"Simple and true I share with all

    The treasures of a kindly mind;
And in my cottage, poor and small,

    The great a welcome find.

"I vex not Gods, nor patron friend,

    For larger gifts or ampler store;
My modest Sabine farm can lend

    All that I want, and more."

They sat in silence,—it was pleasure enough to be together,—and Mary knew that she must wait until Master Sullivan himself made opportunity for speaking of the things which filled her heart.

"Have I ever told you that my father was a friend, in his young days, of Christopher Milton, brother to the great poet, but opposite in politics?" he asked, as if this were the one important fact to be made clear. "A Stuart partisan, a violent Churchman, and a most hot-headed Tory," and the old master laughed with sincere amusement, as Mary looked up, eager to hear more.

"Voltaire, too, had just such a contradiction of a brother, credulous and full of superstitions,—a perfect Jansenist of those days. Yes, I was reading Horace when you came, but for very homesickness; he can make a man forget all his own affairs, such are his polite hospitalities of the mind! These dark autumn days mind me every year of Paris, when they come, as April weather makes me weep for childhood and the tears and smiles of Ireland."

"The old days in your Collége Louis-le-Grand," Mary prompted him, in the moment\'s silence. "Those are your Paris days I love the best."

"Oh, the men I have known!" he answered. "I can sit here in my chair and watch them all go by again down the narrow streets. I have seen the Abbé de Chateauneuf pass, with his inseparable copy of Racine sticking out of his pocket; I often hid from him, too, in the shadow of an archway, with a young boy, his pupil and my own schoolfellow, who had run away from his tasks. He was four years younger than I. Le petit Arouet we called him then, who proves now to be the very great Voltaire! Ah, \'t was an idle flock of us that ranged the old cloisters in cap and gown; \'t was the best blood in France! I have seen the illustrious Duke de Boufflers handsomely flogged for shooting peas at dull old Lejay, the professor. (We were the same age, Monsieur de Boufflers and I; we were great friends, and often flogged in company for our deviltries.) He was a colonel of the French army in that moment, and bore the title of Governor of Flanders; but on the day of the pea-shooting they flogged him so that I cried out at the sight, and turned to the wall, sick at heart. As for him, he sobbed all night afterward, and caught his breath in misery next morning while we read our Epictetus from the same book. We knelt together before the high altar and vowed to kill Lejay by dagger or poison before the month\'s end. \'T was a good vow, but well broken."

The old man laughed again, and made a gay French gesture. Mary laughed with him, and they had a fine moment together.

"You were not always like that,—you must have learned your lessons; it was not all idleness," Mary protested, to lead him on.

"The old fathers taught us with all their power to gain some skill in the use of words," reflected the master soberly. "Yes, and I learned to fence, too, at the college. A student of Louis-le-Grand could always speak like a gentleman, but we had to play with our words; \'t was the most important of all our science. \'Les sottises, toujours les sottises,\'" grumbled the old man. "Yes, they made a high profession then of talking nonsense, though France was whipped at Blenheim and lost the great fight at Malplaquet. They could laugh at the ruined convent of Port Royal and the distresses of saintly souls, but they taught us to talk nonsense, and to dress with elegance, and to be agreeable to ladies. The end is not yet; the throne of France will shake, some day, until heads fall in the dust like fruit that nobody stoops to gather."

The master fell a-whispering to himself, as if he had forgotten that he had a listener.

"I saw some signs of it, too. I knew there, when I was a lad, Le Tellier, the King\'s confessor, who was the true ruler of France. I rode to St. Denis myself, the day of the old King\'s funeral, and it was like a fair: people were singing and drinking in the booths, and no one all along the way but had his gibe at Le Tellier, whose day was over, thank God! Ah, but I was a gay lad then; I knew no country but France, and I cannot but love her yet; I was only a Frenchman of my gay and reckless time. There was saving grace for me, and I passed it by; for I knew the great Fénelon, and God forgive my sins, but I have been his poor parishioner from those days to these. I knew his nephew, the Abbé de Beaumont, and I rode with him in the holidays to Cambrai,—a tiresome journey; but we were young, and we stayed in the good archbishop\'s house, and heard him preach and say mass. He was the best of Christians: I might have been a worse man but for that noble saint. Yes, I have seen the face of the great Fénelon," and Master Sullivan bent his head and blessed himself. The unconscious habit of his youth served best to express the reverence which lay deep in his aged heart.

"I think now, as I look back on those far days, that my good archbishop was the greatest prince and saint of them all, my dear child," said the old teacher, looking up gently from his reverie into Mary Hamilton\'s face.

"You belong to another world, mon ma?tre," said the girl affectionately. "How much you could teach us, if we were but fit to learn!"

The old man gave an impatient fling of his hand.

"I am past eighty years old, my darling," he answered. "God knows I have not been fit to learn of the best of men, else I might now be one of the wisest of mankind. I have lived in the great days of France, but I tell you plain, I have lived in none that are fuller of the seeds of greatness than these. I live now in my sons, and our Irish veins are full of soldier\'s blood. \'T is Tir-nan-Og here,—the country of the young. My boys have their mother\'s energy, thank God! As for me, my little school is more alive than I. There is always a bright child in every flock, for whose furthering a man may well spend himself. \'T is a long look back; the light of life shone bright with me in its beginning, but the oil in the old lamp is burning low. My forbears were all short-lived, but the rest of their brief days are added to the length of mine."

"\'T is not every man has made so many others fit to take their part in life," said Mary. "Think of your own sons, master!"

"Ay, my sons," said the old man, pleased to the heart, "and they have their mother\'s beauty and energy to couple with their sad old father\'s gift of dreams. The princes of Beare and Bantry are cousins to the Banshee, and she whispers me many things. I sometimes fear that my son John, the general, has too much prudence. The Whisperer and Prudence are not of kin."

There was a new silence then; and when Master Sullivan spoke again, it was with a sharp, questioning look in his eyes.

"What said your little admiral at parting? I heard that he was fretted with the poor outfitting of his ship, and sailed away with scant thanks to the authorities. Prudence cannot deal with such a man as that. What of our boy Roger? How fares the poor mother since she lost him out of her sight? \'T was anxious news they brought me of his going; when my first pride had blazed down, you might have seen an old man\'s tears."

Mary looked up; she flushed and made as if she would speak, but remained silent.

"You \'ll never make soldier or sailor of him, boy or man; the Lord meant him for a country gentleman," said the master warningly; and at this moment all Mary\'s hopes of reassurance fell to the ground.

"My son John is a soldier born," he continued coldly; "he could tell you where the troops were placed in every battle, from old Troy down to the siege of Louisburg."

Mary began to speak, and again something ailed her throat. She turned and looked toward the fireside, where the old housemother was knitting now, and humming a strange old Irish tune to herself; she had left them to themselves as much as if she were miles away.

"Incipit vita nova," said the master under his breath, and went on as if he were unobservant of Mary\'s startled look.

"Captain Paul Jones is a man of the world, and Wallingford is a country gentleman of the best sort," he continued; "they may not understand each other at these close quarters. I mind me of pushing adventurers in my old days who came from the back corner of nowhere, and yet knew the worst and the best of Paris. How they would wink at their fellows when some noble boy came to see the world, from one of the poor and proud chateaux of Brittany or the far south!"

"Roger is college-bred, and you have called him your own best scholar of these later days," insisted Mary, with a touch of indignation. "With such kindred in Boston, and the company of his father\'s friends from childhood, he is not so new to the world."

"Ecce Deus fortior me qui veniens dominabitur mihi," the old man repeated softly, as if he were saying a short prayer; then glanced again at the girl\'s beautiful young face and pleading eyes. "Well, the gallant lads have sailed!" he exclaimed, with delighted eagerness, and no apparent concern for his listener\'s opinion. "They\'ll be in good season, too, in spite of all delays. What say the loud Patriots now, who are so full of fighting, and yet find good excuse for staying at home? They are an evil-minded chorus! but the young man Wallingford will serve them for a text no more. His father was a man of parts, of the same type as Washington himself, an I mistake not that great leader, though never put to the proof by so high a summonsing of opportunity. Our Roger is born out of his father\'s clear brain rather than his fiery heart. I see in him the growing scholarliness and quiet authority of the judge\'s best days upon the bench, not the strong soldier of the Indian wars. And there is something in the boy that holds by the past; he may be a persuaded Patriot, but a Tory ghost of a conscience plucks him by the sleeve. He does not lack greatness of soul, but I doubt if he does any great things except to stand honestly in his place, a scholar and a gentleman; and that is enough."

Mary listened, with her eyes fixed upon Master Sullivan\'s face.

"God bless the poor lads, every one! We must send our prayers after them. Wallingford will fall upon evil days; \'t will try him in blood and bone when they suspect him, as they surely will. God help an old ruin like me! If I were there, and but a younger man!" and the master clenched the arms of his chair, while something Mary never had seen before flashed in his eyes.

"I have seen much fighting in my time," he said the next moment to Mary, falling to a gentler mood. "My mind is often with those lads on the ship." And the startled girl smiled back at him expectantly.

"I am glad when I think that now Roger will see France again, as a grown man. He will remember many things I have told him. I wish that I might have seen him ere he went away so suddenly. Wherever he is, he has good thoughts in his head; he always loved his Latin, and can even stumble through the orchard ground and smell the trodden thyme with old Theocritus. I wish I had been there at your parting feast. \'T was a glory to the house\'s mistress, and that merchant prince, the good master of the river."

"Peggy has another opinion of me. \'Go you an\' deck the tables, an it please you, child,\' she says, \'an\' leave me to give my orders;\' but we hold some grave consultations for all tha............