“Exactly,” laughed Ishmael, as his eyes danced with the eagerness of youth for the sport.

They went into the house, where Phillis had prepared a nice dinner, of bacon and sprouts and apple dumplings, which the whole party relished.

Afterwards Ishmael started on his first fishing voyage with Sam.  And though it was a short one, it had for him all the charms of novelty added to the excitement of sport, and he enjoyed the excursion excessively.  The fishing was very successful, and they filled their little boat and got back home by sunset.  At supper Ishmael gave a full account of the expedition and received the hearty congratulations of Reuben.  And thus ended the holiday of their first day at home.

The next morning Reuben Gray went into the fields to resume his oversight of his employer’s estate.

Hannah turned in to housework, and had all the furniture she had brought from the hill hut moved into the cottage and arranged in one of the empty rooms upstairs.

Ishmael, forbidden to study, employed himself in useful manual labor in the garden and in the fields.

And thus in cheerful industry passed the early days of spring.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

ISHMAEL’S STRUGGLES

  Yet must my brow be paler!  I have vowed
  To clip it with the crown that shall not fade
  When it is faded.  Not in vain ye cry,
  Oh, glorious voices, that survive the tongue
  From whence was drawn your separate sovereignty,
  For I would stand beside you!

  —­E.B.  Browning.

Ishmael continued his work, yet resumed his studies.  He managed to do both in this way—­all the forenoon he delved in the garden; all the afternoon he went over the chaotic account-books of Reuben Gray, to bring them into order; and all the evening he studied in his own room.  He kept up his Greek and Latin.  And he read law.

No time to dream of Claudia now.

One of the wisest of our modern philosophers says that we are sure to meet with the right book at the right time.  Now whether it were chance, fate, or Providence that filled the scanty shelves of the old escritoire with a few law books, is not known; but it is certain that their presence there decided the career of Ishmael Worth.

As a young babe, whose sole object in life is to feed, pops everything it can get hold of into its mouth, so this youthful aspirant, whose master-passion was the love of learning, read everything he could lay his hands on.  Prompted by that intellectual curiosity which ever stimulated him to examine every subject that fell under his notice, Ishmael looked into the law books.  They were mere text-books, probably the discarded property of some young student of the Mervin family, who had never got beyond the rudiments of the profession; but had abandoned it as a “dry study.”