if you take pains.” Next moment he had a volume of Browning in his hand and said, “Browning now: ever read any Browning? I thought not. Listen to me for a couple of minutes,” and he read “The Lost Leader.” Once, I remember, I had been to his house in the evening, and he walked back with me across the cricket-field after night had fallen. The sky was clear and a myriad frosty stars burned there. For some little way Beesly walked in silence, then, in his low distinct voice he began: “See how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold.” I insist on the apparent triviality and fragmentariness of all this, for it was just in these ways, not in heavy discourses or lectures on morality and studiousness and activity, that Beesly gained his ascendency over me. He was never a great talker, but these _obiter dicta_ stamped themselves on my mind like some stroke of a steel die on malleable metal. He was never in the smallest degree demonstrative: he might have been speaking to a blank wall, except just for that glance, merry and intimate, which he occasionally showed me, but for all that I divined a strong affection, which I for my part returned in a glow of hero-worship. The very fact that he never asked for a confidence prompted me to tell him all that perplexed or interested me, in the sure knowledge that he would always throw light in some brief curt sentence. “Stupid thing to do,” was one of his wise comments when I had told him of some row I had got into with my house master. “Go and apologize, and then don’t think anything more about it.” There was the root and kernel of the matter: down came that steel die, sharply impressing itself, whereas discursive and laboured advice would have merely been boring and unconvincing. Off I went, trusting implicitly in his wisdom, and finding it wholly justified.