tended to his business, could earn more money than a clerk or a curate,
while much less expense by way of show was required of him. The tailor
also had more liberty, and a better chance of rising. Ernest resolved at
once, as he had fallen so far, to fall still lower--promptly, gracefully
and with the idea of rising again, rather than cling to the skirts of a
respectability which would permit him to exist on sufferance only, and
make him pay an utterly extortionate price for an article which he could
do better without.

He arrived at this result more quickly than he might otherwise have done
through remembering something he had once heard his aunt say about
"kissing the soil." This had impressed him and stuck by him perhaps by
reason of its brevity; when later on he came to know the story of
Hercules and Antaeus, he found it one of the very few ancient fables
which had a hold over him--his chiefest debt to classical literature. His
aunt had wanted him to learn carpentering, as a means of kissing the soil
should his Hercules ever throw him. It was too late for this now--or he
thought it was--but the mode of carrying out his aunt's idea was a
detail; there were a hundred ways of kissing the soil besides becoming a
carpenter.

He had told me this during our interview, and I had encouraged him to the
utmost of my power. He showed so much more good sense than I had given
him credit for that I became comparatively easy about him, and determined
to let him play his own game, being always, however, ready to hand in
case things went too far wrong. It was not simply because he disliked
his father and mother that he wanted to have no more to do with them; if
it had been only this he would have put up with them; but a warning voice
within told him distinctly enough that if he was clean cut away from them
he might still have a chance of success, whereas if they had anything
whatever to do with him, or even knew where he was, they would hamper him
and in the end ruin him. Absolute independence he believed to be his
only chance of very life itself.

Over and above this--if this were not enough--Ernest had a faith in his
own destiny such as most young men, I suppose, feel, but the grounds of
which were not apparent to any one but himself. Rightly or wrongly, in a
quiet way he believed he possessed a strength which, if he were only free
to use it in his own way, might do great things some day. He did not
know when, nor where,