, pronounced incorrigible, he was expelled from the university.

He left it joyous and happy, escaped from the tutor commissioned to
conduct him to his father, and at last wholly free, his own master, he
took lodgings in a cabin, not far from the Royal Salmon, and thought
himself monarch of the universe.

As soon as the doors of the inn were opened, he penetrated there with
the earliest fogs of morning, with the first beams of day; in the
evening he was the last to cross the threshold, after the extinction
of the lights.

All day long, seated at a little table opposite the bar, between a
pipe and a pewter pot, he watched the movements of Kitty, and followed
her with admiring eyes.

Catherine was not slow to perceive this new passion; but she was
accustomed to admiring eyes, and therefore paid but little heed to
them. She was then at the age of twenty-two, in all the glory of her
transient royalty; he, scarcely sixteen, was in her eyes a boy, a raw
and awkward boy, like almost all the other students, and she contented
herself with now and then bestowing a slight smile upon him, in common
with her other customers.

But this mechanical smile, this half extinguished spark, did but
increase the flame, by kindling in the young man's soul a ray of hope.

At this age, passion has not yet an oral language; it is in the heart,
in the head especially, but not on the lips; one comprehends,
experiences, dreams, writes of love in prose and verse, but does not
talk of it. Selkirk had twenty times attempted to confess his
affection to Catherine; he had as yet succeeded only in a few simple
and hasty meteorological sentences, on the rain and fine weather. He
therefore wrote.

Unfortunately, Catherine could not easily read writing; she applied to
him to interpret his letter. This was a hard task for the poor boy,
who, with a tremulous and hesitating voice, saw himself forced to
stammer through all that burning phraseology which seemed to congeal
under the breath of the reader.

The result however was that Catherine became his friend; she
encouraged his confidence, and gave him good advice as an elder sister
might have done. She even called him by the familiar name of Sandy,
which was a good omen.

Meanwhile his scanty resources became exhausted; he had no longer
means to pay for the pot of ale which he consumed daily. The idea of
asking credit of his beloved, of opening with her an account, which he
might never have means to