Aughinbaugh bowed. “Thank you, Mr. Bransford, thank you! But I am proof against even such subtle and insidious flattery as yours. Hereafter, sir, I shall read no book through to you. I shall select works suited to your parts and your station in life and read barely enough to stimulate your sluggish mind. Then you can shell corn or be buried alive. To-night, for instance, I shall read some salient extracts from Carlyle’s ‘French Revolution.’ You will not in the least understand it, but your interest and curiosity will be aroused. You will then finish it, with such collateral reading as I shall direct.” “Sure you got all those ‘shalls’ and ‘wills’ just right?” suggested Jeff. “It’s mighty easy to get ’em tangled up.” “That is the only proper way to study history,” George went on, wisely ignoring the interruption. “Read history lightly, about some period, then read the best works of poetry or fiction dealing with the same events. Then come back to history again. The characters will be real people to you and not mere names. You will eagerly extend your researches to details about these familiar acquaintances and friends, and learn particulars that you would else have shirked as dull and laborious.” He took a book from the shelf. “I will now read to you--after you replenish the fire--a few chapters here and there, especially there, dealing with the taking of the Bastille.” Without, a wild March wind shrilled and moaned at the trembling casements; within, firelight’s cozy cheer, Aughinbaugh’s slim youth lit by the glowing circle of the shaded lamp, the dusky corners beyond. The flexible voice sank with pity or swelled with hot indignation. And Bransford, as he listened to that stupendous, chaotic drama of incoherent clangorous World Bedlam, saw, in the glowing coals, tumultuous, dim-confused figures come and go, passionate, terrible and grim; the young, the gay, the beautiful, the brave, the brave in vain; fire-hearted, vehement, proud, swallowed up by delirium. Newer shapes, wild, portentous, spluttering, flashing, whirling, leaping in wild dervish dance. In the black shadows, in the eddying thick smoke, lurked crowding shapes more terrible still, abominable, malignant, demoniacal, imbecile--Proteus shapes that changed, dwindled, leaped and roared to an indistinguishable sulphurous whirlpool, sport of all the winds. Brief flashes of clearer light there were, as the smoke billowed aside; faces gleamed a moment distinct, resolute, indomitable, bright-sparkling; blazed high--and fell, trampled down by fresh legion-changing apparitions. Sad visions, some monstrous, some heroic, all pitiful; thronging innumerable, consuming and consumed. * * * * *