The Doctor sat smiling to himself for a little while, nodded his head once or twice, and then, fixing his clear, cool blue eyes on my face, said, in an emphatic voice,--"That boy will make his mark. Depend upon it, he will make his mark in one way or another!" A shadow fell over the eyes; the voice was lowered:--"I have only one fear for him. It is that he may throw himself away on some fanaticism." "How long have you known Harry Dudley?" I asked, when the pause had lasted so long that I thought the Doctor would not begin again without being prompted. "All his life. Our families are connected;--not so nearly by blood; but they have run down side by side for four or five generations. His father and I pass for cousins. We were in college together. He was my Senior, but I was more with him than with any of my own classmates until he was graduated. He married very soon after, and then his house was like a brother's to me. I went abroad after I left college, and was gone three years. When I came back, we took things up just where we left them. Dudley went to Europe himself afterwards with his family, but I was backwards and forwards, so that I have never lost sight of them. I have nobody nearer to me." "I was surprised to learn, from what you said last evening, that Harry had passed a good deal of time in Europe." The Doctor turned upon me briskly. Perhaps my tone may have implied that I was sorry to learn it. "He has lost nothing by that. He has lost nothing by it, but that fixed stamp of place and time that most men wear. Though I don't know whether he would have had it at any rate: he was always himself. You have seen some shallow fellow who has been spoiled for living at home by a few years of sauntering and lounging about Europe. But rely on it, he who comes back a coxcomb went out one. Never fear! Harry is as good an American as if he had not been away,--and better. Living abroad, he has had the simplicity to study the history of his own country as carefully as if it had been a foreign one, not aware that it is with us no necessary part of a polite education. As for its institutions, he has an enthusiasm for them that I could almost envy him while it lasts, though I know he has got to be cured of it." "How long was he abroad?" "More than seven years." "Was he with his parents all the time?"