And Tom was not content with such knowledge as could be acquired in the Mill. Although his hours at the loom were long enough in all conscience, and he certainly led laborious days, he resolved also to shun luxurious nights, if idling through the evenings with a novel of Sir Walter Scott or doing odd jobs about the house for Hannah Garside or, in the summer, strolling about the lanes and over the moors could be said to constitute a luxury. He joined the classes at the Mechanics' Institute and nightly wrestled with the mysteries of Euclid, chevied the elusive _x_ through algebraic equations, acquired enough of statics and dynamics to be appalled by the height, depth, and breadth of his own ignorance, and enough of chemistry to bring him to the same conclusion that the highway to ruin would be to trust to his own knowledge of that weird and fascinating science. But if of learning to be likely to be really useful in the career he had marked out for himself, Tom attained to little enough, his mind was all the better for the mental gymnastics his studies compelled. The books he conned demanded close application and sustained thought, and so, had he learned nothing from them at all, were an intellectual discipline that would tell in the battle of life, and rescued him from that flabby habit of mind that comes from desultory and random reading. It was noticed too, that about this time Tom forsook in some measure his first love, the services of the Established Church, and became a very frequent worshipper at Aenon Chapel. Ben declared that he couldn't make head or tail of this change from country walks turned to profitable account, as Ben conceived, by Ben's discursive utterances _de omnibus rebus et aliis praterca_, but more particularly and recurringly concerning the high metaphysics of Calvinistic theology. "There's a screw loose, somewhere," he remarked solemnly to Hannah one Sunday afternoon when Tom, after brushing his suit of woe very sedulously and looking more than once in the little cracked glass to see if his tie were rightly bunched and his "toppin" duly "lashed" and parted had sidled rather shamefacedly out of the house with a hymn-book in one hand, whilst with the fore-finger of the other he assured himself that the coin destined for the collection box nestled securely in the corner of his waistcoat pocket. Hannah stayed her rocking and smoothed the sheen of her silken apron, but was mute.