editation and followed her with a
smile.

"Have you found them all?" he asked.

"I've found Milton and _The Lays of Ancient Rome_ and _Don Quixote_, but
I can't find the _Meditations of Marcus Aurelius_," said she.

"Judge Maxwell has it," he nodded; "he carried it away more than a month
ago. It was the first time he ever met an English translation, he said.
I must get it from him; he has a remarkably short memory for borrowed
books."

Alice joined him in the laugh over the judge's shortcoming.

"He's a regular old dear!" she said.

"Ah, yes; if he was only forty years younger, Alice--if he was only
forty years younger!" the colonel sighed.

"I like him better the way he is," said she.

"Where did that boy ever hear tell of Marcus Aurelius?" he wondered.

"I don't know." She shook her head. "I don't understand him, he seems so
strange and deep. He's not like a boy. You'd think, from talking with
him, that he'd had university advantages."

"It's blood," said the colonel, with the proud swelling of a man who can
boast that precious endowment himself, "you can't keep it down. There's
no use talking to me about this equality between men at the hour of
birth; it's all a poetic fiction. It would take forty generations of
this European scum such as is beginning to drift across to us and taint
our national atmosphere to produce one Joe Newbolt! And he's got blood
on only one side, at that.

"But the best in all the Newbolt generations that have gone before seem
to be concentrated in that boy. He'll come through this thing as bright
as a new bullet, and he'll make his mark in the world, too. Marcus
Aurelius. Well, bless my soul!"

"Is it good?" she asked, stacking the books which she had selected on
the table, standing with her hand on them, looking down at her smiling
father with serious face.

"I wouldn't say that it would be good for a young lady with forty beaus
and unable to choose among them, or for a frivolous young thing with
three dances a week----"

"Oh, never more than two at the very height of social dissipation in
Shelbyville!" she laughed.

He lifted a finger, imposing silence, and a laugh lurked in his eyes.

"No, I'd not say that such a light-headed creature would find much
fodder in the ruminations and speculations and wise conclusions of our
respected friend, Marcus," said he. "But a lad like Joe Newbolt, with a
pair of eyes in his head like a prophet, will get a great deal of good,
and eve