wrecked
the bedroom where he was confined, and was soundly whaled with an old
slipper that broke under the process. Euphrasia kept the slipper, and
once showed it to Hilary during a quarrel they had when the boy was
grown up and gone and the house was silent, and Hilary had turned away,
choking, and left the room. Such was his cross.

To make it worse, the boy had love his father. Nay, still loved him. As
a little fellow, after a scolding for some wayward prank, he would throw
himself into Hilary's arms and cling to him, and would never know how
near he came to unmanning him. As Austen grew up, they saw the world in
different colours: blue to Hilary was red to Austen, and white, black;
essentials to one were non-essentials to the other; boys and girls, men
and women, abhorred by one were boon companions to the other.

Austen made fun of the minister, and was compelled to go church twice
on Sundays and to prayer-meeting on Wednesdays. Then he went to Camden
Street, to live with his grandparents in the old Vane house and
attend Camden Wentworth Academy. His letters, such as they were, were
inimitable if crude, but contained not the kind of humour Hilary Vane
knew. Camden Wentworth, principal and teachers, was painted to the life;
and the lad could hardly wait for vacation time to see his father, only
to begin quarreling with him again.

I pass over escapades in Ripton that shocked one half of the population
and convulsed the other half. Austen went to the college which his
father had attended,--a college of splendid American traditions,--and
his career there might well have puzzled a father of far greater
tolerance and catholicity. Hilary Vane was a trustee, and journeyed more
than once to talk the matter over with the president, who had been his
classmate there.

"I love that boy, Hilary," the president had said at length, when
pressed for a frank opinion,--"there isn't a soul in the place, I
believe, that doesn't,--undergraduates and faculty,--but he has given me
more anxious thought than any scholar I have ever had."

"Trouble," corrected Mr. Vane, sententiously.

"Well, yes, trouble," answered the president, smiling, "but upon my
soul, I think it is all animal spirits."

"A euphemism for the devil," said Hilary, grimly; "he is the animal part
of us, I have been brought up to believe."

The president was a wise man, and took another tack.

"He has a really remarkable mind, when he chooses to use it. Every on