As for the boy Thomas, his nervous system had received such a shock that it became a positive agony to him to have to trudge home from his work in the dark winter nights, and when his father was unable to go to meet him he always ran at the top of his speed past Whitbury farm, his heart within him palpitating like to burst. All his life long, so deep was the impression that fright made on him, a certain nervous tremor seized him whenever he found himself alone on a strange road on a moonless night. The rest of the boyhood of Thomas Wanless was uneventful. He grew in mind and in stature, and suffered less withal from hunger than many of his order. At the age of twenty he took a wife, following in that respect the habits of those around him. 'Tis the fashion nowadays to inveigh against early marriages, and especially against the poor who marry early. By such a practice it is declared miseries are heaped upon them, and our pauper roll is augmented. This is an easy way to push aside one of the most perplexing social problems that this country has ever had to face. With the growth of wealth marriage has become a luxury even to the rich, and for the comparatively poor a forbidden indulgence. As a consequence of this the youth of the present day avoid marriage with all its hampering ties. A code of morals has thus grown up which may be said to be paving the way for a coming negation of all morality. A young man may commit almost any crime against a young woman with impunity so long as he steers clear of all hints of marriage. The relations of the sexes are under this modern code utterly unnatural and fruitful of corruption. Nor can it be otherwise while a man is forbidden under penalty of social ostracism to take a wife. To marry is almost as sure a way to renounce the world, with all its hopes and advantages, as of old was the taking of a monastic vow. What the next generation will be, what licenses it will give itself under the modern restrictions which outrage all that is best in humanity, I must not venture to predict. But that corruption is spreading on all hands, that flippancy, folly, and worse, dominate the relationships of the young of both sexes is even now too apparent. But I am travelling far from Thomas Wanless's history. He at all events felt no social restraint save that of poverty, which he did not fear, and so he married young. The lad had, indeed, little choice.