man resignedly. "Yer honour'll consider the bad way, I expict."

'His honour' had reason to remember it. They were going down Bank St., where the fall of ground was rather rapid, and the travel of the morning had not yet been enough to break up the smooth glare of the frozen sleet. The Irishman and the barrow got upon a run, the former crying out, "Och, it will go, yer honour!" -- and as it would go, it chose its own course, which was to run full tilt against a cart which stood quietly by the sidewalk. Neither Michael's gravity nor that of the wheelbarrow could stand the shock. Both went over, and the unlucky trunk was tumbled out into the middle of the street. But the days when the old trunk could have stood such usage were long past. The hasp and hinge gave way, the cover sprang, and many a thing they should have guarded from public eyes flew or rolled from its hiding place out upon the open street.

Winthrop from higher ground had beheld the overthrow, and knew what he must find when he got to the bottom. Two or three pair of the socks little Winnie had knitted for him had bounced out and scattered themselves far and wide, one even reaching the gutter. Some sheets of manuscript lay ingloriously upon the wheelbarrow or were getting wet on the ice. One nicely "done up" shirt was hopelessly done for; and an old coat had unfolded itself upon the pavement, and was fearlessly telling its own and its master's condition to all the passersby. Two or three books and several clean pockethandkerchiefs lay about indifferently, and were getting no good; an old shoe on the contrary seemed to be at home. A paper of gingercakes, giving way to the suggestions of the brother shoe, had bestowed a quarter of its contents all abroad; and the open face of the trunk offered a variety of other matters to the curiosity of whom it might concern; the broken cover giving but very partial hindrance.

The Irishman had gathered himself, and himself only, out of the fallen condition in which all things were.

"Bad luck to the ould thing, then!" -- was his sense of the matter.

"You needn't wish that," said Winthrop.

"Then, yer honour, I wouldn't wish anything better to meself, if I could ha' helped it. If meself had been in the box, I couldn't ha' taken it more tinder, till we began to go, and then, plase yer honour, I hadn't no hoult of anything at all at all."

"Take hold now, then," said Winthrop, "and set this up straight; and then see if you can get a sixpenny worth of rope anywhere."

The man went off, and Winthrop gathered up his stray possessions from the street and the gutter and with some difficulty got them in their places again; and then stood mounting guard over the wheelbarrow and baggage until the coming of the rope; thinking perhaps how little he had to take care of and how strange it was there should be any difficulty in his doing it.

More care, or an evener way, brought them at last, without further mishap, to Diamond St., and along Diamond St. to Mr. Forriner's house and store. Both in the same building; large and handsome enough, at least as large and handsome as its neighbours; the store taking the front of the ground floor. Mr. Forriner stood in the doorway taking a look at the day, which probably he thought promised him little custom; for his face was very much the colour of the weather.

Winthrop stopped the wheelbarrow before the house; went up and named his name.

"Winthrop Landholm!" -- the touch of Mr. Forriner's hand said nothing at all unless it were in the negative; -- "how d'ye do, sir. Come to make a visit in Mannahatta?"

"No, sir. I have come here to stay."

"Ah! -- hum. Sister well?"

"Very well, sir."

"Left home yesterday?"

"No sir -- three days ago."

"Ah? where have you been?"

"In bed, sir -- caught cold in the rain Tuesday."

"Tuesday! -- yes, it did rain considerable all along Tuesday. Where were you?"

"By the way, sir."

"Just got here, eh? -- bad time."

"I could not wait for a good one."

"What are you calculating to do here?"

"Study law, sir."

"Law! -- hum. Do you expect to make money by that?"

"If I don't, I am afraid I shall not make money by anything," said Winthrop.

"Hum! -- I guess there aint much money made by the law," said Mr. Forriner taking a pinch of snuff. "It's a good trade to starve by. How long have you to study?"

"All the time I have to live, sir."

"Eh? -- and how do you expect to live in the meantime?"

"I shall manage to live as long as I study."

"Well I hope you will -- I hope you will," said Mr. Forriner. "You'll come in and take breakfast with us?"

"If you will allow me, sir."

"You haven't had breakfast yet?"

"No sir, nor supper."

"Well, I guess wife's got enough for you. If that's your box you'd better get the man to help you in with it. You can set it down here behind the door."

"Is it the right place, sir?" inquired Michael as Winthrop came out to him.

"No" said Winthrop. "But you may help me in with the trunk."

Michael was satisfied that he had the right money, and departed; and Winthrop followed Mr. Forriner through a narrow entry cut off from the store, to a little back room, which was the first of the domestic premises. Here stood a table, and Mrs. Forriner; a hard-featured lady, in a muslin cap likewise hard-featured; there was a "not-give-in" look, very marked, in both, cap and lady. A look that Winthrop recognized at once, and which her husband seemed to have recognized a great while.

"Mrs. Forriner!" said that gentleman to his nephew. "My dear, this is Cousin Winthrop Landholm -- Orphah's son."

"How do you do, sir?" said Mrs. Forriner's eyes and cap; her tongue moved not.

"Just come in town," pursued her husband; "and has come to take breakfast with us."

"Have you come in to stay, cousin? or are you going back again to the North?"

"I am not going back at present -- I am going to stay," said Winthrop.

The lady was standing up, waiting the instant arrival of breakfast, or not enough at ease in her mind to sit down. The table and room and furniture, though plain enough and even mean in their character, had notwithstanding a sufficient look of homely comfort.

"You didn't like it up there where you were?" she went on, changing the places of things on the table with a dissatisfied air.

"Up where, ma'am?"

"O this is not Rufus, -- this is Winthrop, my dear," said Mr. Forriner. "Cousin Winthrop has just come down from -- I forget -- from home. What does brother Landholm call his place, cousin?"

"We sometimes call it after our mountain, 'Wut-a-qut-o.'"

How sweet the syllables seemed in Winthrop's lips!

"What?" put in the lady.

Winthrop repeated.

"I should never remember it. -- Then this is another cousin?" she remarked to Mr. Forriner; -- "and not the one that was here before?"

"No, my dear. It is Rufus that is in the country up North somewhere -- Cousin Winthrop is coming here to be a lawyer, he tells me."

"Will you sit up, cousin?" said the lady somewhat dryly, after a minute's pause, as her handmaid set a Britannia metal tea- pot on the board. The meaning of the request being that he should move his chair up to the table, Winthrop did so; for to do the family justice he had sat down some time before.

"How will your mother do without you at home?" inquired Mrs. Forriner, when she had successfully apportioned the milk and sugar in the cups.

"I have not been at home for three years past."

"Has she other sons with her?"

"Not another so old as myself."

"It's pretty hard on her, aint it, to have her two eldest go off?"

"Where have you been these three years?" put in Uncle Forriner.

"At Shagarack, sir."

"Ah! -- Brother Landholm is bringing up all his sons to be civilians, it seems."

Winthrop was not very clear what his questioner meant; but as it was probable Mr. Forriner himself was in the same condition of darkness, he refrained from asking.

"What's at Shagarack?" said Mrs. Forriner.

"A College, my dear."

"College! -- Have you just come to the city, cousin?"

"He caught cold in the rain last Tuesday and has been lying by ever since, and only got in town this morning."

"Have you got a place to stay?"

"Not yet, ma'am. I have been but two hours here."

"Well, you had better see to that the first thing, and come here and take dinner -- that'll give you a chance. You'll easily find what you want."

"Not this morning, I think, unless it is to be found very near by," said Winthrop; "for my feet would hardly carry me a hundred yards."

"You see, he's weak yet," put in Mr. Forriner.

"Didn't you walk here, cousin?" said the lady.

"Unfortunately, I did, ma'am; for I have not strength to walk anywhere else."

"O well, you can go up stairs and lie down and get some rest; you'll be better by afternoon I dare say. Will you have another cup of tea?"

But Winthrop declined it.

"He don't look right smart," said Mr. Forriner. "I reckon he'll have to go to bed for a while. Cousin, if you'll come up stairs, I'll shew you a place where you can sleep."

They went up accordingly.

"Mr. Forriner --" called his wife from the bottom of the stairs when he and Winthrop had reached the top -- "Mr. Forriner! -- the end room -- put him in the end room."

"Yes -- it isn't very big, but you won't mind that to take a nap in," said Mr. Forriner, opening the door and ushering Winthrop in.

Where he left him; and what secrets Winthrop's pillow knew were known to none but his pillow. But the morning was not all lost in sleep; and home's fair images did come most sweet about him before sleep came at all.

He was called to dinner, but chose sleep rather, and slept well all the afternoon. Towards evening he roused himself, and though feeling very little strength to boast of, he dressed himself and went out.

The day had changed. A warmer temperature had thawed off the thin sleet, and the pavements were drying. The rain-cloud of the morning was broken up and scattering hither and thither, and through the clefts of it the sun came blinking in upon the world. The light was pleasant upon the wet streets and the long stacks of building and the rolling clouds; and the change in the air was most soothing and mild after the morning's harsh breath. Winthrop tasted and felt it as he walked up the street; but how can the outer world be enjoyed by a man to whom the world is all outer? It only quickened his sense of the necessity there was he should find another climate for his mind to live in. But his body was in no state to carry him about to make discoveries. He must care for that in the first place. After some inquiries and wandering about, he at last made his way into Bank St. and found an eating-house, very near the scene of his morning's disaster. Winthrop had very few shillings to be extravagant with; he laid down two of them in exchange for a small mutton chop and some bread; and then, somewhat heartened, set out upon his travels again, crossing over to the west side of the city. He felt glad, as he went, that his mother -- and his little sister -- did not know at that moment how utterly alone and foundationless he and his undertaking were standing in the place he had chosen for the scene of his labours and the home of his future life. Yet he corrected himself. Not 'foundationless,' while his strong will stood unmoved and untouched by circumstance. Let that not be conquered, it would surely be conqueror, in the long run; and he determined it should have as long a run as was necessary. He could not help the coming to his mind, as he slowly walked up Beaver St., of his mother's recipe against disappointment, and the conversation had about it years before; and the words, "Whatsoever he doeth shall prosper," as Rufus's voice had given them, came back fresh and with a moment's singular doubt and yearning touching their faithfulness. Himself, in that flash of light, he saw to be weak, and not strong. What if it should be so indeed? "Whatsoever he doeth -- SHALL PROSPER." Upon the uncertainty of human things, upon the tumult of human difficulties and resolves, the words came like a strange breath of peace, from somewhere unknown, but felt to be a region of health and strength. Yet the qualifications to take the promise were not in Winthrop's hand; to seek them seemed to be a one side of his purpose; he left them on one side, and went on.

He was bending his steps towards the meeting of Beaver and Little South Sts., the sole point of light which he knew in the city. It seemed to him that rather less of the sun's cheer got into Diamond St. than anywhere else. Bank St. was a heartsome place in comparison. He made his way slowly up Beaver St. looking for Little South, and passing what to him were a great many streets without finding that one. As he drew near still another, his eye was taken with a man standing on the sidewalk before the corner house; a tall, personable, clean-looking man; who on his part looked first steadily at Winthrop and then came down to meet him, laughing and holding out his hand before he got near.

"How do you do?" was his first cordial salutation. -- "It's Mr. Landholm! -- I knew it! -- I knew you, from your likeness to your brother. We've been looking for you. Come in, come in! How is your brother, Mr. Landholm?"

Winthrop was taken by surprise and could hardly say.

"I knew you as far off as I could see you -- I said to myself, 'That's Mr. Landholm!' I am very glad to see you, sir. You've just got here?"

"This morning. But what right have I to be expected?"

"O we knew you were coming. Your room's ready for you -- empty and waiting, and we've been waiting and lonesome too, ever since Mr. William went away. How is Mr. William, Mr. Landholm?"

"Well, sir, and full of kindly remembrances of you."

"Ah, he's not forgotten here," said Mr. Inchbald. "He won't be forgotten anywhere. Here's my sister, Mr. Landholm, -- my sister, Mrs. Nettley. -- Now, my dear sir, before we sit down, tell me, -- you haven't any other place to stay?"

"I have not, Mr. Inchbald, indeed."

"Then come up and see what we have to give you, before we strike a bargain. Doll -- won't you give us a cup of tea by the time we come down? Mr. Landholm will be the better of the refreshment. You have had a tiresome journey this weather, Mr. Landholm?"

As they mounted the stairs he listened to Winthrop's account of his illness, and looked at him when they got to the top, with a grave face of concern it was pleasant to meet. They had come up to the very top; the house was a small and insignificant wooden one, of two stories.

"This is your room," said Mr. Inchbald, opening the door of the front attic, -- "this is the room your brother had; it's not much, and there's not much in it; but now my dear friend, till you find something better, will you keep possession of it? and give us the pleasure of having you? -- and one thing more, will you speak of pay when you are perfectly at leisure to think of it, and not before, or never, just as it happens; -- will you?"

"I'll take you at your word, sir; and you shall take me at mine, when the time comes."

"That I'll do," said Mr. Inchbald. "And now it's a bargain. Shake hands, -- and come let's go down and have some tea. -- Doll, I hope your tea is good to-night, for Mr. Landholm is far from well. Sit down -- I wish your brother had the other place."

That tea was a refreshment. It was served in the little back room of the first floor, which had very much the seeming of being Mrs. Nettley's cooking room too. The appointments were on no higher scale of pretension than Mrs. Forriner's, yet they gave a far higher impression of the people that used them; why, belongs to the private mystery of cups and saucers and chairs, which have an odd obstinate way of their own of telling the truth. "Doll" was the very contrast to the lady of the other tea-table. A little woman, rather fleshy, in a close cap and neat spare gown, with a face which seemed a compound of benevolent good-will, and anxious care lest everybody should not get the full benefit of it. It had known care of another kind too. If her brother had, his jovial, healthy, hearty face gave no sign.

After tea Winthrop went back to Diamond St.

"We didn't wait for you," said Mr. Forriner as he came in, -- "for we thought you didn't intend probably to be back to tea."

"What success have you had?" inquired his better half.

"I have had tea, ma'am," said Winthrop.

"Have you found any place?"

"Or the place found me."

"You have got one! -- Where is it?"

"In Beaver St. -- the place where my brother used to be."

"What's the name?" said Mr. Forriner.

"Inchbald."

"What is he?" asked Mrs. Forriner.

"An Englishman -- a miniature painter by profession."

"I wonder if he makes his living at that?" said Mrs. Forriner.

"What do you have to pay?" said her husband.

"A fair rent, sir. And now I will pay my thanks for storage and take away my trunk."

"To-night?" said Mr. Forriner.

"Well, cousin, we shall be glad to see you sometimes," said Mrs. Forriner.

"At what times, ma'am?" said Winthrop.

He spoke with a straightforward simplicity which a little daunted her.

"O," she said colouring, "come when you have an hour to spare -- any time when you have nothing better to do."

"I will come then," he said smiling.

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Chapter XVII

Now he weighs time, Even to the utmost grain. KING HENRY V.

"Mannahatta, Dec. -- 1813.

"My dear friends at home,

"I am as well and as happy as I can be anywhere away from you. That to be sure is but a modicum of happiness and good condition -- very far from the full perfection which I have known is possible; but you will all be contented, will you not, to hear that I have so much, and that I have no more? I don't know -- I think of your dear circle at home -- and though I cannot wish the heaven over your heads to be a whit less bright, I cannot help wishing that you may miss one constellation. You can't have any more than that from poor human nature -- selfish in the midst of its best generosity. And yet, mother and Winifred, your faces rise up to shame me; and I must correct my speech and say man's nature; I do believe that some at least of your side of the world are made of better stuff than mine.

"'All are not such.'

"But you want to hear of me rather than of yourselves, and I come back to where I began.

"I went to see Mr. De Wort the day after I reached here. I like him very well. He received me politely, and very handsomely waived the customary fee ($250) and admitted me to the privileges of his office upon working terms. So I am working now, for him and for myself, as diligently as I ever worked in my life -- in a fair way to be a lawyer, Winnie. By day engrossing deeds and copying long-winded papers, about the quarrels and wrongs of Mr. A. and Mr. B. -- and at night digging into parchment-covered books, a dryer and barrener soil than any near Wut-a-qut-o or on the old mountain itself, and which must nevertheless be digged into for certain dry and musty fruits of knowledge to be fetched out of them. I am too busy to get the blues, but when I go out to take an exercise walk now and then at dusk or dawn, I do wish I could transport myself to the neighbourhood of that same mountain, and handle the axe till I had filled mother's fireplace, or take a turn in the barn at father's wheat or flax. I should accomplish a good deal before you were up; but I wouldn't go away without looking in at you.

"I am in the same house where Rufus lived when he was in Mannahatta, with his friend Mr. Inchbald; and a kinder friend I do not wish for. He is an Englishman -- a fine-looking and fine-hearted fellow -- ready to do everything for me, and putting me upon terms almost too easy for my comfort. He is a miniature painter, by profession, but I fear does not make much of a living. That does not hinder his being as generous as if he had thousands to dispose of. His heart does not take counsel with his purse, nor with anything but his heart. He lives with a widowed sister who keeps his house; and she is as kind in her way as he is in his, though the ways are different. I am as much at home here as I can be. I have Rufus's old room; it is a very pleasant one, and if there is not much furniture, neither do I want much. It holds my bed and my books; and my wardrobe at present does not require very extensive accommodations; and when I am in the middle of one of those said parchment-covered tomes, it signifies very little indeed what is outside of them or of me, at the moment. So you may think of me as having all I desire, so far as I myself am concerned; for my license and my use of it, must be worked and waited for. I shall not be a great lawyer, dear Winnie, under three years at least.

"For you all, I desire so much that my heart almost shuts up its store and says nothing. So much that for a long time, it may be, I can have no means of helping you to enjoy. Dear father and mother, I hope I have not on the whole lessened your means of enjoyment by striking out this path for myself. I trust it will in the end be found to be the best for us all. I have acted under the pressure of an impulse that seemed strong as life. I could do no other than as I have done. Yet I can hardly bear to think of you at home sometimes. Dear Winnie and Asahel, our images rise up and lie down with me. Asahel must study hard every minute of time he can get. And Winnie, you must study too every minute that it does not tire you, and when mother does not want you. And write to me. That will do you good, and it will do me good too.

"Give my love to Karen.

"Yours all, faithfully,

"Winthrop Landholm.

"P. S. -- I have seen nobody yet but Mr. Herder."

When Winthrop went to put this letter in the post, he drew out the following:

"To Winthrop Landholm, Esq.:

At Mr. George Inchbald's,

"Cor. Beaver and Little South Sts., Mannahatta.

"I am so tired, Governor, with the world and myself to-night, that I purpose resting myself at your expense, -- in other words, to pour over all my roiled feelings from my own heart into yours, hoping benevolently to find my own thereby cleared. What will be the case with yours, I don't like to stop to think; but incline to the opinion, which I have for many years held, that nothing can roil it. You are infinitely better than I, Governor; you deserve to be very much happier; and I hope you are. The truth is, for I may as well come to it, -- I am half sick of my work. I can see your face from here, and know just what its want of expression expresses. But stop. You are not in my place, and don't know anything about it. You are qualifying yourself for one of the first literary professions -- and it is one of the greatest matters of joy to me to think that you are. You are bidding fair to stand, where no doubt you will stand, at the head of society. Nothing is beyond your powers; and your powers will stop short of nothing within their reach. I know you, and hug myself (not having you at hand) every day to think what sort of a brother I have got.

"Governor, I have something in me too, and I am just now in a place not calculated to develope or cultivate the finer part of a man's nature. My associates, without an exception, are boors and donkeys, not unfrequently combining the agreeable properties of both in one anomalous animal yclept a clown. With them my days, for the greater part, are spent; and my nights in a series of calculations almost equally extinguishing to any brightness of mind or spirit. The consequence is I feel my light put out! -- not hid under a bushel, but absolutely quenched in its proper existence. I felt so when I began to write this letter; but by dint of looking steadily for so long a time towards you, I perceive a reflection of light and warmth coming back upon me and beginning to take effect upon my own tinder, whereby I gather that it is capable of being ignited again. Seriously, Winthrop, I am sick of this. This was not what we left home for. I suppose in time, and with business enough, one might make money in this way, but money is not our object in life. It cannot satisfy me, and I trust not you. What shall I do? I must finish this piece of work -- that will keep me in the wilds and fastnesses of this beautiful region (for it is a superb country, Winthrop; nature goes far here to make up for the want of all other discoursers whatever. I have sometimes felt as if she would make a poet of me, would I, nold I,) the finishing of my work here will detain me in the North at least till June or July of the coming summer; perhaps August. And then it is intimated to me my services would be acceptable out West -- somewhere near Sawcusto. I have a great mind to come to Mannahatta -- perhaps take a tutorship till something better offers -- Herder said I would have no sort of difficulty in getting one, or at least he said what amounted to that -- and perhaps, eventually, enter the political line. I am undecided, except in my disapprobation and dislike of what and where I now am. I have half an inclination to study law with you. It is hard to do anything with Fortune's wheel when one is at the very bottom; and the jade seems to act as if you were a drag upon her. And it is hard that you and I should be at opposite sides of the world while we are both tugging at said wheel. I sometimes think we could work to more advantage nearer together; we could work with somewhat more comfort. I am in exile here. Write me as soon as you can.

"My pleasantest thoughts are of you. Herder is as good as he can be, and you are his favourite; you will presently have the best literary society, through his means. You don't speak of Haye. Don't you go there? You had better, Winthrop; -- you may find a short cut to the top of Fortune's wheel through the front door of his house. At any rate, there are two very pretty girls there and a number of other pleasant things, with which you will do well to make yourself acquainted, come thereafter what may. I wrote to them at home a week or two ago.

W. Landholm.

"P. S. Isn't Inchbald a good fellow?"

The next post went out with the answer.

"To William Landholm, Esq., North Lyttleton, Sassafras Co.

"My dear Rufus,

"Stick to your choice. Go West, and do not come here. Do not be discouraged by the fact of making money. And don't try to turn Fortune's wheel by force, for it will break your arms.

"Yours ever,

"Winthrop Landholm."

Winthrop did not tell them at home that he was giving lessons in the classics several hours daily, in order to live while he was carrying on his own studies; nor that, to keep the burden of his kind hosts, as well as his own burden, from growing any heavier, he had refused to eat with them; and was keeping himself in the most frugal manner, partly by the help of a chop-house, and partly by the countenance and support of a very humble little tin coffee-pot and saucepan in his own attic at home. Mr. Haye's front door he had never entered, and was more than indifferent where or what it led to.

"Why for do you not come to your friend, Mr. Haye, ever?" said Mr. Herder to him one day.

"I am short of time, Mr. Herder."

"Time! -- But you come to see me?"

"I have time for that."

"I am glad of it," said the naturalist, "for there is no person I like to see better come into my room; but ozer people would like to see you come in too."

"I am not sure of that, Mr. Herder."

"I am sure," said his friend looking kindly at him. "You are working too much."

"I can't do that, sir."

"Come wiz me to Mr. Haye to-night!"

"No sir, thank you."

"What for do you say that?"

"Because it is kind in you to ask me," said Winthrop smiling.

"You will not let nobody be of no use to you," said the naturalist.

Winthrop replied by a question about a new specimen; and the whole world of animate nature was presently buried in the bowels of the earth, or in the depths of philosophy, which comes to about the same thing.

But it fell out that same day that Winthrop, going into the chop-house to fit himself for hard work with a somewhat better dinner than usual, planted himself just opposite a table which five minutes after was taken by Mr. Haye. It happened then that after the usual solitary and selfish wont of such places, the meals were near over before either of the gentlemen found out he had ever seen the other. But in the course of Mr. Haye's second glass of wine, his eye took a satisfied fit of roving over the company; and presently discovered something it had seen before in the figure and face opposite to him and in the eye which was somewhat carelessly running over the columns of a newspaper. Glass in hand Mr. Haye rose, and the next instant Winthrop felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Mr. Landholm -- isn't it? I thought so. Why, I've been on the point of coming to look after you this last fortnight past, Mr. Landholm, but business held me so tight by the button -- I'm very glad to meet you -- Will you join me? --"

"Thank you, sir -- I must not; for business holds me by the hand at this moment."

"A glass of wine?"

"Thank you sir, again."

"You will not?"

"No, sir. I have no acquaintance in that quarter, and do not wish to be introduced."

"But my dear Mr. Landholm! -- are you serious?"

"Always, sir."

"Most extraordinary! -- But can't you be persuaded? I think you are wrong."

"I must abide the consequences, I am afraid."

"Well, stay! -- Will you come to my house to-night and let me give you some other introductions?"

"I cannot refuse that, sir."

"Then come up to tea. How's your father? --"

So Winthrop was in for it, and went about his afternoon business with the feeling that none would be done in the evening. Which did not make him more diligent, because it could not.

Mr. Haye's house was near the lower end of the Parade, and one of the best in the city. It was a very handsome room in which Winthrop found the family; as luxuriously fitted up as the fashion of those times permitted; and the little group gathered there did certainly look as if all the business of the world was done without them, and a good part of it for them; so undoubtedly easy and comfortable was the flow of their laces and the sweep of their silk gowns; so questionless of toil or endurance was the position of each little figure upon soft cushions, and the play of pretty fingers with delicate do-nothing bobbins and thread. Rose was literally playing with hers, for the true business of the hour seemed to be a gentleman who sat at her feet on an ottoman, and who was introduced to Winthrop as Mr. Satterthwaite. Elizabeth according to her fashion sat a little apart and seemed to be earnestly intent upon some sort of fine net manufacture. They three were all.

Winthrop's reception was after the former manner; from Rose extremely and sweetly free and cordial; from Elizabeth grave and matter-of-fact. She went back to her net-work; and Rose presently found Mr. Satterthwaite very interesting again, and went back to him, so far as looks and talk were concerned. Winthrop could but conclude that he was not interesting, for neither of the ladies certainly found him so. He had an excellent chance to make up his mind about the whole party; for none of them gave him any thing else to do with it.

Rose was a piece of loveliness, to the eye, such as one would not see in many a summer day; with all the sweet flush of youth and health she was not ill-named. Fresh as a rose, fresh-coloured, bright, blooming; sweet too, one would say, for a very pretty smile seemed ever at home on the lips; -- to see her but once, she would be noted and remembered as a most rare picture of humanity. But Winthrop had seen her more than once. His eye passed on.

Her cousin had changed for the better; though it might be only the change which years make in a girl at that age, rather than any real difference of character. She had grown handsomer. The cheek was well rounded out now, and had a clear healthy tinge, though not at all Rose's white and red. Elizabeth's colour only came when there was a call for it and then it came promptly. And she was not very apt to smile; when she did, it was more often with a careless or scornful turn, or full and bright with a sense of the ludicrous; never a loving or benevolent smile, such as those that constantly graced Rose's pretty lip. Her mouth kept its old cut of grave independence, Winthrop saw at a glance; and her eye, when by chance she lifted it and it met his, was the very same mixture of coolness and fire that it had been of old; the fire for herself, the coolness for all the rest of the world.

She looked down again at her netting immediately, but the look had probably reminded her that nobody in her father's house was playing the hostess at the moment. A disagreeable reminder it is likely, for she worked away at her netting more vigorously than ever, and it was two or three minutes before her eyes left it again to take note of what Rose and Mr. Satterthwaite were thinking about. Her look amused Winthrop, it was so plain an expression of impatient indignation that they did not do what they left her to do. But seeing they were a hopeless case, after another minute or two of pulling at her netting, she changed her seat for one on his side of the room. Winthrop gave her no help, and she followed up her duty move with a duty commonplace.

"How do you like Mannahatta, Mr. Landholm?"

"I have hardly asked myself the question, Miss Haye."

"Does that mean you don't know?"

"I cannot say that. I like it as a place of business."

"And not as a place of pleasure?"

"No. Except in so far as the pushing on of business may be pleasure."

"You are drawing a distinction in one breath which you confound in the next," said Elizabeth.

"I didn't know that you would detect it," he said with a half smile.

"Detect what?"

"The distinction between business and pleasure."

"Do you think I don't know the difference?"

"You cannot know the difference, without knowing the things to be compared."

"The things to be compared! --" said she, with a good look at him out of her dark eyes. "And which of them do you think I don't know?"

"I supposed you were too busy to have much time for pleasure," he said quietly.

"It is possible to be busy in more ways than one," said Elizabeth, after a minute of not knowing how to take him up.

"That is just what I was thinking."

"What are you busy about, Mr. Landholm, in this place of business?"

"I am only learning my trade," he answered.

"A trade! -- May I ask what?" she said, with another surprised and inquisitive look.

"A sort of cobbling trade, Miss Elizabeth -- the trade of the law."

"What does the law cobble?"

"People's name and estate."

"Cobble?" said Elizabeth. "What is the meaning of 'cobble?'"

"I don't recollect," said Winthrop. "What meaning do you give it, Miss Haye?"

"I thought it was a poor kind of mending."

"I am afraid there is some of that work done in the profession," said Winthrop smiling. "Occasionally. But it is the profession and not the law that is chargeable, for the most part."

"I wouldn't be a lawyer if that were not so," said Elizabeth. "I wouldn't be a cobbler of anything."

"To be anything else might depend on a person's faculties."

"I don't care," said Elizabeth, -- "I would not be. If I could not mend, I would let alone. I wouldn't cobble."

"What if one could neither mend nor let alone?"

"One would have less power over himself than I have, or than you have, Mr. Landholm."

"One thing at least doesn't need cobbling," he said with a smile.

"I never heard such a belittling character of the profession," she went on. "Your mother would have given it a very different one, Mr. Landholm. She would have told you, 'Open thy mouth, judge' -- what is it? -- 'and plead the cause of the poor.'"

Whether it were the unexpected bringing up of his mother's name, or the remembrance of her spirit, something procured Miss Elizabeth a quick little bright smile of answer, very different from anything she had had from Winthrop before. So different, that her eyes went down to her work for several minutes, and she forgot everything else in a sort of wonder at the change and at the beauty of expression his face could put on.

"I didn't find those words myself," she added presently; -- "a foolish man was shewing me the other day what he said was my verse in some chapter of Proverbs; and it happened to be that."

But Winthrop's answer went to something in her former speech, for it was made with a little breath of a sigh.

"I think Wut-a-qut-o is a pleasanter place than this, Miss Haye."

"O, so do I! -- at least -- I don't know that it signifies much to me what sort of a place I am in. If I can only have the things I want around me, I don't think I care much."

"How many things do you want to be comfortable?"

"O, -- books, -- and the conveniences of life; and one or two friends that one cares about."

"Cut off two of those preliminaries, -- and which one would you keep for comfort, Miss Elizabeth?"

"Couldn't do without either of 'em. What's become of my Merry- go-round, Mr. Winthrop?"

"It lies in the upper loft of the barn, with all the seams open."

"Why?"

"You remember, nobody was to use it but me."

A curious recollection of the time when it was given and of the feeling, half condescending, half haughty, with which it had been given, came over Elizabeth; and for a moment or two she was a little confused. Whether Winthrop recollected it too or whether he had a mischievous mind that she should, he said presently,

"And what's become of your horse, Miss Elizabeth?"

"He's very well," she said. "At least -- I don't know I am sure how he is, for he is up in the country."

Winthrop rose at the instant to greet Mr. Herder, and Elizabeth did not know whether the smile on his lips was for him or at her.

"Ah! Wint'rop," said the new-comer, "how do you do! I thought you would not come here wiz me this morning?"

"I thought not too, sir."

"How did you come? Miss Elisabet' did make you."

"Miss Elizabeth's father."

"He is a strange man, Miss Elisabet'! -- he would not come for me -- I could not bring him -- neizer for de love of me, nor for de love of you, nor for love of himself. He does like to have his way. And now he is here -- I do not know what for; but I am very glad to see him."

He walked Winthrop off.

"He is a strange man," thought Elizabeth; -- "he don't seem to care in the least what he ever did or may do; he would just as lief remind me of it as not. It is very odd that he shouldn't want to come here, too."

She sat still and worked alone. When Mr. Haye by and by came in, he joined Winthrop and Mr. Herder, and they three formed a group which even the serving of tea and coffee did not break up. Elizabeth's eye glanced over now and then towards the interested heads of the talkers, and then at Rose and Mr. Satterthwaite, who on the other side were also enough for each other's contentment and seemed to care for no interruption. Elizabeth interrupted nobody.

But so soon as awhile after tea Mr. Satterthwaite left the company, Rose tripped across to the other group and placed her pretty person over against the naturalist and his young friend.

"Mr. Herder, you are taking up all of Mr. Landholm -- I haven't seen him or spoken to him the whole evening."

"Dere he is, Miss Rose," said the naturalist. "Do what you like wiz him."

"But you don't give a chance. Mr. Landholm, are you as great a favourite with everybody as you are with Mr. Herder?"

"Everybody does not monopolize me, Miss Cadwallader."

"I wished so much you would come over our side -- I wanted to make you acquainted with Mr. Satterthwaite."

Winthrop bowed, and Mr. Haye remarked that Mr. Satterthwaite was not much to be acquainted with.

"No, but still -- he's very pleasant," Rose said. "And how is everything up at your lovely place, Mr. Landholm?"

"Cold, at present, Miss Cadwallader."

"O yes, of course; but then I should think it would be lovely at all times. Isn't it a beautiful place, Mr. Herder?"

"Which place, Miss Rose?"

"Why, Mr. Landholm's place, up the river, where we were that summer. And how's your mother, Mr. Landholm, and your sister? -- so kind Mrs. Landholm is! And have you left them entirely, Mr. Landholm?"

"I have brought all of myself away that I could," he said with a smile.

"Don't you wish yourself back there every day?"

"No."

"Don't you! I should think you would. How's your brother, Mr. Landholm, and where is he?"

"He is well, and in the North yet."

"Is he coming back to Mannahatta soon?"

"I have no reason to think so."

"I wish he would. I want to see him again. He is such good company."

"Mr. Wint'rop will do so well, Miss Rose," said the naturalist.

"I dare say he will," said Rose with a very sweet face.

"He won't if he goes on as he has begun," said Mr. Haye. "I asked him to dine here the day after to-morrow, Rose."

"He'll come? --"

But Mr. Landholm's face said no, and said it with a cool certainty.

"Why, Mr. Landholm! --"

"He is very -- you cannot do nozing wiz him, Miss Rose," said the naturalist. "Miss Elisabet'! --"

"Well, Mr. Herder?"

"I wish you would come over here and see what you can do."

"About what, Mr. Herder?"

"Wiz Mr. Wint'rop here."

"I just heard you say that nobody can do anything with him, Mr. Herder."

"Here he has refuse to come to dinner wiz all of us."

"If he can't come for his own pleasure, I don't suppose he would come for anybody else's," said Elizabeth.

She left her solitary chair however, and came up and stood behind Mr. Herder.

"He pleads business," said Mr. Haye.

"Miss Elisabet', we want your help," said Mr. Herder. "He is working too hard."

"I am not supposed to know what that means, sir."

"What?" said Mr. Haye.

"Working too hard."

"Work!" said Mr. Haye. "What do you know about work?"

"The personal experience of a life-time, sir," said Winthrop gravely. "Not much of the theory, but a good deal of the practice."

"I'll bear her witness of one thing," said Mr. Haye; "if she can't work herself, she can make work for other people."

"You've got it, Lizzie," said her cousin, clapping her hands.

"I don't take it," said Elizabeth. "For whom do I make work, father?"

"For me, or whoever has the care of you."

Elizabeth's cheek burned now, and her eye too, with a fire which she strove to keep under.

"It's not fair!" she exclaimed. "If I make work for you, I am sure it is work that nobody takes up."

"That's true," said her father laughing, -- "it would be too much trouble to pretend to take it all up."

"Then you shouldn't bring it up!" said Elizabeth, trembling.

"It's nothing very bad to bring up," said her father. "It's only a little extra strong machinery that wants a good engineer."

"That's no fault in the machinery, sir," said Winthrop.

"And all you have to do," suggested Mr. Herder, "is to find a good engineer."

"I am my own engineer!" said Elizabeth, a little soothed by the first remark and made desperate by the second.

"So you are!" said her cousin. "There's no doubt of that."

"Are you a good one, Miss Elisabet'?" said the naturalist, smiling at her.

"You must presume not! -- after what you have heard," she answered with abundant haughtiness.

"It is one mark of a good engineer to be a match for his machinery," said Winthrop quietly.

It was said so coolly and simply that Elizabeth did not take offence. She stood, rather cooled down and thoughtful, still at the back of Mr. Herder's chair. Winthrop rose to take leave, and Mr. Haye repeated his invitation.

"I will venture so far as to say I will come if I can, sir."

"I shall expect you," said the other, shaking his hand cordially.

Mr. Herder went with his friend. Mr. Haye soon himself followed, leaving the two ladies alone. Both sat down in silence at the table; Elizabeth with a book, Miss Cadwallader with her fancy work; but neither of them seemed very intent on what she was about. The work went on lazily, and the leaves of the book were not turned over.

"I wish I was Winthrop Landholm," said Rose at length.

"Why?" -- said her cousin, after a sufficient time had marked her utter carelessness of what the meaning might have been.

"I should have such a good chance."

"Of what?" -- said Elizabeth dryly enough.

"Of a certain lady's favour, whose favour is not very easy to gain."

"You don't care much for my favour," said Elizabeth.

"I should, if I were Winthrop Landholm."

"If you were he, you wouldn't get it, any more than you have now."

"O no. I mean, I wish I were he and not myself, you know."

"You must think well enough of him. I am sure no possible inducement could make me wish myself Mr. Satterthwaite, for a moment."

"I don't care for Mr. Satterthwaite," said Rose coolly. "But how Mr. Haye takes to him, don't he?"

"To whom?"

"Winthrop Landholm."

"I don't see how he shews it."

"Why, the way he was asking him to dinner."

"It is nothing very uncommon for Mr. Haye to ask people to dinner."

"No, but such a person."

"What 'such a person'?"

"O, a farmer's boy. Mr. Haye wouldn't have done it once. But that's the way he always comes round to people when they get up in the world."

"This one hasn't got much up in the world yet."

"He is going to, you know. Mr. Herder says so; and President Darcy says there are not two such young men seen in half a century as he and his brother."

Elizabeth laid down her book and looked over at her companion, with an eye the other just met and turned away from.

"Rose, -- how dare you talk to me so!"

"So how?" said the other, pouting and reddening, but without lifting her face from her work.

"You know, -- about my father. No matter what he does, if it were the worst thing in the world, your lips have no business to mention it to my ears."

"I wasn't saying anything bad," said Rose.

"Your notions of bad and good, and honourable and dishonourable, are very different from mine! If he did as you say, I should be bitterly ashamed."

"I don't see why."

"I will not have such things spoken of to me, -- Rose, do you understand? What my father does, no human being has a right to comment upon to me; and none shall!"

"You think you may talk as you like to me," said Rose, between pouting and crying. "I was only laughing."

"Laugh about something else."

"I wish Winthrop Landholm had been here."

"Why?"

"He'd have given you another speech about engineering."

Elizabeth took her candle and book and marched out of the room.

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