BOTCHAN
students or some others during the early part in the evening, it would surely be after nine. For the first two nights, I was on the watch till about 11 o’clock, but no sight of Red Shirt was seen. On the third night, I kept peeping through from nine to ten thirty, but he did not come. Nothing made me feel more like a fool than returning to the boarding house at midnight after a fruitless watch. In four or five days, our old lady began worrying about me and advised me to quit night prowling,–being married. My night prowling is different from that kind of night prowling. Mine is that of administering a deserved chastisement. But then, when no encouragement is in sight after one week, it becomes tiresome. I am quick tempered, and get at it with all zeal when my interest is aroused, and would sit up all night to work it out, but I have never shone in endurance. However loyal a member of the heavenly-chastisement league I may be, I cannot escape monotony. On the sixth night I was a little tired, and on the
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