stness and honesty?

None rejoiced more in the outward change of life than Julian Home; for
Violet's sake now, as well as for Kennedy's, he felt a keen and
brotherly interest in the progress and estimation of his friend. Once
more they were to be found together as often as they had been in their
freshman's year, and it was Julian's countenance and affection that
tended more than anything else to repair Kennedy's damaged popularity,
and remove the tarnish attaching to his name.

One evening they were taking the usual two-hours' constitutional--which
is often the poor substitute for exercise in the case of reading men--
and discussing together the chances of the coming scholarship
examination, when they found themselves near a place called Gower's
Mill, and heard a sudden cry for help. Pressing forwards they saw a
boat floating upside down, and whirling about tumultuously in the racing
and rain-swollen eddies of the mill-dam. A floating straw hat was
already being sucked in by the gurgling rush of water that roared under
the mighty circumference of the wheel, and for a moment they saw nothing
more. But as they ran up, a black spot emerged from the stream, only a
few yards from the mill, and they saw a man, evidently in the last stage
of exhaustion, struggling feebly in the white and boiling waves.

The position was agonising. The man's utmost efforts only served to
keep him stationary, and it was clear, from the frantic violence of his
exertion, that he could not last an instant longer. Indeed, as they
reached the bank, he began to sink and disappear--disappear as it seemed
to the certainty of a most horrid death.

In one instant--without considering the danger and apparent hopelessness
of the attempt, without looking at the wild force of the water, and the
grinding roll of the big wheel, without even waiting to fling off their
coats--Julian and Kennedy, actuated by the strong instinct to save a
fellow-creature's life, had both plunged into the mill-dam, and at the
same moment struck out for the sinking figure. It was not till then
that they felt their terrific danger; in the swirl of those spumy and
hissing waves it was all but impossible for them to make head against
the current, and they felt it carry them nearer and nearer to the black,
dripping mass, one blow of which would stun them, and one revolution of
it mangle them with horrible mutilation. They reached the drowning
wretch, and each seizing him by th