The same afternoon, when Harry had waked from his siesta, upon which Hugh still insisted, they went out for a walk in the fields.  The sun was half way down the sky, but very hot and sultry.

“I wish we had our cave of straw to creep into now,” said Harry.  “I felt exactly like the little field-mouse you read to me about in Burns’s poems, when we went in that morning, and found it all torn up, and half of it carried away.  We have no place to go to now for a peculiar own place; and the consequence is, you have not told me any stories about the Romans for a whole week.”

“Well, Harry, is there any way of making another?”

“There’s no more straw lying about that I know of,” answered Harry; “and it won’t do to pull the inside out of a rick, I am afraid.”

“But don’t you think it would be pleasant to have a change now; and as we have lived underground, or say in the snow like the North people, try living in the air, like some of the South people?”

“Delightful!” cried Harry.—­“A balloon?”

“No, not quite that.  Don’t you think a nest would do?”

“Up in a tree?”

“Yes.”

Harry darted off for a run, as the only means of expressing his delight.  When he came back, he said: 

“When shall we begin, Mr. Sutherland?”

“We will go and look for a place at once; but I am not quite sure when we shall begin yet.  I shall find out to-night, though.”

They left the fields, and went into the woods in the neighbourhood of the house, at the back.  Here the trees had grown to a great size, some of them being very old indeed.  They soon fixed upon a grotesque old oak as a proper tree in which to build their nest; and Harry, who, as well as Hugh, had a good deal of constructiveness in his nature, was so delighted, that the heat seemed to have no more influence upon him; and Hugh, fearful of the reaction, was compelled to restrain his gambols.

Pursuing their way through the dark warp of the wood, with its golden weft of crossing sunbeams, Hugh began to tell Harry the story of the killing of Caesar by Brutus and the rest, filling up the account with portions from Shakspere.  Fortunately, he was able to give the orations of Brutus and Antony in full.  Harry was in ecstasy over the eloquence of the two men.

“Well, what language do you think they spoke, Harry?” said Hugh.

“Why,” said Harry, hesitating, “I suppose —­” then, as if a sudden light broke upon him —­ “Latin of course.  How strange!”

“Why strange?”

“That such men should talk such a dry, unpleasant language.”