Ned, and Elsie--set forth, one day of spring, leaving the house to
crusty Hannah and the great spider, in a carryall, being the only
excursion involving a night's absence that either of the two children
remembered from the house by the graveyard, as at nightfall they saw
the modest pine-built edifice, with its cupola and bell, where Ned was
to be initiated into the schoolboy. The Doctor, remembering perhaps
days spent in some gray, stately, legendary great school of England,
instinct with the boyhood of men afterwards great, puffed forth a
depreciating curse upon it; but nevertheless made all arrangements for
Ned's behoof, and next morning prepared to leave him there.

"Ned, my son, good by," cried he, shaking the little fellow's hand as
he stood tearful and wistful beside the chaise shivering at the
loneliness which he felt settling around him,--a new loneliness to
him,--the loneliness of a crowd. "Do not be cast down, my boy. Face the
world; grasp the thistle strongly, and it will sting you the less. Have
faith in your own fist! Fear no man! Have no secret plot! Never do what
you think wrong! If hereafter you learn to know that Doctor Grim was a
bad man, forgive him, and be a better one yourself. Good by, and if my
blessing be good for anything, in God's name, I invoke it upon you
heartily."

Little Elsie was sobbing, and flung her arms about Ned's neck, and he
his about hers; so that they parted without a word. As they drove away,
a singular sort of presentiment came over the boy, as he stood looking
after them.

"It is all over,--all over," said he to himself: "Doctor Grim and
little Elsie are gone out of my life. They leave me and will never come
back,--not they to me, not I to them. O, how cold the world is! Would