famous beauty, had left behind her, records of
the romantic days when she was the belle of the county,--storybooks,
memoirs, novels, and poems, and not a few love-letters,--a strange
collection, which, as so often happens with such deposits in old
families, nobody had cared to meddle with, and nobody had been willing
to destroy, until at last they had passed out of mind, and waited for a
new generation to bring them into light again.

The other discovery was of a small hoard of coin. Under one of the
boards which formed the imperfect flooring of the garret was hidden
an old leather mitten. Instead of a hand, it had a fat fist of silver
dollars, and a thumb of gold half-eagles.

Thus knowledge and power found their way to the simple and secluded
maiden. The books were hers to read as much as any other's; the gold and
silver were only a part of that small provision which would be hers by
and by, and if she borrowed it, it was borrowing of herself. The tree of
the knowledge of good and evil had shaken its fruit into her lap, and,
without any serpent to tempt her, she took thereof and did eat.

CHAPTER IV. BYLES GRIDLEY, A. M.

The old Master of Arts was as notable a man in his outside presentment
as one will find among five hundred college alumni as they file in
procession. His strong, squared features, his formidable scowl, his
solid-looking head, his iron-gray hair, his positive and as it were
categorical stride, his slow, precise way of putting a statement,
the strange union of trampling radicalism in some directions and
high-stepping conservatism in others, which made it impossible to
calculate on his unexpressed opinions, his testy ways and his generous
impulses, his hard judgments and kindly actions, were characteristics
that gave him a very decided individuality.

He had all the aspects of a man of books. His study, which was the best
room in Mrs. Hopkins's house, was filled with a miscellaneous-looking
collection of volumes, which his curious literary taste had got together
from the shelves of all the libraries that had been broken up during
his long life as a scholar. Classics, theology, especially of the
controversial sort, statistics, politics, law, medicine, science, occult
and overt, general literature,--almost every branch of knowledge was
represented. His learning was very various, and of course mixed up,
useful and useless, new and ancient, dogmatic and rational,--like his
library, in short; for