instructed. I have made some attempts myself; but having no art of
instructing, no skill, no temper I suppose, I make but an indifferent
hand at it: and besides I have other business that occupies my
thoughts. Take him in hand, if you like, and the girl for company. No
matter whether you teach her anything, unless you happen to be
acquainted with needlework."

"I will talk with the children," said Colcord, "and see if I am likely
to do good with them. The lad, I see, has a singular spirit of
aspiration and pride,--no ungentle pride,--but still hard to cope with.
I will see. The little girl is a most comfortable child."

"You have read the boy as if you had his heart in your hand," said the
Doctor, rather surprised. "I could not have done it better myself,
though I have known him all but from the egg."

Accordingly, the stranger, who had been thrust so providentially into
this odd and insulated little community, abode with them, without more
words being spoken on the subject: for it seemed to all concerned a
natural arrangement, although, on both parts, they were mutually
sensible of something strange in the companionship thus brought about.
To say the truth, it was not easy to imagine two persons apparently
less adapted to each other's society than the rough, uncouth, animal
Doctor, whose faith was in his own right arm, so full of the old Adam
as he was, so sturdily a hater, so hotly impulsive, so deep, subtle,
and crooked, so obstructed by his animal nature, so given to his pipe
and black bottle, so wrathful and pugnacious and wicked,--and this mild
spiritual creature, so milky, with so unforceful a grasp; and it was
singular to see how they stood apart and eyed each other, each tacitly
acknowledging a certain merit and kind of power, though not well able