I felt as if there
were a great gulf between us, never more to be passed over. I had very
superb ideas of collegians. I had seen them during their holidays, which
they frequently came into the country to spend, dashing through the
streets like the wild huntsmen, on horses that struck fire as they flew
along. I had seen them lounging in the streets, with long, wild hair,
and corsair visages and Byronian collars, and imagined them a most
formidable race of beings. I did not know that these were the
_scape-goats_ of their class, suspended for rebellion, or expelled for
greater offences,--that having lost their character as students, they
were resolved to distinguish themselves as dandies, the lowest ambition
a son of Adam's race can feel. It is true, I did not dream that Richard
Clyde could be transformed into their image, but I thought some
marvellous change must take place, which would henceforth render him as
much a stranger to me as though we had never met.

Now, when I heard the clear, glad accents of his voice, so natural, so
unchanged, I looked up with a glance of delighted recognition into the
young student's manly face. My first sensation was pleasure, the
pleasure which congenial youth inspires, my next shame, for the
homeliness of my occupation. I was standing by a beautiful bubbling
spring, at the foot of a little hill near my mother's cottage. The
welling spring, the rock over which it gushed, the trees which bent
their branches over the fountain to guard it from the sunbeams, the
sweet music the falling waters,--all these were romantic and
picturesque. I might imagine myself "a nymph, a naiad, or a grace." Or,
had I carried a pitcher in my hand, I might have thought myself another
Rebecca, and poised on my shoulder the not ungraceful burden. But I was
dipping water from the spring, in a tin pail, of a broad, clumsy,
unclassic form,--too heavy for the shoulder, and extremely difficult to
carry in the hand, in consequence of the small, wiry handle. In my
confusion I dropped the pail, which went gaily floating to the opposite
side of the spring, entirely out of my reach. The strong, bubbling
current bore it upward, and it danced and sparkled and turned its sides
of mimic silver, first one way and then the other, as if rejoicing in
its liberty.

Richard laughed, his old merry laugh, and jumping on the rock over which
the waters were leaping, caught the pail, and waved it as a trophy over
his head. Then stoopin