s--"and God bless
you, sir!" he added, with an apology for the liberty he was taking.
This was the only incident in his leave-taking which affected Hugh to
tears; but they were tears of emotion, not of regret. He was looking
on to the new life, and not back to the old; and as he went out into
the foggy air, and along the familiar pavement, there was nothing in
his heart that called him back. He was grateful for all the kindness
and affection of his friends, and the thought that he held a place in
their hearts. What he hoped, he hardly knew; but the release from the
burden of the tedious and useless work was like that which Christian
experienced, when the burden rolled from his back into the grave that
stood in the bottom, and he saw it no more.

VI

His Father's Friendship--His Sister's Death--The Silent River

One of the best things that Hugh's professional life had brought him
was a friendship with his father; their relations had been increasingly
tense all through the undergraduate days; if Hugh had not been of a
superficially timorous temperament, disliking intensely the atmosphere
of displeasure, disapproval, or misunderstanding, among those with whom
he lived, there would probably have been sharp collisions. His father
did not realise that the boy was growing up; active and vigorous
himself, he felt no diminution of energy, no sense of age, and he
forgot that the relations of the home circle were insensibly altering.
He took an intense interest in his son's university career, but
interfered with his natural liberty, expecting him to spend all his
vacations at home, and discouraging visits to houses of which he did
not approve. He was very desirous that Hugh should ultimately take
orders, and was nervously anxious that he should come under no
sceptical influences. The result was that Hugh simply excluded his
father from his confidence, telling him nothing except the things of
which he knew he would approve, and never asking his advice about
matters on which he felt at all keenly; because he knew that his father
would tend to attempt to demolish, with a certain bitterness and
contempt, the speculations in which he indulged, and would be shocked
and indignant at the mere beckoning of ideas which Hugh found to be
widely entertained even by men whom he respected greatly. His father's
faith indeed, subtle and even beautiful as it was, was built upon
axioms which it seemed to him a kind of puerile perve