Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IL STUDYING TO AXSWEK. MAJOR BERGAN—to give him the title by -which lie was known throughout the country round— displayed no alacrity of welcome. He first scanned his visitor closely from head to foot, and then silently extended his hand for the letter which the young man had drawn forth from an inner pocket. " Hold that light here!" were his first words, in a tone deep as a thunder-peal, and addressed not to Bergan Arling, but to the aforesaid torch-bearer. " And quit your staring, and mind your business, or I'll—" The sentence died away in an inarticulate growl, but the boy was plainly at no loss to understand its purport. With a startled look, he fixed his eyes on the torch, and only ventured to withdraw them for an occasional, furtive glance at the object of his curiosity. Meanwhile, his master opened the letter, and read it deliberately from beginning to end. The light of the torcli fell full upon his face as he did so, giving Bergan Arling an opportunity to study him, in his turn. His face was a striking one; in youth it had doubtless been handsome. Now, his brow was too massive, his mouth too Btern, his eyes too cold, his beard too gray and heavy, to bear any relation to mere personal beauty. All soft lights and lines had long gone out of them ; what remained was hard, bold, and rugged, as a rocky headland in winter. The rude strength which was the marked characteristic of his form, repeated itself emphatically in his face. Comparing it with the mental portrait, carefully touched and retouched by his mother's hand, which Bcrgan had carried in his mind since childhood, he felt that the one resembled the other only as a tree in autumn, stripped bare of its foliage and its blossoms, resembles the same tree in its gracious summer bloom and verdure. Little trace o...