“Nothing ever happens,” thought Miles. He dived into a dark billow of firs, brushed along with now and then a gossamer damp across his cheeks, and following the outward curve of the shore, emerged on a tiny promontory, down which a ragged wall of Norway pines sloped to the second lighthouse,--another stunted white obelisk tipped with radiance. Here again his inspection was needless; and soon he climbed the homeward field, where fast encroaching fir-trees squatted like a thinned regiment of dwarfs. At the farmhouse door he blew out his lantern; and tiptoeing from the stair-head past his grandfather’s room, undressed in the dark, and was soon abed and asleep. Full flood of autumn sunshine woke him; and from a late breakfast alone, he went, as usual, straight to the “library.” Before a snapping beech-wood fire, his grandfather, a tall, spare man, whose ruddy, clean-shaven face was marked with severe wrinkles, paced in uncertain fidgets, both hands clasping a Bible at his back. “Get your Testament, sir,” he commanded querulously, without turning his hook-nosed profile. Ella, the “girl” who had served their family these thirty years, looked up and nodded furtive encouragement, then bent to as furtive a study of the long words. Sitting beside her, Miles could see the fat fingers, white and puckered from hot water, faltering across the narrow columns, balking beneath Urbane, Stachys, Tryphena and Tryphosa. When her turn came to read aloud, she omitted them one and all, glibly, but with the air of a nervous knitter dropping stitches. The old man, standing braced before the fire, affected not to notice. It was one of his few compromises. He read on sonorously, his head uplifted before the portrait of his brother, the Admiral, who stared down from the canvas with the same ruddy face and close white curls, the same beaked severity and intolerant poise. Their devotions ended, Ella went bustling to her kitchen, and the head of the Bissant family turned to its youngest survivor. “Good-morning, sir! Are you any better prepared to-day?” With eyes of a confused, smoky brightness, he surveyed his grandson, then searched the few old books on the shelves. “Hmm! Sallust--yes, just so. Come, begin--where’s the lesson, eh?--No, not there, either, take it all!--Hmm!--Ah, here ’tis, boy: _Volturcius interrogatus de itinere_--” “Please, sir,” said Miles humbly, “we don’t--it’s Saturday, grandfather.” “Eh, what the devil?” complained the old man. “So ’tis, boy, so ’tis. Always Saturday.” Frowning vaguely, he thumped the book on the table. “Well, and how d’ye propose to waste your time to-day?” “Shooting, sir, if you don’t mind,” ventured Miles. “The law’s off on patri--” “Don’t let me hear that barbarism!” cried his grandfather bitterly. “Must we talk like rustics? If you _will_ miscall the ruffed grouse, sir, call it p-a-r-t--partridge! Say it!” “Partridge, sir,” mumbled the boy sheepishly. “Louder!” “Partridge.” “Again!” “Partridge, sir.”