"Yes."
And Verty repeated the sigh.
"Tell me your thoughts," said Redbud, earnestly.
"I was only thinking," returned her companion, "that there was no chance of my ever going to college, and I should like to know how I am to be a learned man without having an education."
Redbud sighed too.
"But perhaps," she said, "you might make yourself learned without going to college."
Verty shook his head.
"You are not so ignorant as you think," Redbud said, softly. "I know many persons as old as you are, who—who—are not half as—intelligent."
Verty repeated the shake of his head.
"I may know as much as the next one about hunting," he said; "and ma mere says that none of her tribe had as much knowledge of the habits of the deer. Yes! yes! that is something—to know all about life in the autumn woods, the grand life which, some day, will be told about in great poetry, or ought to be. But what good is there in only knowing how to follow the deer, or watch for the turkeys, or kill bears, as I used to before the neighborhood was filled up? I want to be a learned man. I don't think anybody would, or ought to, marry me," added Verty, sighing.