the
arbour where a grapevine grew. The sound of voices floated out to him,
mingled with bright, girlish laughter, and, looking through the open
window, he saw the light curls of a little girl against the darker head
of a boy. He choked suddenly with shyness, and would have hesitated
there until the morning was over had not the judge's old servant, Caesar,
espied him from the dining-room window.

"Look yer, boy, what you doin' dar?" he demanded suspiciously, and then
called to some one inside the house. "Marse George, dat ar Burr boy is
a-loungin' roun' yo' yawd."

The judge did not respond, but the tutor came to the door of the office
and intercepted the boy's retreat. He was a pale, long-faced young man
in spectacles, with weak, blue eyes and a short, thin moustache. His
name was Graves, and he regarded what he called the judge's "quixotism"
with condescending good-nature.

"Is that you, Nicholas Burr?" he asked in a slightly supercilious voice.
"The judge has told me about you. So you won't be a farmer, eh? And you
won't stay in your class? Well, come in and we'll see what we can make
of you."

Nicholas followed him into the room and sat down at one of the pine
desks, while the judge's son, Tom, nodded to him from across the room,
and Bernard Battle grinned over his shoulder at his sister Eugenia, and
a handsome boy, called Dudley Webb, made a face which convulsed little
Sally Burwell, who hid her merriment in her curls. There were several
other children in the room, but Nicholas did not see them distinctly.
Something had got before his eyes and there was a lump in his throat. He
sat rigidly in his seat, his straw hat, with the shoestring around the
crown, lying upon the desk before him. He looked neither to the right
nor to the left, keeping his frightened gaze upon the tutor's face.

Mr. Graves asked him a few questions, which he could not answer, and
then, giving him a book, turned to the other children. As the lessons
went on it seemed to Nicholas that he had never known anything in his
life; that he should never know anything; and that he should always
remain the most ignorant person on earth--unless that lot fell to Sairy
Jane.

The difficulties besetting the path of knowledge appeared to be
insurmountable. Even if he had the books and the time he could never
learn anything--his head would prevent it.

"Bound Beloochistan, Tom," said the tutor, and Tom, a stout, fair-haired
boy with a heavy face, went t