Frank resumed the chair, and several of the members, perceiving the force of the president’s reasoning, expressed themselves in favor of admitting Tim; when Charles Hardy rose and “plumed himself for a speech.”

“Mr. President:  I confess my surprise at the direction this debate has taken.  There’s a destiny that shapes our ends—­”

“A what?” asked Fred Harper, with a roguish smile.

“I beg the member on the other side will not interrupt me,” replied Charles, with offended dignity.  “I quote the line as John Adams used it, in his celebrated speech, ‘Sink or swim.’”

“Who?”

“John Adams.”

“I beg the member’s pardon, but John Adams never made any such speech,” answered Fred who, it must be confessed, was rather too fond of tantalizing the ambitious youth.

“Really, Mr. President, I am surprised that the member should deny what we all know.  Why, the piece is in our reading book.”

“Daniel Webster put the speech into the mouth of Adams,” added Frank; “and the patriot is only supposed to have made it.”

“It amounts to the same thing,” continued Charles, with a slight blush.

“But your quotation was not correct,” said Fred.

“Perhaps the member will give me the correct reading of the passage.”

“With pleasure; the lines are from Shakspeare:—­

  ’There’s a Divinity that shapes our ends,
      Roughhew them as we will.’

I fancy the lines will not suit the member now,” continued Fred, as he cast a mischievous glance at the discomfited speech-maker.

“Go on, if you please,” said Frank to Charles.

“As I was saying, Mr. President, ’There’s a Divinity that shapes our ends’—­”

“You were not saying so,” interposed Fred.

“Order!” said the chairman.  “Proceed.”

But Charles Hardy could not proceed.  Undoubtedly, when he rose to speak, he had an idea in his head; but it had fled, and he could not at once recall it.  In vain he scratched his head, in vain he thrust his hands into his pockets, as if in search of the lost idea; it would not come.

“You were speaking of Tim Bunker,” said Frank, suggestively.

“I was; and I was about to say that—­that—­”

Some of the boys could no longer suppress their mirth, and, in spite of the vigorous pounding which the chairman bestowed upon the innocent table, in his attempts to preserve order, they had their laugh out.  But the pleasantry of the members, and a sense of the awkwardness of his position, roused Charles to a more vigorous effort, and as he was about to speak of another topic, the lost idea came like a flood of sunshine.

“‘There’s a Divinity that shapes our ends.’  Tim Bunker has chosen the path he will tread, and does anybody suppose he will ever abandon it?  He will certainly die in the State Prison or on the gallows—­my father says so.  We all know what his habits are, and it is as easy for an Ethiopian to change his spots—­”