There is a providence that looks after reckless youth especially, else there would have been broken bones, or worse; but out of the confusion two warriors scrambled to their feet, dazed somewhat and dirty, but unharmed, and two old mares floundered into their normal attitude a little later, evidently much disgusted with the entire proceeding.  And Valentine, grand marshal, who had chanced to have a little difficulty with his elder brother the day before, promptly awarded the honors of the tournament to Grant on the ground that old Molly, the horse ridden by Alfred, seemed a little more shaken up than the other.

Of course there were other books than those of chivalric doings which appealed to this young reader so addicted to putting theory into practice at all risks.  “Robinson Crusoe,” and Byron, and D’Aubigne’s “History of the Reformation,” and “Midshipman Easy,” and “Snarleyow,” and the “Woman in White,” “John Brent,” and Josephus, and certain old readers, such as the American First Class Book, made up the odd country library, and there was not a book in the lot which was not in time devoured.  There was another book, a romance entitled “Don Sebastian,” to which at length a local tragedy appertained.  The scene was laid in Spain or Portugal and the hero of the story was a very gallant character, indeed, one to be relied upon for the accomplishment of great slaughter in an emergency, but who was singularly unlucky in his love affair, in the outcome of which Grant became deeply interested, too deeply, as the event proved.  Upon the country boy of eleven or twelve devolve always, in a new country, certain responsibilities not unconnected with the great fuel question,—­the keeping of the wood-box full,—­and these duties, in the absorption of the novel, the youth neglected shamefully.  A casual allusion or two, followed by a direct announcement of what must come, had been entirely lost upon him, and, one day, as he was lying by the unreplenished fire, deep in the pages of the book, the volume was lifted gently from his hands, and, to his horror, dropped upon the blazing coals against the back-log.  Many things occurred to him in later life of the sort men would avoid, but never came much greater mental shock than on that black occasion.  Stunned, dazed, he went outside and threw himself upon the grass and tried to reason out what could be done.  Was he never to know the fate of Don Sebastian?  It was beyond endurance!  A cheap quality of literature the book was, no doubt, but he was not critical at that age, and in later years he often sought the volume out of curiosity to learn what in his boyhood had entranced him, but he never found it.  It was a small, fat volume, very like a pocket Bible in shape, bound cheaply in green cloth, and printed in England, probably somewhere in the ’30’s, but it had disappeared.  The bereaved youth was, henceforth, in as sore a retrospective strait over “Don Sebastian” as Mr. Andrew Lang declares he is, to-day, with his “White Serpent” story.