re the pain that
had been running below his consciousness, like the minor strain in rich
music, came to the top. This was Barney's spot. At this spot Barney
always made him pause to look back upon the old mill in its frame of
beauty. Poor Barney! Twice he had gone down to the exams, and twice he
had failed. Of all in the home circle only Dick could understand the
full bitterness of the cup of humiliation that his brother had put
silently to his lips and drained. To his mother, the failure brought no
surprise, and she would have been glad enough to have him give up "his
notion of being a doctor and be content with the mill." She had no
ambitions for poor Barney, who was "a quiet lad and well-doing enough,"
an encomium which stood for all the virtues removed from any touch
of genius. She was not hurt by his failure. Indeed, she could hardly
understand how deep the shame had gone into his proud, reserved heart.
His father did not talk about it, but carried him off to look at some
of the mill machinery which had gone wrong, and it was only by a gentler
tone in his voice that Barney knew that his father understood. But Dick,
with his fuller knowledge of college life, realized as none other of
them did the extent of Barney's miserable sense of defeat.

And now, as he looked back upon the mill, Barney's pain became his anew.
The causes of his failure were not far to seek. "He had no chance!" said
Dick aloud, leaning upon the top rail and looking with gloomy eyes upon
the scene of beauty before him. Things had changed since old Doctor
Ferguson's time. The scientific basis of medicine was coming to
its place in medical study, and the old doctor's contempt for these
new-fangled notions had wrought ill for Barney. Dick remembered how
he had gone, hot with indignation for his brother, to the new English
professor in chemistry, whose papers were the terror of all pass men
and, indeed, all honour men who stuck too closely to the text-book.
He remembered the Englishman's drawling contempt as, after looking up
Barney's name and papers, he dismissed the matter with the words, "He
knows nothing whatever about the subject, couldn't conduct the simplest
experiment, don't you know." Poor Barney! the ancient and elementary
chemistry of Dr. Ferguson seemed to hold not even the remotest affinity
to that which Professor Fish expected. Dick was glad this morning that
he had had sense enough to hold his tongue in the professor's presence.
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