m in the face from that
very page. When he remembered how he had pleased himself with that
compliment the other day, he blushed like a school-girl; and then,
thinking out the whole trick,--to hunt up his forgotten book, pick out a
phrase or two from it, and play on his weakness with it, to win his good
opinion,--for what purpose he did not know, but doubtless to use him in
some way,--he grinned with a contempt about equally divided between
himself and the young schemer.

"Ah ha!" he muttered scornfully. "Sounds like Coleridge, hey? Niccolo
Macchiavelli Bradshaw!"

From this day forward he looked on all the young lawyer's doings with
even more suspicion than before. Yet he would not forego his company and
conversation; for he was very agreeable and amusing to study; and this
trick he had played him was, after all, only a diplomatist's way of
flattering his brother plenipotentiary. Who could say? Some time or
other he might cajole England or France or Russia into a treaty with just
such a trick. Shallower men than he had gone out as ministers of the
great Republic. At any rate, the fellow was worth watching.

CHAPTER VI.

THE USE OF SPECTACLES.

The old Master of Arts had a great reputation in the house where he lived
for knowing everything that was going on. He rather enjoyed it; and
sometimes amused himself with surprising his simple-hearted landlady and
her boarders with the unaccountable results of his sagacity. One thing
was quite beyond her comprehension. She was perfectly sure that Mr.
Gridley could see out of the back of his head, just as other people see
with their natural organs. Time and again he had told her what she was
doing when his back was turned to her, just as if he had been sitting
squarely in front of her. Some laughed at this foolish notion; but
others, who knew more of the nebulous sciences, told her it was like's
not jes' so. Folks had read letters laid ag'in' the pits o' their
stomachs, 'n' why should n't they see out o' the backs o' their heads?

Now there was a certain fact at the bottom of this belief of Mrs.
Hopkins; and as it world be a very small thing to make a mystery of so
simple a matter, the reader shall have the whole benefit of knowing all
there is in it,--not quite yet, however, of knowing all that came of it.
It was not the mirror trick, of course, which Mrs. Felix Lorraine and
other dangerous historical personages have so long made use of. It was
nothing