"My song! he is that! Will has his match, though. We had a ploughman once,--Aspatria remembers him,--Robert Steadman, an upright, muscular young fellow, civil and respectful as could be in everything about his work and place; but on wet days when we were all, masters and servants, in the barn together, it was a sight to see Robert wrestling with Will for the mastery, and Will never so ready to say, 'Well done!' nor the rest of us so happy, as when we saw Will's two brawny legs going handsomely over Robert's head." "If I were a man, I should try to be a fine wrestler." "It is a great comfort," said Brune. "If you have a quarrel of any kind, it is a deal more satisfactory to meet your man, and throw him a few times over your head, than to go to law with him. It puts a stop to unpleasantness very quickly and very good-naturedly." Then Sarah rose and opened the piano, and from its keys dashed out a lilting, hurrying melody, like the galloping of horses and shaking of bridles; and in a few moments she began to sing, and Brune went to her side, and, because she looked so steadily into his eyes, he could remember nothing at all of the song but its dashing refrain,-- "For he whom I wed Must be north country bred, And must carry me back to the North Countrie." Then Aspatria played some wonderful music on her harp, and Sarah and Brune sat still and listened to their own hearts, and sent out shy glances, and caught each other in the act, and Brune was made nervous, and Sarah gay, by the circumstance. By and by they began to talk of schools, and of how much Aspatria had learned; and so Brune regretted his own ignorance, and wished he had been more attentive to his schoolmaster. Sarah laughed at the wish. "A knowledge of Shakspeare and the musical glasses and the Della Cruscans," she said, "is for foolish, sentimental women. You can wrestle, and you can fight, and I suppose you can make money, and perhaps even make love. Is there anything else a soldier needs?" "Colonel Jardine is very clever," continued Brune, regretfully; "and I had a good schoolmaster--" "Nonsense, Lieutenant!" said Sarah. "None of them are good. They all spoil your eyes, and seek to lay a curse on you; that is the confusion of languages." "Still, I might have learned Latin." "It was the speech of pagans and infidels." "Or logic." "Logic hath nothing to say in a good cause." "Or philosophy." "Philosophy is curiosity. Socrates was very properly put to death for it." They were all laughing together, when Sarah condemned Socrates, and the evening passed like a happy dream away.