n a good memory than upon the
inscrutable favours of Almighty God. Even the Confessions of St.
Augustine, which might have shed their own fierce light of Africa upon
the dark problem of sin, were scarcely touched upon. Here in this
tranquil room St. Augustine lived in quotations from his controversial
works, or in discussions whether he had not wrongly translated [Greek]
in the Epistle to the Romans by _in quo omnes
peccaverunt_ instead of like the Pelagians by _propter quod omnes
peccaverunt_. The dim echoes of the strife between Semipelagian
Marseilles and Augustinian Carthage resounded faintly in Mark's brain;
but they only resounded at all, because he knew that without being able
to display some ability to convey the impression that he understood the
Thirty-Nine Articles he should never be ordained. Mark wondered what
Canon Havelock would have done or said if a woman taken in adultery had
been brought into the lecture-room by the beadle. Yet such a supposition
was really beside the point, he thought penitently. After all, human
beings would soon be degraded to wax-works if they could be lectured
upon individually in this tranquil and sunny room to the sound of rooks
cawing in the elms beyond the Deanery garden.

Mark made no intimate friendships among his fellows. Perhaps the
moderation of their views chilled him into an exceptional reserve, or
perhaps they were an unusually dull company that year. Of the thirty-one
students, eighteen were from Oxford, twelve from Cambridge, and the
thirty-first from Durham. Even he was looked at with a good deal of
suspicion. As for Mark, nothing less than God's prevenient grace could
explain his presence at Silchester. Naturally, inasmuch as they were
going to be clergymen, the greatest charity, the sweetest toleration was
shown to Mark's unfortunate lack of advantages; but he was never unaware
that intercourse with him involved his companions in an effort, a
distinct, a would-be Christlike effort to make the best of him. It was
the same kind of effort they would soon be making when as Deacons they
sought for the sick, poor, and impotent people of the Parish. Mark might
have expected to find among them one or two of whom it might be
prophesied that they would go far. But he was unlucky. All the brilliant
young candidates for Ordination must have betaken themselves to
Cuddesdon or Wells or Lichfield that year.

Of the eighteen graduates from Oxford, half took their religion as a h