"Ah! that is a pa.s.sion, not an object. Does your ambition point in one direction? Unless it does, it is objectless."

The youth was silent. The old man proceeded:--

"I am disposed to be severe with you, my son. There is no surer sign of feebleness than in the constant beginnings and the never performings of a mind. Know thyself, is the first lesson to learn. Is it not very childish to talk of having ambition, without knowing what to do with it?

If we have ambition, it is given to us to work with. You come to me, and declare this ambition! We confer together. Your ambition seeks for utterance. You ask, 'What sort of utterance will suit an ambition such as mine?' To answer this question, we ask, 'What are your qualities?'

Did you think, William, that I disparaged yours when I recommended the law to you as a profession?"

"No, sir! oh, no! Perhaps you overrated them. I am afraid so--I think so."

"No, William, unfortunately, you do not think about it. If you would suffer yourself to think, you would speak a different language."

"I can not think--I am too miserable to think!" exclaimed the youth in a burst of pa.s.sion. The old man looked surprised. He gazed with a serious anxiety into the youth's face, and then addressed him:--

"Where have you been, William, for the last three weeks? In all that time I have not seen you."

A warm blush suffused the cheeks of the pupil. He did not immediately answer.

"Ask ME!" exclaimed a voice from behind them, which they both instantly recognised as that of Ned Hinkley, the cousin of William. He had approached them, in the earnestness of their interview, without having disturbed them. The bold youth was habited in a rough woodman's dress.

He wore a round jacket of homespun, and in his hand he carried a couple of fishing-rods, which, with certain other implements, betrayed sufficiently the object of his present pursuit.

"Ask me!" said he. "I can tell you what he's been about better than anybody else."

"Well, Ned," said the old man, "what has it been? I am afraid it is your fiddle that keeps him from his Blackstone."

"My fiddle, indeed! If he would listen to my fiddle when she speaks out, he'd be wiser and better for it. Look at him, Mr. Calvert, and say whether it's book or fiddle that's likely to make him as lean as a March pickerel in the short s.p.a.ce of three months. Only look at him, I say."

"Truly, William, I had not observed it before, but, as Ned says, you do look thin, and you tell me you are unhappy. Hard study might make you thin, but can not make you unhappy. What is it?"

The more volatile and freespoken cousin answered for him.

"He's been shot, gran'pa, since you saw him last."

"Shot?"

"Yes, shot!--He THINKS mortally. I think not. A flesh wound to my thinking, that a few months more will cure."

"You have some joke at bottom, Edward," said the old man gravely.

"Joke, sir! It's a tough joke that cudgels a plump lad into a lean one in a single season."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean to use your own language, gran'pa. Among the lessons I got from you when you undertook to fill our heads with wisdom by applications of smartness to a very different place--among the books we sometimes read from was one of Master Ovid."

"Ha! ha! I see what you're after. I understand the shooting. So you think that the blind boy has. .h.i.t William, eh?"

"A flesh wound as I tell you; but he thinks the bolt is in his heart.

I'm sure it can and will be plucked out, and no death will follow."

"Well! who's the maiden from whose eyes the arrow was barbed?"

"Margaret Cooper."

"Ah! indeed!" said the old man gravely.

"Do not heed him," exclaimed William Hinkley; but the blush upon his cheeks, still increasing, spoke a different language.

"I would rather not heed him, William. The pa.s.sions of persons so young as yourself are seldom of a permanent character. The attractions which win the boy seldom compensate the man. There is time enough for this, ten years hence, and love then will be far more rational."

"Ah, lud!--wait ten years at twenty. I can believe a great deal in the doctrine of young men's folly, but I can't go that. I'm in love myself."

"You!"

"Yes! I!--I'm hit too--and if you don't like it, why did you teach us Ovid and the rest? As for rational love, that's a new sort of thing that we never heard about before. Love was never expected to be rational.

He's known the contrary. I've heard so ever since I was knee-high to the great picture of your Cupid that you showed us in your famous Dutch edition of Apuleius. The young unmarried men feel that it's irrational; the old married people tell us so in a grunt that proves the truth of what they say. But that don't alter the case. It's a sort of natural madness that makes one attack in every person's lifetime. I don't believe in repeated attacks. Some are bit worse than others; and some think themselves bit, and are mistaken. That's the case with William, and it's that that keeps him from your law-books and my fiddle. That makes him thin. He has a notion of Margaret Cooper, and she has none of him; and love that's all of one side is neither real nor rational. I don't believe it."

William Hinkley muttered something angrily in the ears of the speaker.

"Well, well!" said the impetuous cousin, "I don't want to make you vexed, and still less do I come here to talk such politics with you.

What do you say to tickling a trout this afternoon? That's what I come for."

"It's too cool," said the old man.

"Not a bit. There's a wind from the south, and a cast of cloud is constantly growing between us and the sun. I think we shall do something--something better than talking about love, and law, where n.o.body's agreed. You, gran'pa, won't take the love; Bill Hinkley can't stomach the law, and the trout alone can bring about a reconciliation.

Come, gran'pa, I'm resolved on getting your supper to-night, and you must go and see me do it."

"On one condition only, Ned."

"What's that, gran'pa?"

"That you both sup with me."

"Done for myself. What say you, Bill?"

The youth gave a sad a.s.sent, and the rattling youth proceeded:--

"The best cure of grief is eating. Love is a sort of pleasant grief.

Many a case of affliction have I seen mended by a beefsteak. Fish is better. Get a lover to eat, rouse up his appet.i.tes, and, to the same extent, you lessen his affections. Hot suppers keep down the sensibilities; and, gran'pa, after ours, to-night, you shall have the fiddle. If I don't make her speak to you to-night, my name's Brag, and you need never again believe me."

And the good-humored youth, gathering up his canes, led the way to the hills, slowly followed by his two less elastic companions.

CHAPTER XIII.