Next morning he was up and washed and dressed, all but his jacket and waistcoat, just as the ten minutes’ bell began to ring, and then in the face of the whole room knelt down to pray. Not five words could he say—the bell mocked him; he was listening for every whisper in the room—what were they all thinking of him? He was ashamed to go on kneeling, ashamed to rise from his knees. At last, as it were from his inmost heart, a still small voice seemed to breathe forth the words of the publican, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” He repeated them over and over, clinging to them as for his life, and rose from his knees comforted and humbled, and ready to face the whole world. It was not needed: two other boys besides Arthur had already followed his example, and he went down to the great school with a glimmering of another lesson in his heart—the lesson that he who has conquered his own coward spirit has conquered the whole outward world; and that other one which the old prophet learned in the cave in Mount Horeb, when he hid his face, and the still small voice asked, “What doest thou here, Elijah,” that however we may fancy ourselves alone on the side of good, the King and Lord of men is nowhere without his witnesses; for in every society, however seemingly corrupt and godless, there are those who have not bowed the knee to Baal. LXXXVIII. “It is about the toughest part of a man’s life, I do believe,” said Hardy, “the time he has to spend at college. 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 fellow I am, if anybody will take me the right way. You taught me to scull, you know; or at least put me in the 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, and 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? But the spoken word cannot be recalled; it must go on its way for good or evil; and this one set the hearer staring into the ashes, and putting many things together in his head.