toward him. But he avoided Brother Aloysius so carefully during the remainder of his stay that it was impossible to test the Abbot's knowledge as directly as he could have wished.

The night before Michael was to leave the monastery, a great gale blew from the southwest and kept him wide awake hour after hour until the bell for Matins. He felt that on this his last night it would be in order for him to attend the Office. So he dressed quickly and hurried through the wind-swept corridor into the Chapel. Here, in a severity of long droning psalms, he tried to purge his mind of all it had acquired from the shamelessness of Brother Aloysius. He was so far successful that he could look Dom Cuthbert fearlessly in the face when he bade him good-bye next day, and, as he coasted over the downs through the calm September sunlight, he to himself seemed like the country washed by the serene radiance of the tempest's aftermath.

M

CHAPTER VIII

MIRRORS

ICHAEL somehow felt shy when he heard his mother's voice telling him to come into her room. He had run upstairs and knocked excitedly at her door before the shyness overwhelmed him, but it was too late not to enter, and he sat down to give her the account of his holidays. Rather dull it seemed, and robbed of all vitality by the barrier which both his mother and he hastened to erect between themselves.

"Well, dear, did you enjoy yourself at this Monastery?" "Oh, rather."

"Is the-what do you call him-the head monk a nice man?"

"Oh, yes, awfully decent."

"And your friend Chator, did he enjoy himself?" "Oh, rather. Only he had to go before me.

enjoy yourself abroad, mother?"

Did you

"Very much, dear, thank you. We had lovely weather all the time."

"We had awfully ripping weather too."

"Have you got everything ready for school in the morn

ing?"

"There's nothing much to get. I suppose I'll go into Cray's the Upper Fifth. Do you want mother?"

me now,

"No, dear. I have one or two letters to write."

"I think I'll go round and see if Chator's home yet. You don't mind?"

"Don't be late for dinner."

"Oh, no, rather not."

Going downstairs from his mother's room, Michael had half an impulse to turn back and confide in her the real account of his holidays. But on reflection he protested to himself that his mother looked upon him as immaculate, and he felt unwilling to disturb by such a revolutionary step the approved tranquillities of maternal ignorance.

Mr. Cray, his new form-master, was a man of distinct personality, and possessed a considerable amount of educaive ability; but unfortunately for Michael the zest of cassics had withered in his heart after his disappointment over the Oxford and Cambridge Certificate. Therefore Mr. Cray with his bright archæology and chatty scholarship bored Michael more profoundly than any of his masters so far had bored him. Mr. Cray resented this attitude very bitterly, being used to keenness in his form, and Michael's dreary indolence, which often came nearer to insolence, irritated him. As for the plodding, inky sycophants who fawned upon Mr. Cray's informativeness, Michael regarded them with horror and contempt. He sat surrounded by the butts and bugbears of his school-life. All the boys whose existence he had deplored seemed to have clambered arduously into the Upper Fifth just to enrage him with the sight of their industrious propinquity. There they sat with their scraggy wrists protruding from shrinking coat-sleeves, with ambitious noses glued to their books, with pens and pencils neatly disposed for demonstrative annotation, and nearly all of them conscious of having figured in the school-list with the printed bubble of the Oxford and Cambridge Higher Certificate beside their names. Contemplating them in the mass, Michael

scarcely knew how he would endure another dusty year of school.

"And now we come to the question of the Homeric gate the Homeric gate, Fane, when you can condescend to our level," said Mr. Cray severely.

"I'm listening, sir," said Michael wearily.

"Of course the earliest type of gate was without hinges -without hinges, Fane! Very much like your attention, Fane!"

Several sycophants giggled at this, and Michael, gazing very earnestly at Mr. Cray's benign but somewhat dirty bald head, took a bloody revenge upon those in reach of his javelin of quadruple penholders.

"For Monday," said Mr. Cray, when he had done with listening to the intelligent advice of his favorite pupils on the subject of gates ancient and modern, "for Monday the essay will be on Patriotism."

Michael groaned audibly.

"Isn't there an alternative subject, sir?" he gloomily inquired.

"Does Fane dislike abstractions?" said Mr. Cray. "Curious! Well, if Fane wishes for an alternative subject, of course Fane must be obeyed. The alternative subject will be An Examination into the Fundamental Doctrines of Hegelian Idealism. Does that suit Fane?"

"Very well indeed," said Michael, who had never heard of Hegel until that moment, but vowed to himself that somehow between this muggy Friday afternoon and next Monday morning he would conquer the fellow's opinions. As a matter of fact, the essay proved perfectly easy with the assistance of The Popular Encyclopedia, though Mr. Cray called it a piece of impudence and looked almost baleful when Michael showed it up.

From this atmosphere of complacent effort Michael withdrew one afternoon to consult Father Viner about

his future.

Underneath the desire for practical advice was a desire to talk about himself, and Michael was disappointed on arriving at Father Viner's rooms to hear that he was out. However, learning that there was a prospect of his speedy return, he came in at the landlady's suggestion to amuse himself with a book while he waited.

Wandering round the big bay-windowed room with its odor of tobacco and books, and casting a careless glance at Father Viner's desk, Michael caught sight of his own name in the middle of a neatly written letter on the top of a pile of others. He could not resist taking a long glance to see the address and verify the allusion to himself, and with this longer glance curiously conquered so completely the prejudice against prying into other people's correspondence that Michael, breathing nervously under the dread of interruption, took up the letter and read it right through. It was in his present mood of anxiety about himself very absorbing.

CLERE ABBEY

MICHAEL MASS.

PAX

DEAR BROTHER:

I have been intending to write to you about young Michael Fane ever since he left us, and your letter of inquiry has had the effect of bringing me up to the point.

I hardly know what to tell you. He's a curious youth, very lovable, and with enough brains to make one wish that he might have a vocation for the priesthood. At the same time I noticed while he was with us, especially after the admirable Chator departed, an overwhelming languor which. I very much deplored.

He spent much of his time with a very bad hat indeed, whom I have just sent away from Clere. If you ever come across Mr. Henry Meats, be careful of him. Arbuthnot of St. Aidan's, Holloway, sent him to me. You know Arbuthnot's expansive (and for his friends expensive) Christianity. This last effort of his was a snorter, a soft,