iousness of youth and hope. Temperaments which are
subject to fits of heavy and causeless depression have their
compensations sometimes in the reaction which follows; the infesting
cares, as in Longfellow's poem, 'fold their tents, like the Arabs, and
as silently steal away,' and with their retreat comes an exquisite
exhilaration which more equable dispositions can never experience.

Is this so with Rolleston now? He only knows that the cloud has lifted
from his brain, and that in the clear sunshine which bursts upon him now
he can look his sorrows in the face and know that there is nothing so
terrible in them after all.

It is true that he is not happy at the big City day school which he has
just left. How should he be? He is dull and crabbed and uncouth, and
knows too well that he is an object of general dislike; no one there
cares to associate with him, and he makes no attempt to overcome their
prejudices, being perfectly aware that they are different from him, and
hating them for it, but hating himself, perhaps, the most.

And though all his evenings are spent at home there is little rest for
him even there, for the work for the next day must be prepared; and he
sits over it till late, sometimes with desperate efforts to master the
difficulties, but more often staring at the page before him with eyes
that are almost wilfully vacant.

All this has been and is enough in itself to account for the gloomy
state into which he had sunk. But--and how could he have forgotten
it?--it is over for the present.

To-night he will not have to sit up struggling with the tasks which will
only cover him with fresh disgrace on the morrow; for a whole month he
need not think of them, nor of the classes in which the hand of everyone
is against him. For the holidays have begun; to-day has been the last of
the term. Is there no reason for joy and thankfulness in that? What a
fool he has been to let those black thoughts gain such a hold over him!

Slowly, more as if it had all happened a long time ago instead of quite
recently, the incidents of the morning come back to him, vivid and clear
once more--morning chapel and the Doctor's sermon, and afterwards the
pretence of work and relaxed discipline in the class rooms, when the
results of the examinations had been read out, with the names of the
boys who had gained prizes and their remove to the form above. He had
come out last of course, but no one expected anything else from him; a
l