ought he to himself, "They're
getting the porridge for the men!" He had a vision of the woman stirring
in the meal, and of the homely interior in the dancing firelight. He
wondered who the folk were, and would have liked to know them. Yes, it
was "queer," he thought, that he who left Barbie only a few hours ago
should be in intimate momentary touch with a place and people he had
never seen before. The train seemed arrested by a spell that he might
get his vivid impression.

When ensconced in his room that evening he had a brighter outlook on the
world. With the curtains drawn, and the lights burning, its shabbiness
was unrevealed. After the whirling strangeness of the day he was glad to
be in a place that was his own; here at least was a corner of earth of
which he was master; it reassured him. The firelight dancing on the tea
things was pleasant and homely, and the enclosing cosiness shut out the
black roaring world that threatened to engulf his personality. His
spirits rose, ever ready to jump at a trifle.

The morrow, however, was the first of his lugubrious time.

If he had been an able man he might have found a place in his classes to
console him. Many youngsters are conscious of a vast depression when
entering the portals of a university; they feel themselves inadequate to
cope with the wisdom of the ages garnered in the solid walls. They envy
alike the smiling sureness of the genial charlatan (to whom professors
are a set of fools), and the easy mastery of the man of brains. They
have a cowering sense of their own inefficiency. But the feeling of
uneasiness presently disappears. The first shivering dip is soon
forgotten by the hearty breaster of the waves. But ere you breast the
waves you must swim; and to swim through the sea of learning was more
than heavy-headed Gourlay could accomplish. His mind, finding no solace
in work, was left to prey upon itself.

If he had been the ass total and complete he might have loafed in the
comfortable haze which surrounds the average intelligence, and cushions
it against the world. But in Gourlay was a rawness of nerve, a
sensitiveness to physical impression, which kept him fretting and
stewing, and never allowed him to lapse on a sluggish indifference.

Though he could not understand things, he could not escape them; they
thrust themselves forward on his notice. We hear of poor genius cursed
with perceptions which it can't express; poor Gourlay was cursed with
impression