ed a singular perversity in
looking away and denying it. Possibly they were affected in some degree
by a nervous restlessness in his organization, which appeared to pervade
every fiber in his lean, lithe body. The rector's healthy Anglo-Saxon
flesh crept responsively at every casual movement of the usher's supple
brown fingers, and every passing distortion of the usher's haggard
yellow face. "God forgive me!" thought Mr. Brock, with his mind running
on Allan and Allan's mother, "I wish I could see my way to turning Ozias
Midwinter adrift in the world again!"

The conversation which ensued between the two was a very guarded one.
Mr. Brock felt his way gently, and found himself, try where he might,
always kept politely, more or less, in the dark.

From first to last, the man's real character shrank back with a savage
shyness from the rector's touch. He started by an assertion which it
was impossible to look at him and believe--he declared that he was only
twenty years of age. All he could be persuaded to say on the subject of
the school was that the bare recollection of it was horrible to him.
He had only filled the usher's situation for ten days when the first
appearance of his illness caused his dismissal. How he had reached
the field in which he had been found was more than he could say. He
remembered traveling a long distance by railway, with a purpose (if he
had a purpose) which it was now impossible to recall, and then wandering
coastward, on foot, all through the day, or all through the night--he
was not sure which. The sea kept running in his mind when his mind began
to give way. He had been employed on the sea as a lad. He had left it,
and had filled a situation at a bookseller's in a country town. He had
left the bookseller's, and had tried the school. Now the school had
turned him out, he must try something else. It mattered little what he
tried--failure (for which nobody was ever to blame but himself) was
sure to be the end of it, sooner or later. Friends to assist him, he
had none to apply to; and as for relations, he wished to be excused from
speaking of them. For all he knew they might be dead, and for all _they_
knew _he_ might be dead. That was a melancholy acknowledgment to make at
his time of life, there was no denying it. It might tell against him in
the opinions of others; and it did tell against him, no doubt, in the
opinion of the gentleman who was talking to him at that moment.

These strange ans