Poor Kenrick! he felt as much as Walter did that he had lost one of his truest and most pleasant friends, and he, too, often yearned for the old intercourse between them. Even his best friends, Power, Henderson, and Whalley, all thought him wrong; and in consequence a coolness rose between them and him. He felt thoroughly miserable, and did not know where to turn; yet none the less he ostentatiously abstained from making the slightest overture to Walter; and whereas the two boys might have enjoyed together many happy hours, they felt a continual embarrassment at being obliged to meet each other very frequently in awkward silence, and apparent unconsciousness of each other's presence. This silent annoyance recurred continually at all hours of the day. They threw away the golden opportunity of smoothing and brightening for each other their schoolboy years. It is sad that since true friends are so few, such slight differences, such trivial misunderstandings, should separate them for years. If a man's penitence for past follies be humble and sincere, his crimes and failings may well be buried in a generous oblivion; but, alas! his own friends, and they of his own household, are too often _the last_ to forgive and to forget. Too often they do not condone the fault till years of unhappiness and disappointment have intervened; till the wounds which they have inflicted are cicatrised; till the sinner's loneliness has taught him to look for other than human sympathy; till he is too old, too sorrowful, too heartbroken, too near the Great White Throne, to expect any joy from human friendship, or any consolation in human love.