It was once proposed to me on excellent authority that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. It seems to be necessary to hear much nonsense while waiting for the sound that rings true. I may be deceived again, many times, but I say it shall not be from any scared wish to believe. _Am I correct, Mr. Welland, in supposing that if doctrines of right and wrong are man-made, learning begins now?_ * * * * * Ben struggled through Tuesday morning's Greek and logic without serious discredit, and picked up only a few minor fresh scratches from the thorns of Latin grammar. He could not quite win clear of a mental shadow that had haunted him since waking after a dream not plainly remembered--a foreboding uneasiness something like that of a child who has wandered into a strange and exciting room: he has not been specifically forbidden to enter here, but knows he has not been granted permission either; presently someone may arrive and with the cool finality of adults chivy him back to the nursery where the toys have lost all magic. In the afternoon Ben achieved brief glory, encountering an area of _De Finibus_ in which Reuben had drilled him so briskly that error was nearly impossible. After this victory the deadly hour hand, the slightly less cruel minute hand, appeared to be creeping with better speed toward the beautiful moment of three o'clock, when Mr. Hibbs would snap his books shut, blow from the tops of them a little imaginary dust, and go away. Ru said once (a dreamy voice coming out of the dark of the bedroom when Ben thought he was asleep): "If I live to be old, I shall alway consider that the immortality of the soul sets in at three o'clock post meridian." A resolution to go once more into Boston had grown today, less like a rational decision than like the climbing of a fever. With the lessons concluded, he would not, like a schoolboy, ask permission: he would simply go, as casually as Ru had been strolling over to Mr. Welland's cottage lately; if there should be consequences of disapproval from Mr. Hibbs or Uncle John himself, Ben supposed they would not be serious--in any case he could meet them with a man's calm, surely?