od-bye, papa," she said coldly.

He kissed her on the cheek, and took a step to follow her to the
door; but thought better of it and returned to the window. He heard
the door close upon her, and five minutes later saw her whisked away
in the gig by Dick Ellison's side.

CHAPTER VIII.

He continued to stare out of the window long after the gig had
disappeared over the low horizon: a small, nervous, indomitable
figure of a man close upon his sixty-second birthday, standing for a
while with his back turned upon his unwieldy manuscripts and his jaw
thrust forward obstinately as he surveyed the blank landscape.
He had the scholar's stoop, but this thrust of the jaw was habitual
and lifted his face at an angle which gave an "up-sighted" expression
to his small eyes, set somewhat closely together above a long
straight nose. Nose, eyes, jaw announced obstinacy, and the eyes,
quick and fiery, warned you that it was of the aggressive kind which
not only holds to its purpose, but never ceases nagging until it be
attained. In build he was lean and wiry: in carriage amazingly
dignified for one who (to be precise) stood but 5 feet 5 and a half
inches high.

His father had been a non-juring clergyman, one of the many ejected
from their livings on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1662; and he himself had
been educated as a Nonconformist at Mr. Morton's famous academy on
Newington Green, where Daniel Defoe had preceded him as a pupil, and
where he had heard John Bunyan preach. At the conclusion of his
training there he was pitched upon to answer some pamphlets levelled
against the Dissenters, and this set him on a course of reading which
produced an effect he was far from intending: for instead of writing
the answer he determined to renounce Dissent and attach himself to
the Established Church. He dwelt at that time with his mother and an
old aunt, themselves ardent Dissenters, to whom he could not tell his
design. So he arose before daybreak one morning, tramped sixty miles
to Oxford, and entered himself at Exeter College as a poor scholar.
This was in August, 1683.

He took up his residence in Oxford with forty-five shillings in his
pocket. He studied there five years, and during that time received
from his family and friends just five shillings; obtained his
Bachelor's degree, and departed seven pounds and fifteen shillings
richer than when he entered the University. The winter of 1683 was a
hard beginning for a scholar to