“The difference is that you are not going to sacrifice Prosper.”

The three were to lie that night at the George Inn, where they had stabled their horses; and at the door of the Head-master’s house, where we Commoners lodged, they took leave of me, my father commending me to God and good dreams.  That they were happy ones I need not tell.

He was up and abroad early next morning, in time to attend chapel, where by the vigour of his responses he set the nearer boys tittering; two of whom I afterwards fought for it, though with what result I cannot remember.  The service, which we urchins heeded little, left him pensive as we walked together towards the inn, and he paused once or twice, with eyes downcast on the cobbles, and muttered to himself.

“I am striving to recollect my Morning Lines, lad,” he confessed at length, with a smile; “and thus, I think, they go.  The great Sir Henry Wotton, you have heard me tell of, in the summer before his death made a journey hither to Winchester; and as he returned towards Eton he said to a friend that went with him:  ’How useful was that advice of an old monk that we should perform our devotions in a constant place, because we so meet again with the very thoughts which possessed us at our last being there.’  And, as Walton tells, ‘I find it,’” he said, “’thus far experimentally true, that at my now being in that school and seeing that very place where I sat when I was a boy occasioned me to remember those very thoughts of my youth which then possessed me:  sweet thoughts indeed—­’”

Here my father paused.  “Let me be careful, now.  I should be perfect in the words, having read them more than a hundred times.  ‘Sweet thoughts indeed,’” said he, “’that promised my growing years numerous pleasures, without mixture of cares; and those to be enjoyed when time—­which I therefore thought slow-paced—­had changed my youth into manhood.  But age and experience have taught me these were but empty hopes, for I have always found it true, as my Saviour did foretell, Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.  Nevertheless, I saw there a succession of boys using the same recreations, and, questionless, possessed with the same thoughts that then possessed me.  Thus one generation succeeds another, both in their lives, recreations, hopes, fears, and death.’”

“But I would not have you, lad,” he went on, “to pay too much heed to these thoughts, which will come to you in time, for as yet you are better without ’em.  Nor were they my only thoughts:  for having brought back my own sacrifice, which I had sometime hoped might be so great, but now saw to be so little, at that moment I looked down to your place in chapel and perceived that I had brought belike the best offering of all.  So my hope—­thank God!—­sprang anew as I saw you there standing vigil by what bright armour you guessed not, nor in preparation for what high warfare.”  He laid a hand on my shoulder.  “Your chapel to-day, child, has been the longer by a sermon.  There, there! forget all but the tail on’t.”