he crept gently
to his room, and was soon asleep, forgetting cares and griefs, and only
awaking as the strong sunlight fell upon his face and proclaimed the
morning.

CHAPTER XXVII. AN UNWELCOME LETTER

The doctor had guessed aright. Tony did not present himself at meeting
on Sunday. Mrs. Butler, indeed, was there, though the distance was more
than a mile, and the day a raw and gusty one, with threatenings of snow
in the air.

"Are you coming with me, Tony, to hear the minister? It will be an
interesting lecture to-day on the character of Ahab," said she, opening
his door a few inches.

"I'm afraid not, mother; I'm in for a hard day's work this morning.
Better lose Ahab than lose my examination."

Mrs. Butler did not approve of the remark, but she closed the door
and went her way, while Tony covered his table with a mass of books,
arranged paper and pens, and then, filling the bowl of a large Turkish
pipe, sat himself down, as he fancied, to work, but in reality to weave
thoughts about as profitable and as connected as the thin blue wreaths
of smoke that issued from his lips, and in watching whose wayward curls
and waftings he continued to pass hours.

I have often suspected--indeed, my experience of life leads me much to
the conviction--that for the perfect enjoyment of what is called one's
own company, the man of many resources must yield the palm to him
of none; and that the mere man of action, whose existence is stir,
movement, and adventure, can and does find his occasional hours of
solitude more pleasurable than he who brings to his reveries the
tormenting doubts and distrusts, the casuistical indecisions, and the
dreary discontents, that so often come of much reading. Certainly in
the former there is no strain,--no wear and tear. He is not called on
to breast the waves and stem the tide, but to float indolently down the
stream without even remarking the scenery that clothes the banks.

Tony, I fancy, was a master of this art; he knew how to follow up any
subject in thought till it began to become painful, and then to turn his
attention to the sea and some far-off white sail, or to the flickering
leaflet of falling snow, tossed and drifted here and there like some
castaway,--a never-failing resource. He could follow with his eyes the
azure circles of smoke, and wonder which would outstrip the other.
To fit him for the life of a "messenger," he had taken down "Cook's
Voyages;" but after reading a few