The two boys walked quickly down the footpath which runs at right angles into the road. They had then a part of the hill to climb. It was the same way as they had walked together on the first day of their life at St. Anselm’s. They had been silent then, and they were silent now. When they reached the turning of the road where Mr. Brandiston’s house came in sight, jutting out a little into the road just beyond the chapel, Gerald said: ‘Do you remember the first time we came here?’ ‘You mean the day we came to St. Anselm’s?’ said Harry. ‘Yes,’ was the reply. ‘We have learnt a good many things since then.’ ‘We’ve learnt to love one another and St. Anselm’s,’ said Harry. Gerald looked at him with a look of ineffable gratitude. By this time they were drawing near to the house. The bell ceased ringing as Harry spoke. There were still two minutes before the doors would be locked. Gerald stopped. ‘Do you remember,’ he asked, ‘the promise you gave me that day? It was just over there.’ ‘No,’ said Harry, ‘I don’t think I do.’ ‘You promised to be my friend always, whatever happened,’ said Gerald. ‘Did I?’ answered Harry. ‘I hope, old man, I have been as good as my word.’ Gerald Eversley answered, with solemn, intense feeling, ‘You have indeed. I have never had a friend like you.’ ‘Well, who knows?’ said Harry, as they entered the house; ‘it may be that the end is not yet.’ Two days later they both left St. Anselm’s. Mr. Selby was the only master (except Mr. Brandiston) to whom Gerald Eversley bade farewell. CHAPTER X THE CRISIS OF FAITH It is a hard thing to write the history of a soul. The human soul is not a simple study; it is constituted of so many parts, faculties, emotions, sympathies, antipathies, as to render its diagnosis imperfect, nay perhaps impossible. We seldom understand one another’s motives; we do not always understand our own. We are a mystery, each of us, to his neighbour; I had almost said we are a mystery each to himself. Yet this is the task which must be undertaken in this chapter--to relate the spiritual agonies of a soul. It will be necessary to show by what process of reason or conviction one who had been trained in the safe though narrow path of Christian evangelical orthodoxy became, as it were, a wanderer, homeless and hopeless, how he passed from certainty to doubt, from doubt to negation, and at length went down into the valley of darkness from which there is often no return.