“To be sure I am,” resumed Billy; “and I do be thinking there 's a kind of poethry in carrying away into the solitary pine forest minds stored with classic lore, to be able to read one's Horace beside the gushing stream that flows on nameless and unknown, and con over ould Herodotus amidst adventures stranger than ever he told himself.” “It might be a happy life,” said the other, slowly, almost moodily. “Ay, and it will be,” said Billy, confidently. “Think of yourself, mounted on that saddle on a wild prairie horse, galloping free as the wind itself over the wide savannas, with a drove of rushing buffaloes in career before you, and so eager in pursuit that you won't stop to bring down the scarlet-winged bustard that swings on the branch above you. There they go, plungin' and snortin', the mad devils, with a force that would sweep a fortress before them; and here are we after them, makin' the dark woods echo again with our wild yells. That's what will warm up our blood, till we 'll not be afeard to meet an army of dragoons themselves. Them pistols once belonged to Cariatoké, a chief from Scio; and that blade--a real Damascus--was worn by an Aga of the Janissaries. Isn't it a picture?” The youth poised the sword in his hand, and laid it down without a word; while Billy continued to stare at him with an expression of intensest amazement. “Is it that you don't care for it all now, that your mind is changed, and that you don't wish for the life we were talkin' over these three weeks? Say so at once, my own darlin', and here I am, ready and willin' never to think more of it. Only tell me what's passin' in your heart; I ask no more.” “I scarcely know it myself,” said the youth. “I feel as though in a dream, and know not what is real and what fiction.” “How have you passed your time? What were you doin' while I was away?” “Dreaming, I believe,” said the other, with a sigh. “Some embers of my old ambition warmed up into a flame once more, and I fancied that there was that in me that by toil and labor might yet win upwards; and that, if so, this mere life of action would but bring repining and regret, and that I should feel as one who chose the meaner casket of fate, when both were within my reach.” “So you were at work again in the studio?” “I have been finishing the arm of the Faun in that pavilion outside the town.” A flush of crimson covered his face as he spoke, which Billy as quickly noticed, but misinterpreted. “Ay, and they praised you, I 'll be bound. They said it was the work of one whose genius would place him with the great ones of art, and that he who could do this while scarcely more than a boy, might, in riper years, be the great name of his century. Did they not tell you so?” “No; not that, not that,” said the other, slowly. “Then they bade you go on, and strive and labor hard to develop into life the seeds of that glorious gift that was in you?”