ave a new invention that would save half the labor.
You'd laugh at a man for that.'
'Laugh away! But I must go out my own man, Scheffer. You'd do the same
thing. Don't talk about it. Have you any of those boots I asked for?'
Scheffer found a pair. He named the price. Cromwell paid for them, and
shook his hand when they separated; for, in the press of business, he
said, it might be he should not find time to call on his old friend
again.
The young men did not meet again. But a fortnight after Cromwell sailed,
Scheffer was called upon to pay a note at the bank; a note that bore his
own signature, and stated that, for 'value received, I promise to pay to
the order of Henry Cromwell, four hundred dollars.'
The demand was made in such a manner, and at such a time, as to vex
Scheffer to the utmost.
Cromwell, it seemed, could not consent to accept a favor at his hands;
yet he could condescend to make that manner of use of him! He paid the
sum due on the note, but at the same time was beset by a sore
temptation.
This was the temptation, and this his resistance: If Harry had gone,
leaving anywhere, in any woman's heart, a hope in him, should he not
dispel it? Should he not convince her that it rested on a foundation
looser than the sand? He did not do so! When Paul spoke now and then of
Cromwell, and prophesied proudly of him, August took the words as an
echo of Josephine's thought, and said to himself:
'Oh! well; it makes no difference.'
But, for all that, he kept on with his studies, and sometimes on Sunday
would walk past the college grounds on Monumental square; for that was
also walking past the cottage occupied by Josephine.
V.
The college, in those days, could have produced no student more
industrious than August.
He advanced with rapid strides through the elementary books, for he
chose to begin at the beginning, and he was proud of his progress. But
he kept his studies secret. He would risk nothing by reporting his own
progress. No man should honor his future to the prejudice of his past.
The story of Minerva, born to the prerogatives of wisdom, was more
attractive to him than that life which '_grew_ in grace, and in favor
with God and man.'
He had no plans in reference to future studies. His tutor was fairly
puzzled; for he was not long in discovering that it was not the delight
of knowledge, but the ends which knowledge may serve, that prompted to
such industry.
One evening Paul threw h
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