r full force on the mind of
Kennedy. His error was its own punishment, and its heaviest punishment.
The hours he had lost were lost so utterly, that he could never hope to
recover them; the undesirable acquaintances he had formed were so far
ripe as to render it no light task to abandon them; and above all, the
fleck on his character, the connection of his name with the outrage on
De Vayne, had injured his reputation in a manner which he never hoped,
by future endeavours, to obviate or remove.

For instance, there was at once an objection to his dropping the society
of the set to which Bruce and Brogten had introduced him. He owed them
money, which at present he could not pay; his undischarged "debts of
honour" hung like a millstone round his neck. To pay these seemed a
necessary preliminary even to the possibility of commencing a new
career.

But how to get the money? ah me! new temptations seemed springing up
around like the crop of armed men from the furrows sown with the
dragon's teeth.

There was but one way which suggested itself to his mind, by which he
would be able at once to deliver himself in part by meeting the most
exigent demands. Let me hurry over the struggle which it cost him, but
finally he adopted it. It was this.

Mr Kennedy was most liberal in allowing his son everything which could
possibly further his university studies, and the most important item in
his quarterly expenses was the charge for private tuition. This sum was
always paid by Kennedy himself, and it amounted at least to seven pounds
a term. Now, what if he should not only ask his father to allow him
this term a classical and a mathematical tutor, but also request
permission to read double with them both _i e_, to go for an hour _every
day_ instead of every other day? This would at once procure him from
his father the sum of twenty-eight pounds, and by means of this he
could, with great economy, clear off all the most pressing of those
pecuniary obligations which bound him to company, which he longed to
shun, and exposed him to dangers which he had learnt to fear. Of course
he would be obliged to forego all assistance from private tutors, and
simply to appropriate the money, without his father's knowledge, to
other ends. In a high point of view, it was simple embezzlement; it was
little better than a form of swindling. But in this gross and repulsive
shape, it never suggested itself to poor Kennedy's imagination. Somehow