ll find friends at school; and not long after his mother's funeral,
he determined to call on his old masters, and get such pecuniary aid as
he could from them and his schoolboy friends. To come to such a
resolution was the very bitterness of humiliation; but Bruce was now all
eagerness to escape from England, and recommence a new life in other
lands.

He took a third class ticket to Harton, and when he arrived there, was
so overcome with shame that he well-nigh determined to return by the
next train, and leave the town unvisited, at whatever cost; but on
inquiry he found that the next train would not start for some hours, and
meanwhile he fully expected to be seen and recognised by those whom he
had known before. And yet it was not easy, in that stooping figure,
with the pale cheek and dimmed eye, to recognise the bright and
audacious Vyvyan Bruce, who had been captain of Harton barely three
years before. Poverty, ruin, disappointment, confinement, guilt, and
sorrow had done their work with marvellous quickness.

Nerving himself to the effort, he turned his face towards Harton, and
walked slowly up the hill. The reminiscences which the walk recalled
were not happy--rather, far from happy. It was not because formerly
when he was a flattered, and rich, and handsome, and popular Harton boy,
all the prospects of his life had looked as bright as now they seemed
full of gloom; it was not that then both his parents were living, and
now one was dead, the other disgraced; it was not that then he was full
of health and vigour, and now was feeble and wearied; it was not that
then he seemed to have many friends, and now he hardly knew of one; no,
it was none of these things that affected him most deeply as he caught
sight of the well-known chapel, and strolled up the familiar hill; but
it was the thought, the bitter thought, the cursed thought that there,
as at Camford, _the voice of his brother's blood was crying against htm
from the ground_.

By the time he reached the school buildings, it happened to be just one
o'clock, and from the various school-rooms, the boys were pouring out in
gay and noisy throngs. The faces were new to him for the most part, and
at first he began to fancy that he should recognise no one. But at last
he observed a boy looking hard at him, who at length came up and shook
him warmly by the hand.

"How do you do, Bruce? Ah, I see you don't remember me; true, I was
only in the Shell when you left