no more school! I shall have your room all done, freshly, and made
so pretty; they are coming about it to-morrow.

The duck is quite well, and I really don't think it is quite as
lame as it was.

God bless you, dear, dear child. Your affectionate happy mother.
K.C.

The interval between these letters and the morning on which I was to
return home seemed to me like one of those long, restless, yet half-
dreamy days which in some infant malady I had passed in a sick-bed. I
went through my task-work mechanically, composed a Greek ode in farewell
to the Philhellenic, which Dr. Herman pronounced a chef d'oeuvre, and my
father, to whom I sent it in triumph, returned a letter of false English
with it, that parodied all my Hellenic barbarisms by imitating them in
my mother-tongue. However, I swallowed the leek, and consoled myself
with the pleasing recollection that, after spending six years in
learning to write bad Greek, I should never have any further occasion to
avail myself of so precious an accomplishment.

And so came the last day. Then alone, and in a kind of delighted
melancholy, I revisited each of the old haunts,--the robbers' cave we
had dug one winter, and maintained, six of us, against all the police of
the little kingdom; the place near the pales where I had fought my first
battle; the old beech-stump on which I sat to read letters from home!
With my knife, rich in six blades (besides a cork-screw, a pen-picker,
and a button-hook), I carved my name in large capitals over my desk.
Then night came, and the bell rang, and we went to our rooms. And I
opened the window and looked out. I saw all the stars, and wondered