f, and, in a mood of
pity, when, as they were standing one day in Mr Noel's private room to
say a lesson, he caught sight of their two selves reflected in the
looking-glass over the mantelpiece, and realised the immense gulf which
separated them--a gulf not of void chaos and flaming space, but the
deeper gulf of warped affections and sinful thoughts--he had felt a
sudden longing to be other than what he was, to have Charlie for a true
friend, to give up trying to make him a bad boy, and to fall at his feet
and ask his pardon. And when he had doggedly failed in his lesson, and
got his customary bad mark, and customary punishment, and received his
customary objurgation, that he was getting worse and worse, and that his
time was utterly wasted--and when he saw the master's face light up with
a pleased expression as Charlie went cheerfully and faultlessly through
his work--a sudden paroxysm of penitence seized Wilton, and, once out of
the room, he left Charlie and ran up the stairs to Kenrick's study, in
which he was allowed to sit whenever he liked. No one was there, and
throwing himself into a chair, Wilton covered his face with both hands,
and burst into passionate tears. A long train of thoughts and memories
passed through his mind--memories of his own headlong fall to what he
was, memories of younger and of innocent days, memories of a father, now
dead, who had often set him on his knee, and prayed, before all other
things, that he might grow up a good and truthful boy, and with no stain
upon his name. But while memory whispered of past innocence, conscience
told him of present guilt; told him that if his father could have
foreseen what he would become, his heart would have broken; told him,
and he knew it, that his name was a proverb and a byeword in the school.
But the prominent and the recurring thought was ever this--"Is it too
late to mend? Is the door shut against me?" For Wilton remembered how
once before his mind was harrowed by fear and guilt as he had listened
to Mr Percival's parting sermon on that sad text--one of the saddest in
all the Holy Book--"_And the door was shut_."

Suddenly he was startled violently from his reverie, for the door _was_
shut with a bang, and Kenrick, entering, flung himself in a chair,
saying, with a vexed expression of voice, "Too late."

It was but a set of verses which Kenrick had written for a prize
exercise, and which he had just sent in too late. He had not lost all
a