scarcely further off to seventeen than to-morrow to a child--to come back triumphant to the confusion of all prophets of evil. Sometimes the young dreamer will carry out his vision, bringing misery and self-reproach to those he leaves behind, but coming back in most cases far from triumphant, forced by destitution or misery, perhaps, or at best disenchanted and dreary, dazzling no one with the success which has ceased to be sweet. Perhaps John, who had a great deal of sense, divined this--at all events, he was held by those bonds of duty which had lain on him lightly in the past, yet had created a tradition and necessity of obedience, which nothing he had yet encountered was strong enough to abrogate. He felt the temptation, but it never occurred to him as one to which he could yield--and though his heart was in revolt and his pride all in arms, yet he trudged along soberly across the river to Great George Street, where he was bound, without any active resistance, feeling himself under the guidance and control of an unkindly fate. He was received not unkindly, however, though with great gravity, by Mr. Barrett, the gentleman to whom his mother’s letter was addressed, and who questioned him as to his studies, how far he had gone in his mathematics, and whether he had made any acquaintance with the special work of the profession he desired to take up. Mr. Barrett was a very serious person, indeed, in a dress that was almost clerical, and with manners more solemn than ever clergyman had, which is a curious effect not unusual among lay persons who assume the attitude of advice and exhortation, which is supposed to be the special privilege of the clergy. Mr. Barrett’s necktie was not white, but the grey and black with which it was striped were faint, producing a sort of illusion in point of colour; and his manners were more distinctive even than his tie. ‘I know your mother,’ he said, ‘she is an excellent woman, a most worthy person. Her son ought to be satisfactory, and I hope you will prove so; but she has had many trials, much more than fall to the ordinary lot.’ John did not make any reply; at all events nothing was audible of what he said, though in reality he kept up a fierce fire of response. ‘If she has had many trials she ought to have kept them from strangers,’ was what he said hotly within himself. ‘I trust you begin work with the hope and intention of making up to her a little for all she has had to bear,’ Mr. Barrett resumed. ‘She has been for many years under my personal observation, and anyone more devoted to duty I never saw.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said John to himself, ‘that is like Emily! not because she likes to do it, but because it’s duty,’ which was at once a hostile and foolish remark.