While Sibyll listened to such explanations as Madge could give her,
the stranger, who had carefully closed the door of the student's
chamber, after regarding Adam for a moment with silent but keen
scrutiny, thus began,--

"When last we met, Adam Warner, it was with satchells on our backs.
Look well at me!"

"Troth," answered Adam, languidly, for he was still under the deep
dejection that had followed the scene with Sibyll, "I cannot call you
to mind, nor seems it veritable that our schooldays passed together,
seeing that my hair is gray and men call me old; but thou art in all
the lustihood of this human life."

"Nathless," returned the stranger, "there are but two years or so
between thine age and mine. When thou wert poring over the crabbed
text, and pattering Latin by the ell, dost thou not remember a lack-
grace good-for-naught, Robert Hilyard, who was always setting the
school in an uproar, and was finally outlawed from that boy-world, as
he hath been since from the man's world, for inciting the weak to
resist the strong?"

"Ah," exclaimed Adam, with a gleam of something like joy on his face,
"art thou indeed that riotous, brawling, fighting, frank-hearted, bold
fellow, Robert Hilyard? Ha! ha!--those were merry days! I have known
none like them--" The old schoolfellows shook hands heartily.

"The world has not fared well with thee in person or pouch, I fear me,
poor Adam," said Hilyard; "thou canst scarcely have passed thy
fiftieth year, and yet thy learned studies have given thee the weight