for himself, if they did. The world was as much to be struggled with
in one place as another; and, after all, was not the struggle mainly
with one's own self, and could that be avoided? Then what in himself
was wrong? what should be fought against? Who would tell him? Men
spoke roughly to him, and he answered back sharply. He couldn't help
doing that. How could he be blamed? He suspected he might be.

He knew there were better things than to chop and clear land, and
make black salts, or tend a saw-mill, or drive oxen, or sell tape and
calico; but, in these woods, poor and unfriended, how could he find
them? Was not his brother Henry studying law at Jefferson, and were
they not all proud of him, and did not everybody expect great things
of him? But Henry was different from him. Dr. Lyman believed in
him; Judge Markham spoke with respect of him. Julia Markham--how
inexpressibly lovely and radiant and distant and inaccessible she
appeared! And then he felt sore, as if her father had dealt him a
blow, and he thought of his sending him away the year before, and
wished he had explained. No matter. How he writhed again and again
under the sting of his contemptuous sarcasm! "He wouldn't even pick me
up; would leave me to lie by the wayside."

Towards sundown, weary and saddened, he reached the centre,
"Jugville," as he had named it, years before, in derision. He was a
mile and a half from home, and paused a moment to sit on the platform
in front of "Marlow's Hotel," and rest. The loungers were present in
more than usual force,--Jo and Biather Alexander, old Neaze Savage,
old Cal Chase, Tinker,--any number of old and not highly-esteemed
acquaintances.

"Hullo, Bart Ridgeley! is that you?"