d indignation to prevent
them from coming to it. The discovery of their differences was
too recent, and they were too much alike in character and temper,
for either to make large enough allowance for, or to be really
tolerant of, the other.

This was the first occasion on which they had come to outspoken
and serious difference; and though the collision had been
exceedingly painful to both, yet when they parted for the night,
it was with a feeling of relief that the ice had been thoroughly
broken. Before his father left the room, Tom had torn the
facsimile of the death-warrant out of its frame, and put it in
the fire, protesting, however, at the same time, that, though "he
did thist out of deference to his father, and was deeply grieved
at having given him pain, he could not and would not give up his
convictions, or pretend that they were changed, or even shaken."

The Squire walked back to his hotel deeply moved. Who can wonder?
He was a man full of living and vehement convictions. One of his
early recollections had been the arrival in England of the news
of the beheading of Louis XVI, and the doings of the Reign of
Terror. He had been bred in the times when it was held impossible
for a gentleman or a Christian to hold such views as his son had
been maintaining, and, like many of the noblest Englishmen of his
time, had gone with and accepted the creed of the day.

Tom remained behind, dejected and melancholy; now accusing his
father of injustice and bigotry, now longing to go after him, and
give up everything. What were all his opinions and convictions
compared with his father's confidence and love? At breakfast the
next morning, however, after each of them had had time for
thinking over what had passed, they met with a cordiality which
was as pleasant to each as it was unlooked for; and from this
visit of his father to him at Oxford, Tom dated a new and more
satisfactory epoch in their intercourse.

The fact had begun to dawn on the Squire that the world had
changed a good deal since his time. He saw that young men were
much improved in some ways, and acknowledged the fact heartily;
on the other hand, they had taken up with a lot of new notions
which he could not understand, and thought mischievous and bad.
Perhaps Tom might get over them as he got to be older and wiser,
and in the meantime he must take the evil with the good. At any
rate he was too fair a man to try to dragoon his son out of
anything which he r