hich lets the internal humanity shine through, just as the
polish on marble reveals its veined beauty. Many talks did the elderly
man hold with the three youths, and his experience of life taught
Ericson and Robert much, especially what he told them about his Brahmin
friend in India. Moray, on the other hand, was chiefly interested in his
tales of adventure when on service in the Indian army, or engaged in the
field sports of that region so prolific in monsters. His gipsy blood and
lawless childhood, spent in wandering familiarity with houseless nature,
rendered him more responsive to these than the others, and his kindled
eye and pertinent remarks raised in the doctor's mind an early question
whether a commission in India might not be his best start in life.

Between Ericson and Robert, as the former recovered his health,
communication from the deeper strata of human need became less frequent.
Ericson had to work hard to recover something of his leeway; Robert had
to work hard that prizes might witness for him to his grandmother and
Miss St. John. To the latter especially, as I think I have said before,
he was anxious to show well, wiping out the blot, as he considered it,
of his all but failure in the matter of a bursary. For he looked up
to her as to a goddess who just came near enough to the earth to be
worshipped by him who dwelt upon it.

The end of the session came nigh. Ericson passed his examinations with
honour. Robert gained the first Greek and third Latin prize. The
evening of the last day arrived, and on the morrow the students would be
gone--some to their homes of comfort and idleness, others to hard
labour in the fields; some to steady reading, perhaps to school again
to prepare for the next session, and others to be tutors all the summer
months, and return to the wintry city as to freedom and life. Shargar
was to remain at the grammar-school.

That last evening Robert sat with Ericson in his room. It was a cold
night--the night of the last day of March. A bitter wind blew about the
house, and dropped spiky hailstones upon the skylight. The friends were
to leave on the morrow, but to leave together; for they had already sent
their boxes, one by the carrier to Rothieden, the other by a sailing
vessel to Wick, and had agreed to walk together as far as Robert's home,
where he was in hopes of inducing his friend to remain for a few days
if he found his grandmother agreeable to the plan. Shargar was asleep on