The boy burst into tears when informed of his father’s decision with regard to his winter studies, and could only be consoled by the hope which Hugh held out to him —­ certainly upon a very slight foundation —­ that they might meet sometimes in London.  For the little time that remained, Hugh devoted himself unceasingly to his pupil; not merely studying with him, but walking, riding, reading stories, and going through all sorts of exercises for the strengthening of his person and constitution.  The best results followed both for Harry and his tutor.

CHAPTER XXXI.

Explanations.

I have done nothing good to win belief,
My life hath been so faithless; all the creatures
Made for heaven’s honours, have their ends, and good ones;
All but...false women...When they die, like tales
Ill-told, and unbelieved, they pass away.

I will redeem one minute of my age,
Or, like another Niobe, I’ll weep
Till I am water.

Beaumont and Fletcher. —­ The Maid’s Tragedy.

The days passed quickly by; and the last evening that Hugh was to spend at Arnstead arrived.  He wandered out alone.  He had been with Harry all day, and now he wished for a few moments of solitude.  It was a lovely autumn evening.  He went into the woods behind the house.  The leaves were still thick upon the trees, but most of them had changed to gold, and brown, and red; and the sweet faint odours of those that had fallen, and lay thick underfoot, ascended like a voice from the grave, saying:  “Here dwelleth some sadness, but no despair.”  As he strolled about among them, the whole history of his past life arose before him.  This often happens before any change in our history, and is surest to take place at the approach of the greatest change of all, when we are about to pass into the unknown, whence we came.

In this mood, it was natural that his sins should rise before him.  They came as the shadows of his best pleasures.  For now, in looking back, he could fix on no period of his history, around which the aureole, which glorifies the sacred things of the past, had gathered in so golden a hue, as around the memory of the holy cottage, the temple in which abode David, and Janet, and Margaret.  All the story glided past, as the necromantic Will called up the sleeping dead in the mausoleum of the brain.  And that solemn, kingly, gracious old man, who had been to him a father, he had forgotten; the homely tenderness which, from fear of its own force, concealed itself behind a humorous roughness of manner, he had —­ no, not despised —­ but forgotten, too; and if the dim pearly loveliness of the trustful, grateful maiden had not been quite forgotten, yet she too had been neglected, had died, as it were, and been buried in the churchyard of the past, where the grass grows long over the graves, and the moss soon begins to fill up the chiselled records.  He was ungrateful.  He dared not allow to himself that he was unloving; but he must confess himself ungrateful.