They said good-night, and Edwin kissed his father; but for several hours later he heard the clocks of Bristol chiming. In a little time he knew by the quiet breathing of his father that he was asleep, and hearing this sound and thinking of the grey man who lay beside him, he was overwhelmed with an emotion in which pity and passionate devotion were curiously mingled. He felt strangely protective, as though it were the man who had fought such a hard battle who was weak, and he, who had never endured anything, were the stronger. He conceived it a kind of sacred duty to see that for all the rest of his life his father should never suffer any pain or even discomfort from which he could protect him. It was a more vivid version of the feeling that had bowled him over once before, when they had knelt together after his mother’s death. It was a wholly illogical sentiment—and yet, when he came to think it over, he came to the conclusion that something of the same kind must have underlain his mother’s tenderness towards his father. He was eager to persuade himself that there was no compassion in it: only love and admiration. “He is the most wonderful man in the world,” he thought, “and I never knew it.” Remorse overcame him when he remembered that once, at St. Luke’s, he had been ashamed of Mr. Ingleby’s calling. There couldn’t be another chap in the school who had a father that was a patch on him. He remembered a more recent cause for shame: the shiver of discomfort that the landlady’s revelation of his Uncle Will’s occupation had given him. He had thought that a gardener uncle would be an uncomfortable skeleton in the cupboard of a Fellow of Balliol. Instead of that he now knew that he should have been proud of it: he should have been proud of anything in the world that did honour to his father. Everything that he was, every shred of culture that he possessed had its origin in the devotion and the sufferings of this wonderful man, and, whatever happened, he determined that he would be worthy of them. The cathedral clock slowly chimed two. Edwin turned over and fell asleep in a mood of strange, exalted happiness. CHAPTER XII THE HILLS I UNDER a sky of rain-washed blue they had left Bristol, and after an hour of hard riding came to an easy upland plateau where the road lay white and clear before them, so clean between its wide margins of rough turf, that it seemed to have some affinity with the sky. On their way they had met few people, but the carters with whom they had exchanged a morning greeting were all smiling and friendly, very different from the surly colliers that slouched about the cinder-paths at Halesby. “Good-maarnin’,” they said, and the very dialect was friendly. “We’re over the worst of the road,” said Mr. Ingleby. “In a minute or two we shall see the hills.”