Paul retorted hotly. "Why?" he demanded. "It's that kind of saying that we have got to disprove. Christ is real to me. I want to feel Him at every turn. I want to give up all my life to the Cross. This is only the sign of it, I know, but why should you argue that my wearing of the sign will make the thing itself unreal to me, just because some people wear it and have forgotten its meaning?" "But is it necessary, Paul?" queried his mother gently. "You don't understand, mother," said Paul. "Is it necessary to put up your portrait in my rooms at Cambridge? Can't I remember you without?" His mother sighed; that was so like Paul. His father looked troubled. "It's the thin end of the wedge, laddie," he said, "so often. We don't, of course, object to the thing itself; it's only that we hate the religion that has destroyed the truth of Christ while it has decked itself out with crosses. Isn't the Saviour without the symbol enough for you, my boy? The old devil is so cunning, Paul, lad." "And the cocksure folk are the people he gets first," added Miss Bishop. "Then," said Paul shrewdly, "you ought to look out, Miss Bishop." "Paul," said his father sternly, "you forget yourself." (5) Yet one might almost have supposed that Miss Bishop had indeed stirred the devil into action. She would have said that he was positively waiting for cocksure Paul that very first afternoon of the May term. His emissary was a youthful-looking man, rather small, light and quick in movement, fair of complexion, with alert, keen, grey-blue eyes that perpetually brimmed over with humour, although the home of it was low down in them, out of sight. He was decorously dressed in black, but with a rather shabby buttoned frock-coat, for he was careless of appearances, and when he spoke at first to strangers, or if he were unusually moved, there was often a little stammer in his voice. He was, in short, the Rev. Father Vassall, a Popish priest. Paul found him in Hannam's rooms, Hannam being the new acquaintance of the previous term. He kept in the rooms below Paul, who did not care for him particularly, and had, indeed, done no more than call the first term. But Hannam was a lonely individual, of somewhat eccentric tastes, one of which was for verse. He, therefore, admired Paul and Paul's writings, and latterly the two had seen more of each other. Paul knew, that he was a Catholic, but as one did not exactly associate religion of any sort with Hannam, who, nevertheless, was tolerant of Paul's ardent faith, this fact had not obtruded as one might have expected. Thus, then, it chanced that Kestern arrived at St. Mary's a day before Manning, and by an earlier train than that of any of his more intimate friends. He was chaffing old Tom about four of the clock in the First Court, and on his way to his rooms knocked by an impulse at Hannam's door.