that Hugh knew so well, stand before
him.

The first disaster that was revealed to him was the smallness of his
father's fortune; his father, though often talking about business to
his son, had a curious reticence about money affairs, and had never
prepared him for the scantiness of the provision that he had
accumulated. Hugh saw at once that the utmost care would have for the
future to be exercised, and that their whole scale of life must be
altered. The fact was that his father's professional income had been
ample, and that he had had a strong dislike to saving money from
ecclesiastical sources. The home must evidently be broken up at once,
and a small house taken for his mother. But fortunately both his
mother and sister were entirely undismayed by this; their tastes were
simple enough; but Hugh saw that he would have himself to contribute to
their assistance. With his own small fortune, his literary work, and a
little academical work that he was doing, he had been able to live
comfortably enough without taking thought; but now he saw that all this
must be curtailed. He had an intense dislike of thinking about money;
and he therefore determined that there should be no small economies on
his part, but that he would simply, if necessary, alter his easy scale
of living.

It was a terrible process disestablishing the old home; the sale of
furniture and books, the displacing of the old pictures, seemed to tear
and rend all sorts of delicate fibres; but at last the house was
dismantled, and it became a bitter sort of joy to leave a place that
had become like a sad skeleton of one that he had loved. The trees,
the flowers, the church-tower over the elms--as they drove away on that
last morning, these seemed to regard him with mournful and hollow eyes;
the parting was indeed so intensely sad, that Hugh experienced a grim
relief in completing it; and there fell on him a deep dreariness of
spirit, which seemed at last to benumb him, until he felt that he could
no longer care for anything.

He returned at last to Cambridge; and now illness fell upon him for the
second time in his life. Not a definite illness, but a lingering
_malaise_, which seemed to bereave him of all spring and energy. He
was told that he must not work, must spend his time in the open air,
must be careful in matters of food and sleep. He lived indeed for some
months the life of an invalid. The restrictions fretted him
intolerably; but he found