He sat himself down in his familiar arm-chair, and looked across the table at his poor little pupil, who seemed at once so helpless and so strong.
Lessons begun.

The child was exceedingly intelligent--precociously, nay, preternaturally so, it appeared to Mr.Cardross, who, like many another learned father, had been blessed with rather stupid boys, who liked any thing better than study, and whom he had with great labor dragged through a course of ordinary English, Latin, and even a fragment of Greek.

But this boy seemed all brains.

His cheeks flushed, his eyes glittered, he learned as if he actually enjoyed learning.

True, as Mr.
Cardross soon discovered, his acquirements were not at all in the regular routine of education; he was greatly at fault in many simple things; but the amount of heterogeneous and out-of-the-way knowledge which he had gathered up, from all available sources, was quite marvelous.