[Illustration]

Bob sat still awhile, his agitation soothed by the comforting sense of the oaken seat beneath him.  At school he had been called by his school-fellows “the Knitting-needle,” a remarkable example of the well-known fondness of boys for sharp, short nicknames; but this did not trouble him now.  He and his eagerness, his boundless curiosity, and his lovable mistakes, were now part and parcel of the new life of Oxford—­new to him, but old as the ages, that, with their rhythmic recurrent flow, like the pulse of—­[Two pages of fancy writing are here omitted. Ed.] Brigham and black were in chapel, too.  They were Dons, older than Bob, but his intimate friends.  They had but little belief, but black often preached, and Brigham held undecided views on life and matrimony, having been brought up in the cramped atmosphere of a middle-class parlour.  At Oxford, the two took pupils, and helped to shape BOB’s life.  Once Brigham had pretended, as an act or pure benevolence, to be a Pro-Proctor, but as he had a sardonic scorn, and a face which could become a marble mask, the Vice-Chancellor called upon him to resign his position, and he never afterwards repeated the experiment.

CHAPTER II.

One evening Bob was wandering dreamily on the banks of the Upper River.  He sat down, and thought deeply.  Opposite to him was a wide green expanse dotted with white patches of geese.  There and then, by the gliding river, with a mass of reeds and a few poplars to fill in the landscape, he determined to become a clergyman.  How strange that he should never have thought of this before; how sudden it was; how wonderful!  But the die was cast; alea jacta est, as he had read yesterday in an early edition of St. Augustine; and, when Bob rose, there was a new brightness in his eye, and a fresh springiness in his steps.  And at that moment the deep bell of St. Mary’s—­[Three pages omitted. Ed.]

CHAPTER III.

And thus Bob was ordained, and, having married Catherine, he accepted the family living of Wendover, though not before he had taken occasion to point out to black that family livings were corrupt and indefensible institutions.  Still, the thing had to be done; and bitterly as Bob pined for the bracing air of the East End of London, he acknowledged, with one of his quick, bright flashes, that, unless he went to Wendover, he could never meet Squire MUREWELL, whose powerful arguments were to drive him from positions he had never qualified himself, except by an irrational enthusiasm, to defend.  Of Catherine a word must be said.  Cold, with the delicate but austere firmness of a Westmoreland daisy, gifted with fatally sharp lines about the chin and mouth, and habitually wearing loose grey gowns, with bodices to match, she