Hardenow only took this long tramp for the sake of collecting his forces. Saturday was not their proper day for this very admirable coat-tail chase. Neither did they swallow hill and plain in this manner on a Sunday. Lectures were needful to fetch them up to the proper pitch for striding so. Wherefore on the morrow Mr. Hardenow was free for a cruise on his own account, after morning sermon at St. Mary's; and not having heard of his old friend Russel for several weeks, he resolved to go and hunt him up in his own home. It was not a possible thing for this very active and spare-bodied man to lounge upon his road. Whatever it was that he undertook, he carried on the action with such a swing and emphasis, that he seemed to be doing nothing else. He wore a short spencer, and a long-tailed coat, "typical"--to use the pet word of that age--both of his curt brevity and his ankle-reaching gravity. His jacket stuck into him, and his coat struck away with the power of an adverse wind, while the boys turned back and stared at him; but he was so accustomed to that sort of thing that he never thought of looking round. He might have been tail-piped for seven leagues without troubling his head about it. This was a man of great power of mind, and led up to a lofty standard; pure, unselfish, good, and grand (so far as any grandeur can be in the human compound), watchful over himself at almost every corner of his ways, kind of heart, and fond of children; loving all simplicity, quick to catch and glance the meaning of minds very different from his own; subtle also, and deep to reason, but never much inclined to argue. He had a shy and very peculiar manner of turning his eyes away from even an undergraduate, when his words did not command assent; as sometimes happened with freshmen full of conceit from some great public school. The manner of his mind was never to assert itself, or enter into controversy. He felt that no arguments would stir himself when he had solidly cast his thoughts; and he had of all courtesies the rarest (at any rate with Englishmen), the courtesy of hoping that another could reason as well as himself. In this honest and strenuous nature there was one deficiency. The Rev. Thomas Hardenow, copious of mind and active, clear of memory, and keen at every knot of scholarship, patient and candid too, and not at all intolerant, yet never could reach the highest rank, through want of native humour. His view of things was nearly always anxious and earnest. His standing-point was so fixed and stable, that every subject might be said to revolve on its own axis during its revolution round him; and the side that never presented itself was the ludicrous or lightsome one.