Irishman, supposed
to be clever, and decidedly popular in the college. As he stood looking
at him, puzzled by the difference between the old impression and the
new, suddenly the man's story flashed across him; he remembered some
disgraceful escapade--an expulsion.

'You came for the funeral, of course?' said the other, his face flushing
consciously.

'Yes--and you too?'

The man turned away, and something in his silence led Robert to stroll
on beside him to the open end of the platform.

'I have lost my only friend,' MacNiell said at last hoarsely. 'He took
me up when my own father would have nothing to say to me. He found me
work; he wrote to me; for years he stood between me and perdition. I am
just going out to a post in New Zealand he got for me, and next week
before I sail--I--I--am to be married--and he was to be there. He was so
pleased--he had seen her.'

It was one story out of a hundred like it, as Robert knew very well.
They talked for a few minutes, then the train loomed in the distance.

'He saved you,' said Robert, holding out his hand, 'and at a dark moment
in my own life I owed him everything. There is nothing we can do for him
in return but--to remember him! Write to me, if you can or will, from
New Zealand, for his sake.'

A few seconds later the train sped past the bare little cemetery, which
lay just beyond the line. Robert bent forward. In the pale yellow glow
of the evening he could distinguish the grave, the mound of gravel, the
planks, and some figures moving beside it. He strained his eyes till he
could see no more, his heart full of veneration, of memory, of prayer.
In himself life seemed so restless and combative. Surely he, more than
others, had need of the lofty lessons of death!

CHAPTER XLV

In the weeks which followed--weeks often of mental and physical
depression, caused by his sense of personal loss and by the influence of
an overworked state he could not be got to admit--Elsmere owed much to
Hugh Flaxman's cheery sympathetic temper, and became more attached to
him than ever, and more ready than ever, should the fates deem it so, to
welcome him as a brother-in-law. However, the fates for the moment
seemed to have borrowed a leaf from Langham's book, and did not
apparently know their own minds. It says volumes for Hugh Flaxman's
general capacities as a human being that at this period he should have
had any attention to give to a friend, his position as a lover was so