A Hoosier Chronicle | Page 7

you to so much bother."
"Oh, that was nothing."
"Is that new building the college library?"
"Yes," replied Sylvia. "Are you a Madison man?"
"No. I was never here before. I went to a very different college
and"--he hesitated--"a little bigger one."

"I suppose there are bigger colleges," Sylvia remarked, with the
slightest accent on the adjective.
The young man laughed.
"That's the right spirit! Madison needs no praise from me; it speaks for
itself. Is this the nearest way to the station?"
It had been on Sylvia's tongue to ask him the name of his college, but
he had perhaps read this inquiry in her eyes, and as though suddenly
roused by the remembrance of the secrecy that had been imposed upon
him, he moved on.
"Yes, I understand," he called over his shoulder. "Thank you, very
much."
He whistled softly to himself as he continued on his way, still glancing
about alertly.
The manner of the old professor in receiving the letter and the calmness
with which he had given his reply minimized the importance of the
transaction in the mind of the messenger. He was thinking of Sylvia
and smiling still at her implication that while there were larger colleges
than Madison there was none better. He turned to look again at the
college buildings closely clasped by their strip of woodland. Madison
was not a college to sneer at; he had scanned the bronze tablet on the
library wall that published the roll of her Sons who had served in the
Civil War. Many of the names were written high in the state's history
and for a moment they filled the young man's mind.
As she neared home Sylvia met her friend Dr. Wandless, the former
president, who always had his joke with her.
"Hail, Lady of the Constellations! You have been looting the library, I
see. Hast thou named the stars without a gun?"
"That isn't right," protested Sylvia. "You're purposely misquoting.
You've only spoiled Emerson's line about the birds."

"Bless me, I believe that's so!" laughed the old gentleman. "But tell me,
Sylvia: 'Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the
bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or
guide Arcturus with his sons?'"
Sylvia, with brightening eyes and a smile on her lips, answered:--
"Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion
thereof in the earth?"
"Ah, if only I could, Sylvia!" said the old minister, smiling gravely.
They came in high spirits to the parting of their ways and Sylvia kept
on through the hedge to her grandfather's cottage. The minister turned
once, a venerable figure with snowy beard and hair, and beat the path
softly with his stick and glanced back, as Sylvia's red ribbon bobbed
through the greenery.
"'Whose daughter art thou?'" he murmured gently.
Then, glancing furtively about, he increased his gait as though to
escape from his own thoughts; but the question asked of Bethuel's
daughter by Abraham's servant came again to his lips, and he shook his
head as he repeated:--
"Whose daughter art thou?"

CHAPTER II
SYLVIA GOES VISITING
"How old did you say you were, Sylvia?"
"I'm sixteen in October, grandpa," answered Sylvia.
"Is it possible!" murmured the professor. "And to think that you've
never been to school."

"Why, I've been going to school every day, almost, ever since I can
remember. And haven't I had the finest teacher in the world, all to
myself?"
His face brightened responsive to her laugh.
This was at the tea-table--for the Keltons dined at noon in conformity
with local custom--nearly a week after the unsigned letter had been
delivered to Andrew Kelton by the unknown messenger. Sylvia and her
grandfather had just returned from a walk, prolonged into the cool dusk.
They sat at the square walnut table, where they had so long faced each
other three times a day. Sylvia had never doubted that their lives would
go on forever in just this way,--that they would always be, as her
grandfather liked to put it, "shipmates," walking together, studying
together, sitting as they sat now, at their simple meals, with just the
same quaintly flowered dishes, the same oddly turned teapot, with its
attendant cream pitcher (slightly cracked as to lip) and the sugar-bowl,
with a laboring ship depicted in blue on its curved side, which was not
related, even by the most remote cousinship, to anything else in the
pantry.
Professor Kelton was unwontedly preoccupied to-night. Sylvia saw that
he had barely touched his strawberries--their first of the season, though
they were fine ones and the cream was the thickest. She folded her
hands on the edge of the table and watched him gravely in the light of
the four candles whose flame flared in the breeze that