men who had
known from day to day the cheery modest helper in a hundred local
causes; side by side with the youth of Alma Mater went the poor of
Oxford; tradesmen and artisans followed or accompanied the group of
gowned and venerable figures, representing the Heads of Houses and the
Professors, or mingled with the slowly pacing crowd of Masters; while
along the route groups of visitors and merrymakers, young men in
flannels or girls in light dresses, stood with suddenly grave faces here
and there, caught by the general wave of mourning, and wondering what
such a spectacle might mean.

Robert, losing sight of Langham as they left the chapel, found his arm
grasped by young Cathcart, his correspondent. The man was a junior
Fellow who had attached himself to Grey during the two preceding years
with especial devotion. Robert had only a slight knowledge of him, but
there was something in his voice and grip which made him feel at once
infinitely more at home with him at this moment than he had felt with
the old friend of his undergraduate years.

They walked down Beaumont Street together. The rain came on again, and
the long black crowd stretched before them was lashed by the driving
gusts. As they went along, Cathcart told him all he wanted to know.

'The night before the end he was perfectly calm and conscious. I told
you he mentioned your name among the friends to whom he sent his
good-bye. He thought for everybody. For all those of his house he left
the most minute and tender directions. He forgot nothing. And all with
such extraordinary simplicity and quietness, like one arranging for a
journey! In the evening an old Quaker aunt of his, a North-country woman
whom he had been much with as a boy, and to whom he was much attached,
was sitting with him. I was there too. She was a beautiful old figure in
her white cap and kerchief, and it seemed to please him to lie and look
at her. "It'll not be for long, Henry," she said to him once. "I'm
seventy-seven this spring. I shall come to you soon." He made no reply,
and his silence seemed to disturb her. I don't fancy she had known much
of his mind of late years. "You'll not be doubting the Lord's goodness,
Henry?" she said to him, with the tears in her eyes. "No," he said, "no,
never. Only it seems to be His Will, we should be certain of
nothing--_but Himself_! I ask no more." I shall never forget the accent
of those words: they were the breath of his inmost life. If ever man w