“Nothing, sir,” said Miles. He understood now the old man’s gloom, and lay still, with long thoughts of pity and contrition. The rebuke was just: had he not been lying here, his head full of day-dreams, plans, vainglorious romance? He could ride--he had proved that; he loved the sea with an inborn longing. Which, then, was the better life, soldier’s or sailor’s? Dull peace at home, he had thought, was not to be endured. The brief spice of action, of danger, had so edged his fancy that the whole fortnight had passed among conjured shapes of adventure: brigantines navigated through seas not in the atlas, coral islands raised against the dawn, typhoons weathered, cannibals beaten off--were these better than a red whirl of cavalry, with trumpets, with sabres, with leather creaking like Jubilee’s saddle? The choice had seemed, at times, easy and immediate. And now grandfather had somehow scolded him to his senses. He could not put the new emotion into words, but in a flash he had seen that this pictured joy of living was the mere pride of life. “What’s wrong?” grumbled the old man. “Ankle twinged. Nothing,” replied Miles. He could not explain what brightness had died out.--Ella’s step mounted toward them, and the shadow spokes of banisters wheeled in a striped flange across the ceiling, before he spoke again. “Don’t worry about all that, grandfather.” The advice, the audacity, surprised them both; neither was aware that between boyhood and youth a door had closed forever. Closed it had, nevertheless, and Miles, when afoot once more and outdoors, wondered vaguely at the change in his little world. Frost-bitten fields, white-caps on the border river, birch groves and maple shifting their bleak reticulation against a sky that threatened snow,--these formed a background for new and sober thoughts. He had lost the conviction that his future must be different, transplanted and transformed, bright with surprise, excitement, and good fortune. All that was nonsense. Here lay his life, studying by day, trudging by night down to the twin lamps; for variety, he wore now his threadbare reefer, now his mittens and great helmet of moth-eaten fur; now plodded on snowshoes over drifts, where powdered gold puffed upward, at each step, into the lantern-light; now cleared the tower windows of damp snowflakes; now waded in hip-boots through pools of freshet. One deeply starred spring night, he surprised himself recalling that the girl’s name was different from Abram’s. “Perhaps she was adopted,” he thought, as he sniffed the damp sweetness of reviving earth, “or an orphan, like me.” On the heels of this, he could excuse her folly: “I was hurt, of course, and she felt sorry that she’d stumped me. Perhaps Abram would beat her, too--” Why should he speculate, so long afterward, about persons whom he would never see again?