I can't make sense of this! I wouldn't care if it wasn't a story." He had an old folio under one arm, with a finger of the other hand in its leaves.
"It is a curious taste for a child!" said the youth, turning to Donal, in whom he had recognized the peasant-scholar: "this little brother of mine reads all the dull old romances he can lay his hands on." "Perhaps," suggested Donal, "they are the only fictions within his reach! Could you not turn him loose upon sir Walter Scott ?" "A good suggestion!" he answered, casting a keen glance at Donal.
"Will you let me look at the passage ?" said Donal to the boy, holding out his hand.
The boy opened the book, and gave it him.

On the top of the page Donal read, "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia." He had read of the book, but had never seen it.
"That's a grand book!" he said.
"Horribly dreary," remarked the elder brother.
The younger reached up, and laid his finger on the page next him.
"There, sir!" he said; "that is the place: do tell me what it means." "I will try," answered Donal; "I may not be able." He began to read at the top of the page.
"That's not the place, sir!" said the boy.

"It is there." "I must know something of what goes before it first," returned Donal.
"Oh, yes, sir; I see!" he answered, and stood silent.
He was a fair-haired boy, with ruddy cheeks and a healthy look--sweet-tempered evidently.
Donal presently saw both what the sentence meant and the cause of his difficulty.

He explained the thing to him.
"Thank you! thank you! Now I shall get on!" he cried, and ran up the hill.
"You seem to understand boys!" said the brother.
"I have always had a sort of ambition to understand ignorance." "Understand ignorance ?" "You know what queer shapes the shadows of the plainest things take: I never seem to understand any thing till I understand its shadow." The youth glanced keenly at Donal.
"I wish I had had a tutor like you!" he said.
"Why ?" asked Donal.
"I should done better .-- Where do you live ?" Donal told him he was lodging with Andrew Comin, the cobbler.

A silence followed.
"Good morning!" said the youth.
"Good morning, sir!" returned Donal, and went away..