im."

"Yes, and so it is of Percival to let us sit here; but I wish that dear
old Dubbs could be doing trial-work here with us."

"He's very ill," said Henderson, looking serious; "_very_ ill, I'm
afraid. I saw him to-day for a minute, but he seemed too weak to talk."

"Is he? poor fellow! I knew that he was staying out, but I'd no notion
that it was anything dangerous."

"I don't know about _dangerous_, but he's quite ill. Poor Daubeny! you
know how very very patient and good he is, yet even he can't help being
sad at falling ill just now. You know he was to have been confirmed
to-morrow week, and he's afraid that now he won't be well enough, and
will have to put it off."

"Yes, he's mentioned his confirmation to me several times. Lots of
fellows are going to be confirmed this time--about a hundred, I
believe--but I don't suppose one of them thinks of it so solemnly as
dear old Dubbs--unless, indeed, it's Power, who also is to be
confirmed."

The confirmation was to take place on a Sunday, and the candidates had
long been engaged in a course of preparation. The intellectual
preparation was carefully undertaken by Dr Lane and the tutors of the
boys; but this answer of the lips was of comparatively little value,
except in so far as it tended to guide, and solemnise, and concentrate
the preparation of the heart. In too many this approaching
responsibility produced no visible effect in the tenor of outward life--
they talked and thought as lightly as before, and did not elevate the
low standard of schoolboy morality; but there were _some_ hearts in
which the dreary and formless chaos of passion and neglect then first
felt the divine stirring of the brooding wings, and some spiritual
temples were from that time filled more brightly than before with the
Shechinah of the Presence, and bore, as in golden letters on a new
entablature, the inscription, "Holiness to the Lord."

To this confirmation some of the best boys, like Power and Daubeny, were
looking forward, not with any exaggerated or romantic sentimentality,
but with a deep humility, a manly exultation, an earnest hope. They
were ready and even anxious to confirm their baptismal vow, and to be
confirmed in the sacred strength which should enable them for the future
more unswervingly to fulfil it. Of these young hearts the grace of God
took early hold, and in them reason and religion ran together like warp
and woof to frame the web of a sweet and exempla