But John paid no attention. He rushed downstairs two or three steps at a time, and over the threshold which he had crossed so often with the familiarity of every day life. His feet spurned it now. He seemed to be shaking the dust from him as the rejected messengers were to do in the Gospel. No better servant had ever been, no more dutiful pupil, and he was conscious of this. He had never been without a thought indeed of advancement in his own person, of carrying out a work of his own: but all his knowledge, the knowledge acquired out of their limits in the privacy of his own self-denying and studious youth, had been at the service of his masters and teachers unreservedly at all times. He had never thought of sparing himself, of doing as little as was possible, which was the way of many of his fellow-pupils. He had done always as much as was in him, freely and with devotion. And as the climax of so many faithful years, he had brought to them this first fruits of his maturing thought, this plan so long cogitated, which had been to him what a poem is to a poet--the work in which all his faculties, not only of calculation and practical reason, but of thought and imagination had been concentrated. It was to be the climax, and now it was the end. Instead of sharing his honours with them and bringing them substantial profit, as he intended, he was sent forth with shame as a traitor, a false servant, a disloyal man. John’s heart burned within him as, holding his head high, and spurning the very ground, he marched out of that familiar place. The sting of injustice was sharp in his soul. He said to himself that he would offer no further defence, that he would not attempt to prove the deception that had been put upon him, or how it was that he had been robbed at once of his scheme and honour. If it could be believed for a moment by people who had known him for years that he was so guilty, he would make no attempt to explain. If ever an accusation was unlikely, unreasonable, inconsistent with every law, it was this. CHAPTER IV. DEFEATED AND WRONGED. He had walked a long way before he came to himself out of those whirling circles of thought in which the mind gets involved when it is suddenly stung by a great wrong, or startled by a poignant incident. With this strong pressure upon him, he had gone right away into the Strand, and along that busy line of streets into the din and crowds of the city, feeling, like a deaf man, that the noise around made it more possible to hear the voice of his own thoughts, and to endure the clangour of his heart beating in his ears. He walked fast, not turning to the right nor to the left, straight through the bewildering throng in which every man had his own little world of incident, of sentiment, and feeling undisturbed by the contact of others on every side.