The entrance to the stairway, if that could be called a stairway which was as difficult of ascent as a ladder, was through a closet by the side of the donjon chimney, and the logs had been so arranged without and within that the space occupied by the narrow and zigzag stairs was not apparent.  Up these stairs he took Julia, leaving her in a closet above.  As this closet was situated alongside the chimney, it opened, of course, into the small corner room which I have before described, and in which August was now lying.  Andrew descended the stairs and entered the upper story again by the outside ladder.  He thought best to prepare August for the coming of Julia, lest joy should destroy a life that was so far wasted.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE INTERVIEW.

We left August on that summer day on the levee at Louisville without employment.  He was not exactly disheartened, but he was homesick.  That he was forbidden to go back by threats of prosecution for his burglarious manner of entering Samuel Anderson’s house was reason enough for wanting to go; that his father’s family were not yet free from danger was a stronger reason; but strongest of all, though he blushed to own it to himself, was the longing to be where he might perchance sometimes see the face he had seen that spring morning in the bottom of a sun-bonnet.  Right manfully did he fight against his discouragement and his homesickness, and his longing to see Julia.  It was better to stay where he was.  It was better not to go back beaten.  If he surrendered so easily, he would never put himself into a situation where he could claim Julia with self-respect.  He would stay and make his way in the world somehow.  But making his way in the world did not seem half so easy now us it had on that other morning in March when he stood in the barn talking to Julia.  Making your fortune always seems so easy until you’ve tried it.  It seems rather easy in a novel, and still easier in a biography.  But no Samuel Smiles ever writes the history of those who fail; the vessels that never came back from their venturous voyages left us no log-books.  Many have written the History of Success.  What melancholy Plutarch shall arise to record, with a pen dipped in wormwood, the History of Failure?

No! he would not go back defeated.  August said this over bravely, but a little too often, and with a less resolute tone at each repetition.  He contemned himself for his weakness, and tried, but tried in vain, to form other plans.  Had he known how much one’s physical state has to do with one’s force of character, he might have guessed that he did not deserve the blame he meted out to himself.  He might have remembered what Shakespeare’s Portia says to Brutus, that “humour hath his hour with every man.”  But with a dull and unaccountable aching in his head and back he compromised with himself.  He would go to the castle and pass a day or two.  Then he would return and fight it out.