him in continual terror of complete loss of visual power.

It has been stated that Lafcadio Hearn was expelled from Ushaw.
Ecclesiastics are not prone to state their reasons for any line of
action they may choose to take. No inquiries were made and no reasons
were given. His departure is easily accounted for without any question
of expulsion. In fact, it was a matter of necessity, for in consequence
of the loss of the money, invested in the Molyneux business, his
grand-aunt was no longer able to pay his school fees.

Towards the end of his residence at college he generally spent his
holidays (or a portion of them) at Ushaw, going home less and less as
time went on.

Mrs. Brenane's mind, weakened by age and misfortune, was incapable any
longer of forming a sound opinion. Those surrounding her persuaded her
that the boy whom she had hitherto loved as her own son, and declared
her heir, was a "scapegrace and infidel, no fit inmate for a Christian
household." Besides which, the lamentable fact remained that she, who
only a few years before had lived in affluence, no longer owned a home
of her own, and Lafcadio was hardly likely to care to avail himself of
Molyneux's hospitality.

At the time of Henry Molyneux's marriage to Miss Agnes Keogh, a marriage
which took place a year before his failure in 1866, Mrs. Brenane
bestowed the whole of the landed property her husband, Justin Brenane,
had left her, in the form of a marriage settlement on the young lady.
The rest of her life, therefore, was spent as a dependent in the
Molyneux's house, Sweetbriars, Tramore.

Thus did Lafcadio Hearn lose his inheritance, but if he had inherited it
would he ever have been the artist he ultimately became? He was wont to
say that hard knocks and intellectual starvation were, with him, a
necessary stimulus to creative work, and pain of exceeding value
betimes. "Everybody who does me a wrong, indirectly does me a right. I
am forced to detach myself from things of the world, and devote myself
to things of the imagination and spirit."

Amidst luxurious surroundings, with a liberal competency to live upon,
might he not perhaps have spent his life in reading or formulating vague
philosophical theories, seeking the "unknown reality," instead of being
driven by the pressing reality of having to support a wife and children?

CHAPTER V
LONDON

"In Art-study one must devote