ction that had followed the scene with Sibyll, "I cannot call you to
mind, nor seems it veritable that our schooldays passed together,
seeing that my hair is gray and men call me old; but thou art in all the
lustihood of this human life."

"Nathless," returned the stranger, "there are but two years or so
between thine age and mine. When thou wert poring over the crabbed text,
and pattering Latin by the ell, dost thou not remember a lack-grace
good-for-naught, Robert Hilyard, who was always setting the school in
an uproar, and was finally outlawed from that boy-world, as he hath been
since from the man's world, for inciting the weak to resist the strong?"

"Ah," exclaimed Adam, with a gleam of something like joy on his face,
"art thou indeed that riotous, brawling, fighting, frank-hearted, bold
fellow, Robert Hilyard? Ha! ha!--those were merry days! I have known
none like them--" The old schoolfellows shook hands heartily.

"The world has not fared well with thee in person or pouch, I fear me,
poor Adam," said Hilyard; "thou canst scarcely have passed thy fiftieth
year, and yet thy learned studies have given thee the weight of sixty;
while I, though ever in toil and bustle, often wanting a meal, and even
fearing the halter, am strong and hearty as when I shot my first fallow
buck in the king's forest, and kissed the forester's pretty daughter.
Yet, methinks, Adam, if what I hear of thy tasks be true, thou and I
have each been working for one end; thou to make the world other than it
is, and I to--"

"What! hast thou, too, taken nourishment from the bitter milk of
Philosophy,--thou, fighting Rob?"

"I know not whether it be called philosophy, but marry, Edward of York
would call it rebellion; they are much the same, for both war against
rules established!" returned Hilyard, with more depth of thought than
his careless manner seemed to promise. He paused, and laying his broad
brown hand on Warner's shoulder, resumed, "Thou art poor, Adam!"

"Very poor,--very, very!"

"Does thy philosophy disdain gold?"

"What can philosophy achieve without it? She is a hungry dragon, and her
very food is gold!"

"Wilt thou brave some danger--thou went ever a fearless boy when thy
blood was up, though so meek and gentle--wilt thou brave some danger for
large reward?"

"My life braves the scorn of men, the pinchings of famine, and, it may
be, the stake and the fagot. Soldiers brave not the dangers that are
braved by a wise man in