rrents and rocks are marked on those of a
navigator. All the young girls in the country, and not a few in the
city, with which, as mentioned, he had frequent relations, were on his
list of possible availabilities in the matrimonial line of speculation,
provided always that their position and prospects were such as would make
them proper matches for so considerable a person as the future Hon.
William Murray Bradshaw.

Master Gridley had made a careful study of his old pupil since they had
resided in the same village. The old professor could not help admiring
him, notwithstanding certain suspicious elements in his character; for
after muddy village talk, a clear stream of intelligent conversation was
a great luxury to the hard-headed scholar. The more he saw of him, the
more he learned to watch his movements, and to be on his guard in talking
with him. The old man could be crafty, with all his simplicity, and he
had found out that under his good-natured manner there often lurked some
design more or less worth noting, and which might involve other interests
deserving protection.

For some reason or other the old Master of Arts had of late experienced a
certain degree of relenting with regard to himself, probably brought
about by the expressions of gratitude from worthy Mrs. Hopkins for acts
of kindness to which he himself attached no great value. He had been
kind to her son Gifted; he had been fatherly with Susan Posey, her
relative and boarder; and he had shown himself singularly and
unexpectedly amiable with the little twins who had been adopted by the
good woman into her household. In fact, ever since these little
creatures had begun to toddle about and explode their first consonants,
he had looked through his great round spectacles upon them with a decided
interest; and from that time it seemed as if some of the human and social
sentiments which had never leafed or flowered in him, for want of their
natural sunshine, had begun growing up from roots which had never lost
their life. His liking for the twins may have been an illustration of
that singular law which old Dr. Hurlbut used to lay down, namely, that at
a certain period of life, say from fifty to sixty and upward, the
grand-paternal instinct awakens in bachelors, the rhythms of Nature
reaching them in spite of her defeated intentions; so that when men marry
late they love their autumn child with a twofold affection,--father's and
grandfather's both in on