f which he has experience. As a youth, Caius heartily endorsed
his father's views, and felt superior to all who were more lax. He had
been born into that religious school which teaches that a man should
think for himself on every question, provided that he arrives at a
foregone conclusion. Caius, at the age of eighteen, had already done
much reasoning on certain subjects, and proved his work by observing
that his conclusions tallied with set models. As a result, he was, if
not a reasonable being, a reasoning and a moral one.

We have ceased to draw a distinction between Nature and the forces of
education. It is a great problem why Nature sets so many young people in
the world who are apparently unfitted for the battle of life, and
certainly have no power to excel in any direction. The subjective
religion which Caius had been taught had nourished within him great
store of noble sentiment and high desire, but it had deprived him of
that rounded knowledge of actual life which alone, it would appear,
teaches how to guide these forces into the more useful channels. Then as
to capacity, he had the fine sensibilities of a poet, the facile
introspection of the philosophical cast of mind, without the mental
power to write good verse or to be a philosopher. He had, at least in
youth, the conscience of a saint without the courage and endurance which
appear necessary to heroism. In mockery the quality of ambition was
bestowed upon him but not the requisites for success. Nature has been
working for millions of years to produce just such characters as Caius
Simpson, and, character being rather too costly a production to throw
away, no doubt she has a precise use for every one of them.

It is not the province of art to solve problems, but to depict them. It
is enough for the purpose of telling his story that a man has been
endowed with capacity to suffer and rejoice.

CHAPTER II.

THE SAD-EYED CHILD.

One evening in early summer Caius went a-fishing. He started to walk
several miles to an inlet where at high tide the sea-trout came within
reach of the line. The country road was of red clay, and, turning from
the more thickly-settled district, Caius followed it through a wide wood
of budding trees and out where it skirted the top of low red cliffs,
against which the sea was lapping. Then his way led him across a farm.
So far he had been walking indolently, happy enough, but here the shadow
of the pain of the world fell upo