But Uncle Lloyd knew only too well the carking cares of a workman’s life. He knew what it was to feel a mind-hunger which cannot be sated. Those who saw much of the preacher-bootmaker in those days tell how eager he was for books—how in this eagerness he struck up a very admirable friendship with the kindly village curate; how, after his long day’s work, he would read half through the night, and how the village doctor, going on some errand of midnight or dawn, would still see the light of his candle shining through his bedroom window. Such a life is often filled with an aching regret. The hardly tasked body yearns for a fuller freedom—the freedom to follow, undisturbed, the clear call of the mind. It was such a life that he dreamed of for his boys when he decided to send them, at all costs, into one of those learned professions which Britons hold in so much honour. His eager aim was to free them, at any sacrifice, from the great burden of manual drudgery. That being decided, it was not so easy to make a choice between the professions. Richard Lloyd was not one of those men who think it a sign of strength to force children into careers against their own will. Above all, he wished to have the following wind of their free consent and help. The “ministry” was practically closed to them by that rule of their uncle’s Church which forbade Christian service as a means of livelihood. The Established Church, indeed, was an open road for them; there “Welcome!” was written over the door for every clever Welsh village boy. If David had consented to follow the lead of some of his village friends, who can say that he might not have ended as an Archbishop? The thought never took serious shape at Highgate Cottage. I scarcely dare to think of what would have been said in the village “smithy” or the uncle’s workshop if David had turned his steps towards that primrose path—as both he and his brother were more than once invited to do. Richard Lloyd’s own desire was that David should be a doctor. But the lad had an instinctive, physical shrinking from disease and death. Richard Lloyd, being a wise man, sorrowfully agreed that David’s temperament was unfitted for the hospital ward and the sick-room. His mother, Mrs. William George, pondering the future in her heart, and watching the boy with a fond mother’s eyes, desired him to be a lawyer. The mother won. In those old days when Mrs. William George was in the depths of sorrow and distress, through the long agony of her husband’s illness, she had received much help and kindness from an old friend of her husband’s, one of those tender-hearted family lawyers who are the crown and salvation of their profession—Mr. Thomas Goffey of Liverpool. The boys had heard much of this man at an impressionable age; and the effect left on David was a great desire to go and do likewise. “To be a lawyer like Mr. Goffey!” That was the shining quest before him.