boy.

'Where?'

'It's all in the paper. The students' prayer-meeting, held every Wednesday morning at nine o'clock sharp. Special meeting to-morrow.'

Hyacinth was bewildered. There was something quite unfamiliar in this prompt and business-like advertisement of prayer. The student with the papers began to be doubtful of him.

'You're not High Church, are you?' he asked. 'We're not. We don't have printed offices, with verses and responds, and that sort of thing. We have extempore prayer by members of the union.'

'No; I'm not High Church,' said Hyacinth—'at least, I think not. I don't really know much about these things. I'll be very glad to go to your meeting.'

'That's right,' said the other. 'All are welcome. There will be special prayer to-morrow for the success of the British arms. I suppose you heard that old Kruger has sent an ultimatum. There will be war at once.'

There was a sudden movement among the students; gowns were pulled straight and caps adjusted.

'Here he comes,' said someone.

Dr. Henry, the divinity professor, crossed the square rapidly. He was a middle-aged man, stout, almost ponderous, in figure; but he held himself rigidly upright, and walked fast across the square. The extreme neatness of his clothes contrasted with the prevailing shabbiness of the students and the assistant lecturers who followed him. Yet he did not seem to be a man who gave to externals more than their due share of consideration. His broad forehead gave promise of great intellectual power, a promise half belied by the narrow gray eyes beneath it. These were eyes which might see keenly, and would certainly see things just as they are, though they were not likely to catch any glimpse of that greater world where objects cannot be focussed sharply. Yet in them, an odd contradiction, there lurked a possibility of humorous twinkling. The man was capable perhaps of the broad tolerance of the great humorist, certainly of very acute perception of life's minor incongruities. His thin lips were habitually pressed together, giving a suggestion of strength to the set of his mouth. A man with such a mouth can think and act, but not feel either passionately or enduringly. He will direct men because he knows his own mind, but is not likely to sway them because he will always be master of himself, and will not become enslaved to any great enthusiasm. The students trooped into the hall, and the examination began. The assistant lecturers helped in the work. Each student was called up in turn, asked a few questions, and given a portion of the Greek Testament to translate. For the most part their capacities were known beforehand. There were some who had won honours in their University course before entering the divinity school. For them the examiners were all smiles, and the business of the day was understood to be perfunctory. Others were recognised as mere pass men, whom it was necessary to spur to some exertion. A few, like Hyacinth, were unknown. These were the poorer students who had not been able to afford to reside at the University sooner than was absolutely necessary. Their knowledge, generally scanty, was received by the examiners with undisguised contempt. It fell to Hyacinth's lot to present himself to Dr. Henry. He did so tremulously.

The professor inquired his name, and looked him over coldly.

'Read for me,' he said, handing him a Greek Testament. The passage marked was St. Paul's great description of charity. It was very familiar to Hyacinth, and he read it with a serious feeling for the words. Dr. Henry, who at first had occupied himself with some figures on a sheet of paper, looked up and listened attentively.

'Where were you at school,' he asked. 'Who taught you Greek?'

'My father taught me, sir.'

'Ah! You have got a very peculiar pronunciation, and you've made an extraordinary number of mistakes in accentuation and quantity, but you've read as if St. Paul meant something. Now translate.'

'You have given me,' he said, when Hyacinth had finished, 'the Authorized Version word for word. Can you do no better than that?'

'I can do it differently,' said Hyacinth, 'not better.'

'Do you know any Greek outside of the New Testament?'

Hyacinth repeated a few lines from Homer.

'That book of the "Odyssey" is not in the college course,' said Dr. Henry. 'How did you come to read it?'

Hyacinth had no explanation to give. He had read the book, it seemed, without being forced, and without hope of getting a prize. He recited it as if he liked it. The remainder of the examination disclosed the fact that he was lamentably deficient in the rudiments of Greek grammar, and had the very vaguest ideas of the history of the Church.

Afterwards Professor Henry discussed the new class with his assistants as they crossed the square together.

'The usual lot,' said Dr. Spenser—'half a dozen scholars, perhaps one man among them with real brains. The rest are either idlers or, what is worse, duffers.'

'I hit on one man with brains,' said Dr. Henry.

'Oh! Thompson, I suppose. I saw that you took him. He did well in his degree exam.'

'No,' said Dr. Henry; 'the man I mean has more brains than Thompson. He's a man I never heard of before. His name is Conneally. He looks as if he came up from the wilds somewhere. He has hands like an agricultural labourer, and a brogue that I fancy comes from Galway. But he's a man to keep an eye on. He may do something by-and-by if he doesn't go off the lines. We must try and lick him into shape a bit.'

Hyacinth Conneally knew extremely little about the politics, foreign or domestic, of the English nation. His father neither read newspapers nor cared to discuss such rumours of the doings of Governments as happened to reach Carrowkeel. On the other hand, he knew a good deal about the history of Ireland, and the English were still for him the 'new foreigners' whom Keating describes. His intercourse with the fishermen and peasants of the Galway seaboard had intensified his vague dislike of the series of oscillations between bullying and bribery which make up the story of England's latest attempts to govern Ireland. Without in the least understanding the reasons for the war in South Africa, he felt a strong sympathy with the Boers. To him they seemed a small people doomed, if they failed to defend themselves, to something like the treatment which Ireland had received.

It was therefore with surprise, almost with horror, that he listened for the first time to the superlative Imperialism of the Protestant Unionist party when he attended the prayer-meeting to which he had been invited. The room was well filled with students, who joined heartily in the singing of 'Onward, Christian soldiers,' a hymn selected as appropriate for the occasion. An address by the chairman, a Dublin clergyman, followed. According to this gentleman the Boers were a psalm-singing but hypocritical nation addicted to slave-driving. England, on the other hand, was the pioneer of civilization, and the nursing-mother of missionary enterprise. It was therefore clear that all good Christians ought to pray for the success of the British arms. The speech bewildered rather than irritated Hyacinth. The mind gasps for a time when immersed suddenly in an entirely new view of things, and requires time to adjust itself for pleasure or revolt, just as the body does when plunged into cold water. It had never previously occurred to him that an Irishman could regard England as anything but a pirate. Anger rapidly succeeded his surprise while he listened to the prayers which followed. It was apparently open to any student present to give utterance, as occasion offered, to his desires, and a large number of young men availed themselves of the opportunity. Some spoke briefly and haltingly, some laboriously attempted to adapt the phraseology of the Prayer-Book to the sentiment of the moment, a few had the gift of rapid and even eloquent supplication. These last were the hardest to endure. They prefaced their requests with