"I have always been at school when there was any school to go to, sir. But my father has taught me for the most part, and once or twice I had a tutor, by good luck."
"And I, too, by ill-luck!" The young man laughed, sauntering up to the shelf and glancing over the titles. "What a life I led them! Ah! 'The Pilgrim's Progress,' 'The Call to Truth,' 'Common Prayer,' 'An History of Rome,' 'Virgil's Æneid—' So you know Latin here, friend Boyd? I used to know it myself. How begins old Virgil?—
"'Ar—arma vorumque cani,'
it goes, don't it?" He opened the volume idly. In so doing his eye fell upon the title-page.
He read the name written there with an exclamation of surprise. Then holding the Virgil he came back to his chair, puzzling over the fly-leaf. Next he smote his hand upon the board with an impetuous, "By the sword of Claver'se! 'Jonas Lockett, His Book.' Can it be the man? What Jonas, except our long-legged Jonas, wrote that cramped fist? Tell me, friend Boyd, was Jonas Lockett, an Edinboro' pedagogue, ever in your house, here, a certain winter?"
"One of my son's instructors, years ago, was so named," replied Boyd, cautiously. He did not like to give these interlopers the least significant bit of information upon his family or its history.
"Was he from Edinboro'? Tell me of him. Well, well, well—Jonas Lockett! Ha!"
"There is little to tell, sir. I understood that he was from Edinboro'. His health suffered there and he travelled into Perthshire and Inverness to recruit it. He was poor and somehow came to me for help. Andrew's ignorance enabled me to give it him. But he only stayed with us a season. I have scarce thought of him since. Did you know him also?"
"Know him! Truly I did. I recollect that he came from Scotland directly before he entered my father's employ. A tall, lean, quick-spoken fellow, with a sly eye and many odd stories at his tongue's end."
"The same, I dare say," Boyd assented, indifferently; "an odd coincidence. But the world is a narrow place, Captain."