im the way to one
of the learned professions. This news stirred him up a little, and for
a time--but not for long. He looked upon it all as destiny: he could
not guess, he hardly tried to surmise, who the unknown friend could be.
Nor did he know till years afterwards that the aid was given by the good
and wealthy Sir Lawrence Power, at his son's earnest and generous
request. For Power did this kind deed by stealth, and mentioned it to
no one, not even to Walter; and Kenrick little thought when he told the
good news to Power, and received his kind congratulations, that Power
had known of it before he did himself. But still, in spite of all,
Kenrick seemed sick at heart, and his life crept on in a sluggish
course, like a river that loses its bright stream in the desert, and all
whose silver runnels are choked up with dust and sand.

The fact was, that the blows of punishment had fallen on him so fast and
so heavily that he felt crushed to the very earth. The expulsion of the
reprobates with whom he had consorted, his degradation and censure,
Wilton's theft and removal, the violent tension and revulsion of feeling
caused by his awakened conscience, his confession, and the gnawing sense
of shame, the failure of his ambition, and then his mother's death
coming as the awful climax of the calamities he had undergone, and
followed by the cold unfeeling harshness of his guardian, and the
damping of his hopes--all these things had broken the boy's spirit
utterly. Disgrace, and sorrow, and bereavement, and the stings of
remorse, and the suffering of punishment--the forfeiture of a guilty
past, and the gloom of a lonely future--these things unmanned him, bowed
him down, poisoned his tranquillity of mind, unhinged every energy of
his soul, seemed to dry up the very springs of life. The hand of man
could not rouse him from the stupor caused by the chastisements of God.

But the rousing came at last, and in due time; and it all came from a
very little matter--so slight a matter as a little puff of seaward air.
A trivial accident, you will say; yes, one of those very trivial
accidents that so often affect the destinies of a lifetime, and:

"Shape our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will."

Kenrick, as usual, was walking along the top of the cliffs alone--
restless, aimless, and miserable--"mooning," as the boys would have
called it--unable even to analyse his own thoughts, conscious only that
it was folly in him to nurse thi