foliage and sky, changing from turquoise to sapphire
in the intense twilight, and to purple as the shades of evening fell.

The boys were back again, all except the graduating class, some of
whom were at Harvard, Brown, and Yale. Master Lewis was in his old
place, and Mr. Beal was again his assistant.

The Zigzag Club was broken by the final departure of the graduating
class. But Charlie Leland, William Clifton, and Herman Reed, who made
a journey on the Rhine under the direction of Mr. Beal, had returned,
and they had been active members of the school society known as the
Club.

We should say here, to make the narrative clear to those who have not
read "Zigzag Journeys in Classic Lands" and "Zigzag Journeys in the
Orient," that the boys of the Academy of Yule had been accustomed each
year to form a society for the study of the history, geography,
legends, and household stories of some chosen country, and during the
long summer vacation as many of the society as could do so, visited,
under the direction of their teachers, the lands about which they had
studied. This society was called the Zigzag Club, because it aimed to
visit historic places without regard to direct routes of travel. It
zigzagged in its travels from the associations of one historic story
to another, and was influenced by the school text-book or the works of
some pleasing author, rather than the guide-book.

The Zigzag books have been kindly received;[1] and we may here remark
parenthetically that they do not aim so much to present narratives of
travel as the histories, traditions, romances, and stories of places.
They seek to tell stories at the places where the events occurred and
amid the associations of the events that still remain. The Zigzag Club
go seeking what is old rather than what is new, and thus change the
past tense of history to the present tense.

[1] More than one hundred thousand volumes have been sold.

Charlie Leland was seated one day on the piazza of the Academy, after
school, reading Hawthorne's "Twice-Told Tales." Master Lewis presently
took a seat beside him; and "Gentleman Jo," whom we introduced to our
readers in "Zigzags in the Occident," was resting on the steps near
them.

Gentleman Jo was the janitor. He was a relative of Master Lewis, and a
very intelligent man. He had been somewhat disabled in military
service in the West, and was thus compelled to accept a situation at
Yule that was quite below his intellig