“I shouldn’t be surprised if he has,” answered Martin; “and it will get him into trouble, whatever it is.  He has several times been ’out of bounds’ for a long time at a stretch, and if it hadn’t been for Alick Fraser and one or two others who have screened him, he would have come to grief.  Can you guess at all what is wrong with him?”

“No,” replied Howard, hesitatingly; “the only thing I can think of is that his father has told him that when he leaves school in September he is to be articled to a lawyer, and I know he has made up his mind to go to sea.  He is crazy about pirates, and whale-hunts, and desolate islands, and all that sort of stuff.  And yet, sometimes, if you talk to him about them he shuts you up so very sharply that you feel as if you were prying into his secrets.  Perhaps—­”

And here Howard stopped.

“Well, perhaps what?” asked Martin.

“I don’t know that it is right to talk about a mere notion that may not have any truth in it at all, so let what I say be kept close between us; but I have noticed him bring things home after he has been out of bounds, and carefully put them in his big box, which he always keeps locked, and I have sometimes thought—­but mind, it is only a passing thought, so don’t let it go any further—­that perhaps he has made up his mind to run away to sea!”

“Howard, I have had this same thought in my mind many a time,” said Martin, “and I believe the reason why Digby dislikes me so much is because something occurred about a month ago, which I would rather not mention, but it led me to say to him that I hoped he would not be so foolish as to think of throwing up all his prospects in life for the sake of a mania about the sea, and he flashed up so angrily that I was convinced I had touched him on a sore point.”

Just then the school-bell rang.  There was no time for further talk, and it was not for many days that the subject was renewed.

CHAPTER II.

AN EVENING AT DR. BRIER’S.

Every expected day comes at last,—­not always, however, to realize the expectations formed of it:  but the evening of the reception in which we are interested bade fair to be a most satisfactory one.  The weather was unusually fine, and the Doctor and Mrs. Brier were in such good spirits that some of the visitors made special note of the fact.

I hardly know where to begin in attempting to describe an evening in the House at Blackrock school.

As to stiffness and formality, there was not a vestige of it.  The Doctor was a gentleman, every inch of him, and ease is an essential quality of gentlemanly behavior.  It is not always an easy thing to be easy, and all the Doctor’s pupils were not miniature doctors, but whatever else a boy might not have learned at Blackrock, he certainly had a chance to learn to be gentlemanly.

So conversation flowed freely; the boys were encouraged to indulge in hearty, unrestrained enjoyment, and no one could have heard the buzz of voices and the sounds of merry laughter, or seen the beaming faces, without feeling that all were perfectly at home.