Northward he would gaze with Saint Cuthbert, who stands in his niche, holding the head of King Oswald in his hand--and he would link his own wild Northern hills, where Barbara Lynn herded sheep, with this ancient city of civilization. Mayhap, as he thought of Barbara Lynn, his eyes would light upon Christ Church, and he would remember the saint whose shrine it guards, to whom Oxford owes her birth--Saint Frideswide, blue-eyed and yellow-haired, who might have worn a crown. Thought is linked to thought, North to South, man to man, in endless succession. Since Adam there has not been one break in the chain; the whole of life is knitted up without a rent. Saint Frideswide and Barbara Lynn stretched their hands to each other through the dim years. Something of the same spirit lived in both, a spirit of self-mastery and aspiration though one refused a crown to keep herself unspotted from the world, the other, pure as any lily, should be crowned--so Timothy Hadwin had prophesied. Peter did not despise the present because he lived so much in the past. He was no step-bairn of his glorious mother, but received a full inheritance from her hands. In the life about him he found inspiration and fellowship, without which he would have been shorn of his Samson locks. And he was a power among his fellow students. They might laugh at his childlike enthusiasms; but they found him a tower of strength when strength was needed; and under his outward sentimentality, they tapped a clear spring of common sense. He had a masculine love of independence; he could work with mind and muscle strained to their utmost; he could idle like an Oriental; but he rose at dawn, slept on a truckle bed, ate plain fare like an ascetic. Of his lowly birth he made no secret. Patronage ran off him like water off a duck's back. He was curiously insensible to differences of rank or breeding. In mental ability he stood second to few. That which was said of William Pitt might be said equally well of him--"He never seemed to learn, but simply to recollect." Thus his academic years had passed; now he stood without the closed door. His friends were going forth to careers of interest or influence; he was drifting back to his Northern home to teach the village children how to make pot-hooks.