Mac looked at me, laughing long and loud. "Thou dear innocent Ned!" cried he at last, "what a diagnostic thou wouldst make! It was indeed the talk of madness, good chum, and a very pretty madness was it, one that needeth not any Anticyran purgatives to expel it. So thou must not fash thyself about the lad, _du liebe dummkopf_, for he will come right very speedily. Didst remark not what he said about the 'herb Pantagruelion,' which, in the vulgar, meaneth only _hemp_? And surely you noted the warm flush of his cheek, the dilatation of his eye, and its phosphorescent glow? Dr. Thorne would soon enough tell you what these things signify. The boy is not crazy, Ned, but drunk,--drunk in the decorous delirium of a Damascene Pacha, propped against a Georgian maid, and fanned by Houris of Bethlehem Judah. He has been reading Monte Cristo, perhaps, or has somehow heard about the Indian Hemp, not the '_utilissima funibus cannabis_' of practical Pliny, but _Cannabis Indica_, wherewith, I believe, Amrou spurred on his Arabs to their miraculous feats of war, when he conquered Egypt and drove Alexandria's Prefect into the sea,--the _bhang_ of amok-running Malays, the _haschish_ of Syria and Cairo. This is what hath made him drunk, and, i' faith, the intoxication does not ill become him. He will be all right in the morning, and all the better for this little brush. And anyhow, Ned, you must not watch the boy too closely, nor interfere with him. Let him 'gang his ain gait.' He comes of another breed than ours, I begin to suspect, and our rough fodder and grooming may not suit his higher blood.--_Ach, Himmel!_ Ned," cried he, laughing, "it pleased me, though, to see how adroitly he contrived to twist that new reading out of the _bon homme François_. It was quite in the style of St. Augustine, and would have delighted that ex-sophist hugely; for, great as he was, and self-denying as he was, he always had a hankering after the dialectic flesh-pots. How he would have rubbed his hands, when Clarian wanted to persuade us that the herb Pantagruelion was no other than Haschish, the expander of souls!--Hollo! yonder goes the lad now. I wonder what he is up to. See him, Ned, yonder, just coming out of the shadow of North College. How fast he walks! how he is swinging his arms! I'll bet he is repeating poetry. I wonder what the lad is after, anyhow.--There he goes, round the corner of West College,--over the fence. Can he mean to have a game of ball by moonlight?--No,--he's making across the fields; if he had a pitcher with him now, I'd say he was going to the spring in the hollow.--Confound that tree! I've lost him." I proposed following Clarian, being really uneasy about him, but Mac entered his veto,--