"What do you do in winter?"
"I have been studying for several years."
"I thought you talked very well for a boy brought up in the woods."
"I don't have anything to do for six months in the year but take care of the horses, and do the housework. I read and study about twelve hours a day in winter. I took up Latin and French last season."
"Indeed! You will make a learned man if you keep on. Have you no desire to see more of the world?"
"Sometimes I have. I don't think I shall stay here many years longer."
"I shouldn't think you would. Why do you study Latin and French?"
"Only because I like them. It is a very great pleasure to me to puzzle out the sentences. Mr. Gracewood is a great scholar, and has plenty of books on the island. I believe I have read them all, except the dictionaries. He had given me a lot of books, which he sent to St. Louis for."
"I should think you would want to know something about your family—your father and mother," added the lieutenant, to whom Mr. Gracewood had related the substance of my history.
"I do, sometimes; but I am almost sure I should learn that one or both of them were lost in the steamer."