“About half a mile, I should say,” replied Bar, with the first sign of a smile he had given. “You told me to begin at the beginning.” “And I should say you had,” said Brayton. “It will take you long enough to digest all that. To-morrow you may take up your Greek, and I’ll try to make up my own mind how on earth I’d better go to work with yours. You’ve a good one. The only question is what to do with it.” “That’s just what I’d like to know,” said Bar. “I’ve done a good many things with it already, but most of them don’t suit me very well.” “We’ll talk about it hereafter,” said Brayton, thoughtfully. “You and Mr. Manning may go now. I think you have done a good day’s work.” So they had, but George Brayton had no notion of what the best part of it--the hardest, at all events--consisted. Neither had it yet been completed, and the boys retired to their own room to give the matter due consideration. A large, pleasant room it was, at the rear of the house, and one of its windows opened upon the sloping roof of the one-story back-building which old Judge Wood, in his pride, had deemed necessary to complete the proportions of his mansion. “He must have foreseen our necessities,” remarked Bar. “You know, Val, it won’t do for anybody to see us go out or come in. Now there isn’t a tree anywhere else within four rods of the house, but that old maple yonder leans clean over the back roof.” “Easy enough to get into that and slide down,” said Val. “I guess other boys that have boarded with Mrs. Wood must have done it many a time. I never had this room before.” “We’ll start about ten o’clock,” said Bar. “It’s going to be a pretty dark night. Stars, but no moon till very late. That’s just what we want.” “Moonshine enough last night,” said Val. “Well,” replied Bar, “wasn’t it about midnight? That’ll be just when we want it. Now we must do some studying, or I must, and then we’ll go to bed for awhile.” Val hardly knew what to make of a fellow who could pick up a Latin grammar and go to work so doggedly under such circumstances. He could not have done it, to save his life, but he managed to get fairly interested in “Ivanhoe” while Bar was studying. Neither of the city boys had given a moment’s thought that day, as to the notions formed of them by the young gentlemen of the village, important as they were likely to find that very thing. They might, indeed, have been surprised if they had known how very thoroughly they had been discussed, or how largely their arrival entered into the current plans and calculations of Zebedee Fuller and his friends. “Now, Zeb,” said Hy Allen, as they sat on the log by the mill-dam after taking their accustomed swim, “we all know Val Manning well enough, and he wasn’t so very hard to manage.”