s, Percival; you know
that I began them before I left college, that I regarded them as the
chief work of my life, and that I devoted to them every moment of my
leisure. You know, too, the pride and pleasure which I took in their
progress, and the relief with which I turned to them from the vexations
and anxieties of one's life here. To work at them has been for years my
only recreation and delight. Well, they were finished at last; I was
only correcting them for the press; they would have gone to the printer
in a month, and I should have lived to complete a toilsome and
honourable task. Well, the dream is over, and a handful of ashes
represents the struggle of my best years."

Mr Percival knew well that his coadjutor had been working for years at
a commentary on the Hebrew text of the Four Greater Prophets. It had
been the cherished and chosen task of his life; he had brought to it
great stores of learning, accumulated in the vigour of his powers, and
the enthusiasm of a youthful ambition, and he had employed upon it every
spare hour left him from his professional duties. He looked to it as
the means of doing essential service to the church of which he was an
ordained member, and, secondarily, as the road to reputation and
well-merited advancement. And in five minutes the hand of one angry boy
had robbed him of the fruit of all his hopes.

"If they wanted to display the hatred which I well know that they feel,"
said Mr Paton bitterly, "they might have chosen any way, literally _any
way_, but that. They might have left me, at least, that which was
almost my only pleasure and object in life, and which had no connection
with them or their pursuits." And his face grew haggard as he stopped
in his walk, and tried to realise the extent of what he had lost. "I
would rather have seen everything I possess in the whole world destroyed
than that," he said slowly, and with strong emotion.

"And was it really Evson who did this?" asked Mr Percival, filled with
the sincerest pity for his colleague's wounded feelings.

"It matters little who did it, Percival; but, yes, it was your friend
Evson."

"The little, graceless, abominable wretch!" exclaimed Mr Percival with
anger, "he must be expelled. But can't you recommence the task?"

"Recommence?" said Mr Paton, in a hard voice; "and who will give me
back the hope and vigour of the last fifteen years? how shall I have the
heart again to toil through the same long trains