back just by the mere
anticipation of it, I'm downright delighted with the plan."

"Indeed!" said the youth, dreamily.

"To be sure I am," resumed Billy; "and I do be thinking there 's a kind
of poethry in carrying away into the solitary pine forest minds stored
with classic lore, to be able to read one's Horace beside the gushing
stream that flows on nameless and unknown, and con over ould Herodotus
amidst adventures stranger than ever he told himself."

"It might be a happy life," said the other, slowly, almost moodily.

"Ay, and it will be," said Billy, confidently. "Think of yourself,
mounted on that saddle on a wild prairie horse, galloping free as the
wind itself over the wide savannas, with a drove of rushing buffaloes in
career before you, and so eager in pursuit that you won't stop to bring
down the scarlet-winged bustard that swings on the branch above you.
There they go, plungin' and snortin', the mad devils, with a force that
would sweep a fortress before them; and here are we after them, makin'
the dark woods echo again with our wild yells. That's what will warm
up our blood, till we 'll not be afeard to meet an army of dragoons
themselves. Them pistols once belonged to Cariatoke, a chief from Scio;
and that blade--a real Damascus--was worn by an Aga of the Janissaries.
Isn't it a picture?"

The youth poised the sword in his hand, and laid it down without a word;
while Billy continued to stare at him with an expression of intensest
amazement.

"Is it that you don't care for it all now, that your mind is changed,
and that you don't wish for the life we were talkin' over these three
weeks? Say so at once, my own darlin', and here I am, ready and willin'
never to think more of it. Only tell me what's passin' in your heart; I
ask no more."

"I scarcely know it myself," said the youth. "I feel as though in a
dream, and know not what is real and what fiction."

"How have you passed your time? What were you doin' while I was away?"

"Dreaming, I believe," said the other, with a sigh. "Some embers of my
old ambition warmed up into a flame once more, and I fancied that there
was that in me that by toil and labor might yet win upwards; and that,
if so, this mere life of action would but bring repining and regret, and
that I should feel as one who chose the meaner casket of fate, when both
were within my reach."

"So you were at work again in the studio?"

"I have been finishing the arm of the Faun in tha