"It is unlucky, certainly, that our present tutors take so little interest in anything which the men care about. But it is more from shyness than anything else, that manner which you noticed. You may be sure that he was more wretched and embarrassed than any of you." "Well, but now I should really like to know what you did yourself," said Tom; "you are the only man of much older standing than myself whom I know at all yet--I mean I don't know anybody else well enough to talk about this sort of thing to them. What did you do, now, besides learning to pull, in your first year?" "I had learnt to pull before I came up here," said Hardy. "I really hardly remember what I did besides read. You see, I came up with a definite purpose of reading. My father was very anxious that I should become a good scholar. Then my position in the college and my poverty naturally kept me out of the many things which other men do." Tom flushed again at the ugly word, but not so much as at first. Hardy couldn't mind the subject, or he would never be forcing it up at every turn, he thought. "You wouldn't think it," he began again, harping on the same string, "but I can hardly tell you how I miss the sort of responsibility I was talking to you about. I have no doubt I shall get the vacuum filled up before long, but for the life of me I can't see how yet." "You will be a very lucky fellow if you don't find it quite as much as you can do to keep yourself in order up here. It is about the toughest part of a man's life, I do believe, the time he has spent here. My university life has been so different altogether from what yours will be, that my experience isn't likely to benefit you." "I wish you would try me, though," said Tom; "you don't know what a teachable sort of a fellow I am, if any body will take me the right way. You taught me to scull, you know; or at least put me in a way to learn. But sculling, and rowing, and cricket, and all the rest of it, with such reading as I am likely to do, won't be enough. I feel sure of that already. "I don't think it will," said Hardy. "No amount of physical or mental work will fill the vacuum you were talking of just now. It is the empty house swept and garnished which the boy might have had glimpses of, but the man finds yawning within him, which must be filled somehow. It's a pretty good three years' work to learn how to keep the devils out of it, more or less; by the time you take your degree. At least I have found it so." Hardy rose and took a turn or two up and down his room. He was astonished at finding himself talking so unreservedly to one of whom he knew so little, and half-wished the words recalled. He lived much alone, and thought himself morbid and too self-conscious; why should he be filling a youngster's head with puzzles? How did he know that they were thinking of the same thing?