edy for solitude. And he had a taste for painted art. An
array of fine pictures looked upon his childhood, and from these roods
of jewelled canvas he received an indelible impression. The gallery at
Stallbridge betokened generations of picture-lovers; Norris was perhaps
the first of his race to hold the pencil. The taste was genuine, it grew
and strengthened with his growth; and yet he suffered it to be
suppressed with scarce a struggle. Time came for him to go to Oxford,
and he resisted faintly. He was stupid, he said; it was no good to put
him through the mill; he wished to be a painter. The words fell on his
father like a thunderbolt, and Norris made haste to give way. "It didn't
really matter, don't you know?" said he. "And it seemed an awful shame
to vex the old boy."

To Oxford he went obediently, hopelessly; and at Oxford became the hero
of a certain circle. He was active and adroit; when he was in the
humour, he excelled in many sports; and his singular melancholy
detachment gave him a place apart. He set a fashion in his clique.
Envious undergraduates sought to parody his unaffected lack of zeal and
fear; it was a kind of new Byronism more composed and dignified.
"Nothing really mattered"; among other things this formula embraced the
dons; and though he always meant to be civil, the effect on the college
authorities was one of startling rudeness. His indifference cut like
insolence; and in some outbreak of his constitutional levity (the
complement of his melancholy) he was "sent down" in the middle of the
second year.

The event was new in the annals of the Carthews, and Singleton was
prepared to make the most of it. It had been long his practice to
prophesy for his second son a career of ruin and disgrace. There is an
advantage in this artless parental habit. Doubtless the father is
interested in his son; but doubtless also the prophet grows to be
interested in his prophecies. If the one goes wrong, the others come
true. Old Carthew drew from this source esoteric consolations; he dwelt
at length on his own foresight; he produced variations hitherto unheard
from the old theme "I told you so," coupled his son's name with the
gallows and the hulks, and spoke of his small handful of college debts
as though he must raise money on a mortgage to discharge them.

"I don't think that is fair, sir," said Norris; "I lived at college
exactly as you told me. I am sorry I was sent down, and you have a
perfect right to bl