r when he was used to read
there, but he could not fix his mind. He went to the bench where he had
lain on the examination day, and kneeling on it, looked out on the green
grass where the graves were. "Mother! mother!" he murmured, "have I been
harsh to your poor little tender sickly boy? I couldn't help it. Oh! if
you were but here! We are all going wrong! What shall I do? How should
Tom be kept from this evil?--it is ruining him! mean, false, cowardly,
sullen--all that is worst--and your son--oh! mother! and all I do only
makes him shrink more from me. It will break my father's heart, and you
will not be there to comfort him."

Norman covered his face with his hands, and a fit of bitter grief
came over him. But his sorrow was now not what it had been before his
father's resignation had tempered it, and soon it turned to prayer,
resolution, and hope.

He would try again to reason quietly with him, when the alarm of
detection and irritation should have gone off, and he sought for the
occasion; but, alas! Tom had learned to look on all reproof as "rowing,"
and considered it as an additional injury from a brother, who, according
to the Anderson view, should have connived at his offences, and turned
a deafened ear and dogged countenance to all he said. The foolish boy
sought after the Andersons still more, and Norman became more dispirited
about him, greatly missing Harry, that constant companion and follower,
who would have shared his perplexities, and removed half of them, in his
own part of the school, by the influence of his high, courageous, and
truthful spirit.

In the meantime Richard was studying hard at home, with greater
hopefulness and vigour than he had ever thrown into his work before.
"Suppose," Ethel had once said to him, "that when you are a clergyman,
you could be Curate of Cocksmoor, when there is a church there."

"When?" said Richard, smiling at the presumption of the scheme, and
yet it formed itself into a sort of definite hope. Perhaps they might
persuade Mr. Ramsden to take him as a curate with a view to Cocksmoor,
and this prospect, vague as it was, gave an object and hope to his
studies. Every one thought the delay of his examination favourable
to him, and he now read with a determination to succeed. Dr. May had
offered to let him read with Mr. Harrison but Richard thought he was
getting on pretty well, with the help Norman gave him; for it appeared
that ever since Norman's return from London,