I can read."
"Latin?"
"No--English. Granddad weren't college-bred."
"Nor I--they gave me more lickings than Latin at the grammar school down
to Alvord, 'cause I would go bird's-nesting and fishing sooner than
study my _hic_, _haec_, _hoc_. And now I've built me a booth like a wild
man o' Virginia and come out here to get my Latin that I should ha'
mastered at thirteen. All the travel-books are in Latin, and you have to
know it to get on in foreign parts."
"Have you been in foreign parts?"
"Four year--France and Scotland and the Low Countries. But I got enough
o' seeing Christians kill one another, and says I to myself, John Smith,
you go see what they're about at home. And here I found our fen-sludgers
all by the ears over Bishops and Papists and Brownists and such like. In
Holland they let a man read's Bible in peace."
"Is that the Bible you got there?"
"Nay--Marcus Aurelius Antoninus--a mighty wise old chap, if he was an
Emperor. And I've got Niccolo Macchiavelli's seven books o' the Art o'
War. When I'm weary of one I take to t' other, and between times I ride
a tilt." He waved his hand toward a ring fastened on a tree, and a lance
and horse-furniture leaning against the trunk.
"Our folks be Separatists," the boy said.
"Well, and what of it?" laughed the young man.
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