about a surveyor's life, etc.; but when he
got back to camp, matters within his breast were rather worse than
better.

He had then tried staying in camp, but without benefit,--nothing
cured, every thing aggravated. And yet he knew so perfectly well that
he was not in love, that just to realize the knowledge, one evening,
when his father was a day's march ahead, and he was having a pleasant
chat with the "chief," no one else nigh, and they were dawdling away
its closing hour with pipes, metaphysics, psychology, and like
trifles, which Claude, of course, knew all about,--Claude told him of
this singular and amusing case of haunting fantasy in his own
experience. His hearer had shown even more amusement than he, and had
gone on smiling every now and then afterward, with a significance that
at length drove Claude to bed disgusted with him and still more with
himself. There had been one offsetting comfort; an unintentional
implication had somehow slipped in between his words, that the
haunting fantasy had blue eyes and yellow hair.

"All right," the angry youth had muttered, tossing on his iron couch,
"let him think so!" And then he had tossed again, and said below his
breath, "It is not love: it is not. But I must never answer its call;
if I do, love is what it will be. My father, my father! would that I
could give my whole heart to thee as thou givest all to me!"

God has written on every side of our nature,--on the mind, on the
soul, yes, and in our very flesh,--the interdict forbidding love to
have any one direction only, under penalty of being forever dwarfed.
This Claude vaguely felt; but lacking the clear thought, he could
only cry, "Oh, is it, _is it_, selfishness for one's heart just to be
hungry and thirsty?"

And now here sat his father, on all their worldly goods, his rifle
between his knees, waiting for his son's choice, and ready to make it
his own. And here stood the son, free of foot to follow that voice
which was calling to-day louder than ever before, but feeling assured
that to follow it meant love without hope for him, and for this dear
father the pain of yielding up the larger share of his son's
heart,--as if love were subject to arithmetic!--yielding it to one
who, thought Claude, cared less for both of them than for one tress of
her black hair, one lash of her dark eyes. While he still pondered,
the father spoke.

"Claude, I tell you!" his face lighted up with courage and ambition.
"We better g