He who had addressed Jacques was Mowbray; the other was Hoffland, the young student who had just arrived at Williamsburg. Hoffland is much younger than his companion--indeed, seems scarcely to have passed beyond boyhood; his stature is low, his figure is slender, his hair flaxen and curling, his face ornamented only with a peach-down mustache. He is clad in a suit of black richly embroidered; wraps a slight cloak around him spite of the warmth of the pleasant May afternoon; and his cocked hat, apparently too large for him, droops over his face, falling low down upon his brow. They walk on for a moment in silence. Then Hoffland says, in a musical voice like that of a boy before his tone undergoes the disagreeable change of manhood: "You have not said how strange you thought this sudden friendship I express, Mr. Mowbray, but I am afraid you think me very strange." "No, indeed," replies Mowbray; "I know not why, but you have already taken a strong hold upon me. Singular! we are almost strangers, but I feel as though I had known you all my life!" "That can scarcely be, for I am but seventeen or eighteen," says Hoffland smiling. "A frank, true age. I regret that I have passed it." "Why?" "Ah, can you ask, Mr. Hoffland?" "Please do not call me Mr. Hoffland. We are friends: say Charles; and then I will call you Ernest. I cannot unless you set me the example." "Ernest? How did you discover my name?" "Oh!" said Hoffland, somewhat embarrassed, "does not every body know Ernest Mowbray?" "Very well--as you are determined to give me compliments instead of reasons, I will not persist. Charles be it then, but you must call me Ernest." "Yes, Ernest." The low musical words went to his heart, and broke down every barrier. They were bosom friends from that moment, and walked on in perfect confidence. "Why did you regret your youth, Ernest?" said Hoffland. "I thought young men looked forward impatiently to their full manhood--twenty-five or thirty; though I do not," he added with a smile. "They do; but it is only another proof of the blindness of youth." "Is youth blind?" "Blind, because it cannot see that all the delights of ambition, the victories of mind, the triumphs and successes of the brain, are mere dust and ashes compared with what it costs to obtain them--the innocence of the heart, the illusions of its youthful hope." "Ah! are illusions to be desired?" "At least they are a sweet suffering, a bitter delight." "Even when one wakes from them to find every thing untrue--despair alone left?"