"Yes, for the illustration. But I do not know him to be strictly a _champion_ of unbelief, although he avows himself on that side. His conversations with me have left me uncertain how far he would go." Faith was silent and looked thoughtful. "Have I touched any of your difficulties? May I hear any more?" "No--" she said. "I believe you have said all you can say. And it is good for me." "I have not said all I _could_ say, but it is not easy for me to talk to you about it at all. You see, Miss Faith," said Mr. Linden smiling, "there cannot be such an anomaly in nature as a philosophical bird--so what am I to do?" Faith smiled a little and thought that as long as he gave her the benefit of his philosophy, it did not much matter. Which recondite view of the subject she did not put into words. The days began to roll on smoothly once more, subsiding into their old uneventful flow. The flow of talk indeed had not quite subsided; but as nothing came to throw any light on the point of the unknown sportsman who chose his sport so strangely, curiosity took a modified, condensed form; and the whole matter was stowed away in people's minds as the one Pattaquasset mystery. Happy Pattaquasset! Even Mr. Linden's protracted confinement to the house made little difference to most, he had been so little seen when he was able to be out: only the boys had had his daylight hours; and where he had spent those times of twilight and evening when he was not at home, no one knew but the poor unknown class who mourned his absence as they had blessed his presence, in secret. The boys were not silent,--but they had the indemnification of going to see him, and of watching--or sleeping--in his room at night, according to their various dispositions. There came all his scholars on Sunday,--met by Faith on her contrary way; there came the whole school by turns, and at all hours. Indeed when once the embargo upon visiters was taken off, the supply was great!--and without careful measures on the part of Mr. Linden, French exercises would have been put aside with a witness. But he made two or three rules, and carried them out. In the first place he would see nobody before dinner, except the doctor; nor anybody after tea, save the same privileged individual. In the second place, when he was able to be out of his room without too much fatigue, the lessons were carried on down stairs,--in the dining-room generally, as being more private. There could both parties come and go without observation; and often when Mrs. Derrick was entertaining a roomful, a sudden fall of the thin partition would have revealed the very people they were discussing, deep in some pretty point of information. Pretty those lessons were! Faith's steps,--arithmetical, geographical, or what other,--were swift, steady, and sure; herself indefatigable, her teacher no less. If Mr. Linden had not quite come to be in her eyes "an old school book," she was yet enough accustomed to his teaching and