different from those of his family,--who, within the memory of the
neighborhood, had been content to sow and reap the rich field in front of
their homestead,--so it was, that Septimius had early manifested a taste
for study. By the kind aid of the good minister of the town he had been
fitted for college; had passed through Cambridge by means of what little
money his father had left him and by his own exertions in school-keeping;
and was now a recently decorated baccalaureate, with, as was understood, a
purpose to devote himself to the ministry, under the auspices of that
reverend and good friend whose support and instruction had already stood
him in such stead.

Now here were these young people, on that beautiful spring morning, sitting
on the hill-side, a pleasant spectacle of fresh life,--pleasant, as if
they had sprouted like green things under the influence of the warm sun.
The girl was very pretty, a little freckled, a little tanned, but with a
face that glimmered and gleamed with quick and cheerful expressions; a
slender form, not very large, with a quick grace in its movements; sunny
hair that had a tendency to curl, which she probably favored at such
moments as her household occupation left her; a sociable and pleasant
child, as both of the young men evidently thought. Robert Hagburn, one
might suppose, would have been the most to her taste; a ruddy, burly young
fellow, handsome, and free of manner, six feet high, famous through the
neighborhood for strength and athletic skill, the early promise of what
was to be a man fit for all offices of active rural life, and to be, in
mature age, the selectman, the deacon, the representative, the colonel. As
for Septimius, let him alone a moment or two, and then they would see him,
with his head bent down, brooding, brooding, his eyes fixed on some chip,
some stone, some common plant, any commonest thing, as if it were the clew
and index to some mystery; and when, by chance startled out of these
meditations, he lifted his eyes, there would be a kind of perplexity, a