"Spoke to her?"

"Oh no. The carriage turned the corner as I crossed the road. The two girls were there, and she--"

"Going with them to the station?"

"I thought so; I went to the house, meaning to leave my enclosure for Sir Harry and meet her on her way back; but I heard she was gone to stay with Lady Susan in Yorkshire. Sir Harry was not up, nor Lady Tyrrell."

Mrs. Poynsett's hope failed, though she was relieved that Camilla's tongue had not been in action. She was dismayed at the prone exhausted manner in which Frank lay, partly on the floor, partly against her couch, with his face hidden.

"Do you know where she is gone?"

"Yes, Revelrig, Cleveland, Yorkshire."

"I will write to her. Whatever may be her intentions, they shall not be carried out under any misrepresentation that I can contradict. You have been a foolish fellow, Frankie; but you shall not be painted worse than you are. She owes you an explanation, and I will do my best that you shall have it. My dear, what is the matter?"

She rang her bell hastily, and upheld the sinking head till help came. He had not lost consciousness, and called it giddiness, and he was convicted of having never gone to bed last night, and having eaten nothing that morning; but he turned against the wine and soup with which they tried to dose him, and, looking crushed and bewildered, said he would go and lie down in his own room.

Raymond went up with him, and returned, saying he only wanted to be alone, with his face from the light; and Mrs. Poynsett, gazing at her eldest son, thought he looked as ill and sunken as his younger brother.

CHAPTER XXVI A Stickit Minister

And the boy not out of him.--TENNYSON'S Queen Mary

Julius had only too well divined the cause of his summons. He found Herbert Bowater's papers on the table before the Bishop, and there was no denying that they showed a declension since last year, and that though, from men without his advantages they would have been passable, yet from him they were evidences of neglect of study and thought. Nor could the cause be ignored by any one who had kept an eye on the cricket reports in the county paper; but Herbert was such a nice, hearty, innocent fellow, and his father was so much respected, that it was with great reluctance that his rejection was decided on and his Rector had been sent for in case there should be any cause for extenuation.

Julius could not say there was. He was greatly grieved and personally ashamed, but he could plead nothing but his own failure to influence the young man enough to keep him out of a rage for amusement, of which the quantity, not the quality, was the evil. So poor Herbert was sent for to hear his fate, and came back looking stunned. He hardly spoke till they were in the fly that Julius had brought from Backsworth, and then the untamed school-boy broke forth: "What are you doing with me? I say, I can't go back to Compton like a dog in a string."

"Where will you go?"

"I don't care. To Jericho at once, out of the way of every one. I tell you what, Rector, it was the most ridiculous examination I ever went up for, and I'm not the only man that says so. There was Rivers, of St. Mary's at Backsworth,--he says the questions were perfectly unreasonable, and what no one could be prepared for. This fellow Danvers is a new hand, and they are always worst, setting one a lot of subjects of no possible use but to catch one out. I should like to ask him now what living soul at Compton he expects to be the better for my views on the right reading of--"

Julius interrupted the passionate tones at the lodge by saying, "If you wish to go to Jericho, you must give directions."

Herbert gave something between a laugh and a growl.

"I left the pony at Backsworth. Will you come with me to Strawyers and wait in the park till I send Jenny out to you?"

"No, I say. I know my father will be in a greater rage than he ever was in his life, and I won't go sneaking about. I'd like to go to London, to some hole where no one would ever hear of me. If I were not in Orders already, I'd be off to the ivory-hunters in Africa, and never be heard of more. If this was to be, I wish they had found it out a year ago, and then I should not have been bound,"

continued the poor young fellow, in his simplicity, thinking his thoughts aloud, and his sweet candid nature beginning to recover its balance. "Now I'm the most wretched fellow going. I know what I've undertaken. It's not your fault, nor poor Joanna's. You've all been at me, but it only made me worse. What could my father be thinking of to make a parson of a fellow like me? Well, I must face it out sooner or later at Compton, and I had better do it there than at home, even if my father would have me."

"I must go to Strawyers. The Bishop gave me a letter for your father, and I think it will break it a little for your mother.

Would you wait for me at Rood House? You could go into the chapel, and if they wish for you, I could return and fetch you."

Herbert caught at this as a relief, and orders were given accordingly. It seemed a cruel moment to tell him of young Hornblower's evasion and robbery, but the police wanted the description of the articles; and, in fact, nothing would have so brought home to him that, though Compton might not appreciate minutiae of Greek criticism, yet the habit of diligence, of which it was the test, might make a difference there. The lingering self- justification was swept away by the sense of the harm his pleasure- seeking had done to the lad whom he had once influenced. He had been fond and proud of his trophies, but he scarcely wasted a thought on them, so absorbed was he in the thought of how he had lorded it over the youth with that late rebuke. The blame he had refused to take on himself then came full upon him now, and he reproached himself too much to be angered at the treachery and ingratitude.

"I can't prosecute," he said, when Julius asked for the description he had promised to procure.

"We must judge whether it would be true kindness to refrain, if he is captured," said Julius. "I had not time to see his mother, but Rosamond will do what she can for her, poor woman."

"How shall I meet her?" sighed Herbert; and so they arrived at the tranquil little hospital and passed under the deep archway into the gray quadrangle, bright with autumn flowers, and so to the chapel.

As they advanced up the solemn and beautiful aisle Herbert dropped on his knees with his hands over his face. Julius knelt beside him for a moment, laid his hand on the curly brown hair, whispered a prayer and a blessing, and then left him; but ere reaching the door, the low choked sobs of anguish of heart could be heard.

A few steps more, and in the broad walk along the quadrangle, Julius met the frail bowed figure with his saintly face, that seemed to have come out of some sacred bygone age.

Julius told his errand. "If you could have seen him just now," he said, "you would see how much more hope there is of him than of many who never technically fail, but have not the same tender, generous heart, and free humility."

"Yes, many a priest might now be thankful if some check had come on him."

"And if he had met it with this freedom from bitterness. And it would be a great kindness to keep him here a day or two. Apart from being with you, the showing himself at Compton or at Strawyers on Sunday would be hard on him."

"I will ask him. I will gladly have him here as long as the quiet may be good for him. My nephew, William, will be here till the end of the Long Vacation, but I must go to St. Faith's on Monday to conduct the retreat."

"I leave him in your hands then, and will call as I return to see what is settled, and report what his family wish. I grieve more for them than for himself."

Julius first encountered Jenny Bowater in the village making farewell calls. He stopped the carriage and joined her, and not a word was needed to tell her that something was amiss. "You have come to tell us something," she said. "Herbert has failed?"

"Prayers are sometimes answered as we do not expect," said Julius.

"I believe it will be the making of him."

"Oh, but how will mamma ever bear it!" cried Jenny.

"We must remind her that it is only a matter of delay, not rejection," said Julius.

"Have you seen him?"

"Yes, the Bishop sent for me, and asked me to see your father. It was partly from slips in critical knowledge, which betrayed the want of study, and the general want of thought and progress, and all the rest of it, in his papers--"

"Just the fact--"

"Yes, which a man of less reality and more superficial quickness might have concealed by mere intellectual answers, though it might have been much worse for him in the end."

"Where is he?"

"At Rood House. Unless your mother wishes for him here, he had better stay there till he can bear to come among us again."

"Much better, indeed," said Jenny. "I only hope papa and mamma will see how good it is for him to be there. O, Julius, if he is taking it in such a spirit, I can think it all right for him; but for them-- for them, it is very hard to bear. Nothing ever went wrong with the boys before, and Herbert--mamma's darling!" Her eyes were full of tears.

"I wish he had had a better Rector," said Julius.

"No, don't say that. It was not your fault."

"I cannot tell. An older man, or more truly a holier man, might have had more influence. We were all in a sort of laissez-aller state this autumn, and now comes the reckoning."

"There's papa," said Jenny. "Had you rather go to him alone, or can I do any good?"