And that might not be long hence; for Harry, who
loved no book so much as the atlas, abounded in schemes of travel, and
had already mapped the grand tour on which the whole family was to set
forth when he stood headboy at the Grammar-School.

In this household Harvey Rolfe knew himself a welcome guest, and never
had he been so glad as now to pass from the noisy world into the calm
which always fell about him under his friend's roof. The miseries
through which he had gone were troubling his health, and health
disordered naturally reacted upon his mind, so that, owing to a gloomy
excitement of the imagination, for several nights he had hardly slept.
No sooner had he lain down in darkness than every form of mortal
anguish beset his thoughts, passing before him as though some hand
unfolded a pictured scroll of life's terrors. He seemed never before to
have realised the infinitude of human suffering. Hour after hour, with
brief intervals of semi-oblivion, from which his mind awoke in nameless
horror, he travelled from land to land, from age to age; at one moment
picturing some dread incident of a thousand years ago; the next,
beholding with intolerable vividness some scene of agony reported in
the day's newspaper. Doubtless it came of his constant brooding on
Redgrave's death and Hugh Carnaby's punishment. For the first time,
tragedy had been brought near to him, and he marvelled at the
indifference with which men habitually live in a world where tragedy is
every hour's occurrence.

He told himself that this was merely a morbid condition of the brain,
but could not bring himself to believe it. On the contrary, what he now
saw and felt was the simple truth of things, obscured by everyday
conditions of active life. And that History which he loved to
read--what was it but the lurid record of woes unutterable? How could
he find pleasure in keeping his eyes fixed on century after century of
ever-repeated torment--war, pestilence, tyranny; the stake, the
dungeon; tortures of infinite device, cruelties inconceivable? He would
close his books, and try to forget all they had taught him.

Tonight he spoke of it, as he sat with Morton after everyone else had
gone to bed. They had talked of Hugh Carnaby (each divining in the
other a suspicion they were careful not to avow), and their mood led
naturally to interchange of thoughts on grave subjects.

'Everyone knows that state of mind, more or less,' said Morton, in his
dreamy voice-