d your father is
going up to town with him about it, as soon as the first volume is
finished.

All are quite well except poor Mrs. Jones, who has the ague very
bad indeed; Primmins has made her wear a charm for it, and Mrs.
Jones actually declares she is already much better. One can't deny
that there may be a great deal in such things, though it seems
quite against the reason. Indeed your father says, "Why not? A
charm must be accompanied by a strong wish on the part of the
charmer that it may succeed,--and what is magnetism but a wish?" I
don't quite comprehend this; but, like all your father says, it has
more than meets the eye, I am quite sure.

Only three weeks to the holidays, and then no more school, Sisty,--
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
which was mine,--whi