He said this in a superior and gentle manner. But it was a terrible blow to the prospects of any student to be thus exiled. And yet the professor was within his strict legal right, and the student knew it. He had avoided this danger all through his college course, and now it came with crushing effect on him. For just as long ago in the valley they had had doctrines about the king, and had punished any one who did not feel them as true, and who was found out, so now when all the ideas about the king had been disproved, they had severe regulations about the belief in the laws. The learned class was a sect of priests, and whoever threatened to bring confusion and trouble by denying any of the known laws, and to lead the ignorant people to disregard them and deny them, was subject to severe punishments. In the case of this student, the error did not so much matter, because he had committed his offence in the presence of well-instructed people, who would only smile at his folly. But he had in his presumption insulted the head of the college, and his punishment was universally considered to be mild and just. And yet he was not altogether in the wrong. For it was not as though the king (when he wanted a being to move away from the metropolis) took as usual a portion of his effort in going there; and at the same time counterbalanced this by taking a still larger portion of the pain involved in his moving away from the metropolis. By no means. When the king willed a man to move away from the metropolis, he let him start afresh, as it were, according to the conditions which every being was subject to in the valley—that it was just as pleasant as painful to move in any way, and he took a portion of the pain involved in moving away from the city. Now the student, when he was sent away, tried earnestly to see wherein he had been wrong. The place where he was exiled was on the confines of the valley, where a peaceable race of savages lived, engaged in agriculture. In the quiet, monotonous life of the place he thought over his whole course of life, but could not obtain any different feeling. And while thus buried in thought, he fell into the way of going about with the savages and doing as they did. Much to his surprise, when his preoccupation of mind passed away, he found himself singularly at home with them. Their tastes seemed to agree with his. And he came to the conclusion that he was in reality a savage who by some mistake had been admitted to the college. Having formed this conclusion, he threw himself into the life around him heartily. In course of time he won the confidence of the rude, uncultivated people, and they talked to him unreservedly.