rger and finer qualities reveal themselves, though they
are indeed often there. The whole atmosphere is one of decorum,
authority, subordination. Introspection is disregarded and even
suppressed. To be active, good-humoured, sensible, is the supreme
development. Hugh indeed got nothing but good out of his school-days;
the simple code of the place gave him balance and width of view, and
the conventionality which is the danger of these institutions never
soaked into his mind; convention was indeed for him like a suit of
bright polished armour, in which he moved about like a youthful knight.
He left school curiously immature in many ways. He had _savoir faire_
enough and mild literary interests, but of hard intellectual robustness
he had nothing. The studies of the place were indeed not of a nature
to encourage it. The most successful boys were graceful triflers with
ancient literatures; to write a polished and vapid poem of Latin verse
was Hugh's highest accomplishment, and he possessed the power of
reading, with moderate facility, both Latin and Greek; add to this a
slender knowledge of ancient history, a slight savour of mathematics,
and a few vague conceptions of science; such was the dainty
intellectual equipment with which he prepared to do battle with the
great world. But for all that he knew something of the art of dealing
with men. He had learnt to obey and to command, to be deferential to
authority and to exact due obedience, and he had too a priceless
treasure of friendship, of generous emotion, untinged with
sentimentality, that threw a golden light back upon the tall elms, the
ancient towers, the swiftly-running stream. It was to come back to him
in later years, in reveries both bitter and sweet, how inexpressibly
dear the place had been to him; indeed when he left his school, it had
simply transmuted itself into his home,--the Rectory, with its trees
and walks, its narrower circle of interests, having faded quite into
the background.

The last morning at school was filled with a desolation that was almost
an anguish; he had packed, had distributed presents, had said a number
of farewells, each thrilled with a passionate hope that he would not be
quite forgotten, but that he might still claim a little part in the
place, in the hearts so dear to him. He lay awake half the night, and
in the dawn he rose and put his curtain aside, and looked out on the
old buttresses of the chapel, the mellow towers of