"No," said the youth, "but I shall be glad when I am gone away from here to the university."
"Ah!" returned the hermit, "it is as I knew it would be when I placed you at the seminary. Your desire for fame and honor has returned, and you long to go forth in the great world and mingle in its st[illegible]."
"No," said Edgar, "I would rather live and die within the walls of this hermitage, than ever go beyond them again; but I'm resolved I will not do the foolish thing. I'll go forth, and if my life is spared, show those who call me a foundling, and a wild cub of the woods, that I am something more than they suppose me to be."
"Who has dared apply such epithets to you, my boy?" exclaimed the hermit, his pale cheeks glowing with anger.
"Do you know Major Howard of 'Summer Home?'" asked Edgar.
"That do I," answered the hermit; "and did he call you by these names?"
"Yes," returned Edgar.
"He talk of foundlings!" said the hermit. "Why did you not slap him in the face, Edgar?"
"The words did not come directly from him to me," said the youth, wondering at his uncle's anger, which far exceeded his own.
"Ay, through a third person you obtained them? and that was"——