ture about your sins."

The boy said, "Yes, thanks very much; I'd love to."

Jack Sandys was a pupil of Howard's in whom he had a special interest.
He was the son of Frank Sandys, the Vicar of the Somersetshire parish
where Mrs. Graves, Howard's aunt, lived at the Manor-house. Frank
Sandys was a cousin of Mrs. Graves' deceased husband. She had advised
the Vicar to send Jack to Beaufort, and had written specially
commending him to Howard's care. But the boy had needed little
commendation. From the first moment that Jack Sandys had appeared,
smiling and unembarrassed, in Howard's room, a relation that was almost
filial and paternal had sprung up between them. He had treated Howard
from the outset with an innocent familiarity, and asked him the most
direct questions. He was not a particularly intellectual youth, though
he had some vague literary interests; but he was entirely healthy,
good, and quite irresistibly charming in his naivete and simplicity.
Howard had a dislike of all sentimentality, but the suppressed paternal
instinct which was strong in him had been awakened; and though he made
no emotional advances, he found himself strangely drawn to the boy,
with a feeling for which he could not wholly account. He did not care
for Jack's athletic interests; his tastes and mental processes were
obscure to him. Howard's own nature was at once intellectual and
imaginative, but he felt an extreme delight in the fearless and direct
confidence which the boy showed in him. He criticised his work
unsparingly, he rallied him on his tastes, he snubbed him, but all with
a sense of real and instinctive sympathy which made everything easy.
The boy never resented anything that he said, asked his advice, looked
to him to get him out of any small difficulties that arose. They were
not very much together, and mostly met only on official occasions.
Howard was a busy man, and had little time, or indeed taste, for vague
conversation. Jack was a boy of natural tact, and he treated all the
authorities with the same unembarrassed directness. Undergraduates are
quick to remark on any sort of favouritism, but only if they think that
the favoured person gets any unfair advantage by his intimacy. But
Howard came down on Jack just as decisively as he came down on anyone
else whose work was unsatisfactory. It was known that they were a sort
of cousins; and, moreover, Jack Sandys was generally popular, though
only in his first year, because he was fr