thought it was very near,
some time in August last."

Winthrop laid by his book; and the two young men stood several
minutes, quite silent, on opposite sides of the hearth, with
folded hands and meditative countenances; but the face of the
one looked like the muddy waters of the Shatemuc tossed and
tumbled under a fierce wind; the other's was calm and steady
as Wut-a-qut-o's brow.

"So you won't have any woman that you don't _oblige_ to marry
you!" Rufus burst out. "Ha, ha, ha! -- ho, ho, ho! --"

Winthrop's mouth gave the slightest good-humoured token of
understanding him, -- it could not be called a smile. Rufus had
his laugh out, and cooled down into deeper gravity than
before.

"Well!" -- said he, -- "I'll go off to my fate, at the limitless
wild of the West. It seems a rough sort of fate."

"Make your fate for yourself," said Winthrop.

"_You_ will," said his brother. "And it will be what you will,
and that's a fair one. And you will oblige anybody you have a
mind to. And marry an heiress."

"Don't look much like it -- things at present," said Winthrop.
"I don't see the way very clear."

"As for me, I don't know what ever I shall come to," Rufus
added.

"Come to bed at present," said Winthrop. "That is one step."

"One step towards what?"

"Sleep in the first place; and after that, anything."

"What a strange creature you are, Governor! and how
doubtlessly and dauntlessly you pursue your way," Rufus said
sighing.

"Sighs never filled anybody's sails yet," said Winthrop. "They
are the very airs of a calm."

"Calm!" said Rufus.

"A dead calm," said his brother laughing.

"I wish I had _your_ calm," said Rufus. And with that the
evening ended.

CHAPTER XXI.

O what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do! not
knowing what they do!
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

One morning, about these days, Mr. and Miss Haye were seated
at the opposite ends of the breakfast-table. They had been
there for some time, silently buttering rolls and sipping
coffee, in a leisurely way on Mr. Haye's part, and an
ungratified one on the part of his daughter. He was
considering, also in a leisurely sort of way, the columns of
the morning paper; she considering him and the paper, and at
intervals knocking with her knife against the edge of her
plate, -- a meditative and discontented knife, and an impassive
and unimpressed plate. So breakfast went on till Elizabeth's
cup was nearly emptied.

"Father," sa