ou,
Bart, that you might be an orator of some sort?"

"Such an orator as Brutus is--cold, formal, and dead? I'd rather
not be an orator at all, 'but talk right on,' like plain, blunt Mark
Antony."

"And yet Brutus has been quoted and held up by poets and orators as a
sublime example of virtue and patriotism, young man!"

"And yet he never made murder the fashion;" and--striking an
attitude--"Caesar had his Brutus! Charles had his Cromwell! and George
III. had--what the devil did George have? He was stupid enough to have
been a mathematician, though I never heard that he was."

"Oh dear, Bart!" said the Doctor, with a sigh, "for God's sake, and
your own, do study Euclid if you can! Don't you see that your mind is
always sky-rocketing and chasing thistle-down through the air?"

"'The downy thistle-seed my fare,
My strain forever new,'"
said Bart, laughing, and preparing to go.

"By the way," asked the Doctor, "wouldn't you like to go fishing one
of these nights? We haven't been but once or twice this summer. Jonah,
and Theodore, and 'Brother Young' and I have been talking about it
for some days. We will rig up a fire-jack, if you will go, and use the
spear."

"I am afraid I would be sky-rocketing, Doctor; but send me word when
you are ready."

* * * * *

Barton had now entered upon something like a regular course. He had
one of those intense nervous temperaments that did not require or
permit excessive sleep. He arose with the first light, and took up at
once the severest study he had until breakfast, and then worked with
the boys, or alone, the most of the forenoon, at whatever on the farm,
or about the house, seemed most to want his hand; the afternoons and
evenings were given to unremitting study or reading. His tone of mind
and new habit of introspection induced him to take long walks in the
woods and secluded places, and after his work for the day was done;
he imposed upon himself a regular and systematic course, and compelled
himself to adhere to it. He saw few, went nowhere; and among that busy
people, after the little buzz occasioned by his return had subsided,
he ceased to be an object of interest or comment.

It was remarked among them that they did not hear his rifle in the
forests, and nobody had presents of wild turkeys and venison, as they
sometimes had, and he was in his own silent way shaping out his own
destiny.

He received a letter from Henry in rep