Thus, in diligent labor and intellectual intercourse, the young man passed the summer months.

One bright hope burned constantly before Ishmael’s mental vision—­of seeing Claudia; but, ah! this hope was destined to be deferred from week to week, and finally disappointed.

Judge Merlin did not come to Tanglewood as usual this summer.  He took his daughter to the seaside instead, where they lived quietly at a private boarding house, because it was not intended that Miss Merlin should enter society until the coming winter at Washington.

To Ishmael this was a bitter disappointment, but a bitter tonic, too, since it served to give strength to his mind.

Late in September his friend Walter Middleton, who was a medical student, left them to attend the autumn and winter course of lectures in Baltimore.  Ishmael felt the loss of his society very much; but as usual consoled himself by hard work through all the autumn months.

He heard from Judge Merlin and his daughter through their letters to the Middletons.  They were again in Annapolis, where Miss Merlin was passing her last term at the finishing school, but they were to go to Washington at the meeting of Congress in December.

As the month of November drew to a close Ishmael began to compute the labors, progress, and profits of the year.  He found that he had brought his school into fine working order; he had brought his pupils on well; he had made Reuben Gray a very good reader, penman, arithmetician, and bookkeeper; and lastly, he had advanced himself very far in his chosen professional studies.  But he had made but little money, and saved less than a hundred dollars.  This was not enough to support him, even by the severest economy, at any law school.  Something else, he felt, must be done for the next year, by which more money might be made.  So after reflecting upon the subject for some time, he wrote out two advertisements—­one for a teacher, competent to take charge of a small country school, and the other for a situation as bookkeeper, clerk, or amanuensis.  In the course of a week the first advertisement was answered by a Methodist preacher living in the same neighborhood, who proposed to augment the small salary he received for preaching on Sundays, by teaching a day school all the week.  Ishmael had an interview with this gentleman, and finding him all that could be desired in a clergyman and country schoolmaster, willingly engaged to relinquish his own post in favor of the new candidate on the first of the coming year.

His second advertisement was not yet answered; but Ishmael kept it on and anxiously awaited the result.

At length his perseverance was crowned with a success greater than he could have anticipated.  It was about the middle of December, a few days before the breaking up of his school for the Christmas holidays, that he called at the Shelton post office to ask if there were any letters for “X.Y.Z.,” those being the initials he had signed to his second advertisement.  A letter was handed him; at last, then, it had come!  Without scrutinizing the handwriting or the superscription, Ishmael tore it open and read: