pect of the most important of all the events which are recorded in
it. Surely Ernest's first day's attempt at more promiscuous visiting,
and at carrying out his principles more thoroughly, had not been
unfruitful. But he must go and have a talk with Pryer. He therefore got
his lunch and went to Pryer's lodgings. Pryer not being at home, he
lounged to the British Museum Reading Room, then recently opened, sent
for the "Vestiges of Creation," which he had never yet seen, and spent
the rest of the afternoon in reading it.

Ernest did not see Pryer on the day of his conversation with Mr Shaw, but
he did so next morning and found him in a good temper, which of late he
had rarely been. Sometimes, indeed, he had behaved to Ernest in a way
which did not bode well for the harmony with which the College of
Spiritual Pathology would work when it had once been founded. It almost
seemed as though he were trying to get a complete moral ascendency over
him, so as to make him a creature of his own.

He did not think it possible that he could go too far, and indeed, when I
reflect upon my hero's folly and inexperience, there is much to be said
in excuse for the conclusion which Pryer came to.

As a matter of fact, however, it was not so. Ernest's faith in Pryer had
been too great to be shaken down all in a moment, but it had been
weakened lately more than once. Ernest had fought hard against allowing
himself to see this, nevertheless any third person who knew the pair
would have been able to see that the connection between the two might end
at any moment, for when the time for one of Ernest's snipe-like changes
of flight came, he was quick in making it; the time, however, was not yet
come, and the intimacy between the two was apparently all that it had
ever been. It was only that horrid money business (so said Ernest to
himself) that caused any unpleasantness between them, and no doubt Pryer
was right, and he, Ernest, much too nervous. However, that might stand
over for the present.

In like manner, though he had received a shock by reason of his
conversation with Mr Shaw, and by looking at the "Vestiges," he was as
yet too much stunned to realise the change which was coming over him. In
each case the momentum of old habits carried him forward in the old
direction. He therefore called on Pryer, and spent an hour and more with
him.

He did not say that he had been visiting among his neighbours; this to
Pryer would have b