Very different was the case of Gerald Eversley. It was not that he was ever involved in a serious trouble. He was not a boy who incurred or deserved punishment. But there was nothing in him that attracted popular favour. It was reported in the school that he was ‘awfully clever.’ It was beyond dispute that he was ‘a dreadful sap.’ Some of the more discerning boys or masters may have ventured upon the prediction which can hardly be considered as unduly hazardous that ‘he would do something some day.’ But that ‘something,’ if it were destined to be done, would be apparently as far away from the sympathy as from the ambition of other boys. His tastes were not theirs. He lived in a different world from them. They were glad sometimes to avail themselves of his assistance, and I am afraid they availed themselves of it rather freely, in the preparation of their lessons; for his knowledge was multifarious, and it was believed that he had once or twice proved capable of answering questions which had puzzled Mr. Brandiston himself; but an oracle is not consulted except for a special purpose, and, when it is not required, it is treated with indifference. So it was with Gerald Eversley. Perhaps there is no isolation like that of a sensitive spirit surrounded by others which never come into contact or sympathy with it at all. It is what Byron has described in some memorable lines. Gerald Eversley was not unhappy in his isolation, of which others were more conscious than himself. He had always led a lonely life (except for the society of his father), and it was no surprise to him or disappointment that his life should be lonely now. Besides he had his consolations, as the lonely often have. There is a pleasure in solitude itself. The old Roman was not wrong in his assertion ‘that he was never less lonely than when he was alone.’ There is a pleasure even in being misunderstood, though it is a pleasure that belongs to age, when the heart is soured a little and has become cynical, rather than to youth. But Gerald was old beyond his years. When his schoolfellows were at cricket or football he went for a walk, if he took any exercise at all, his eyesight disqualifying him for games. He was clever, and always high in his form; but he derived less pleasure from his high place than others who had striven for it more anxiously. The beautiful library of St. Anselm’s is known to all visitors, and there in a corner of the great oriel window he sat for hours, never looking at the view of the wide champaign that stretches beneath it, but scanning books of all kinds--novels, travels, biographies (of which he was especially fond), poetry, books of science (particularly archæology) and art, even sermons and books of controversial divinity. Whatever he read he assimilated. I do not mean that it was all remembered, but it soaked down into his mind and became a reservoir of knowledge upon which he would draw in hours of need. He realised what so few who are young,