the world together.

Boyhood and youth, as long as school life lasted, slipped by with never
a parting. The crux came when we were old enough to choose our
respective paths in life. It appeared that Val, although he had never
before breathed a word to me--whatever he may have done to Dad--had
thoroughly determined to be a priest if he could. I had never felt the
ghost of a vocation in that direction, so here came the parting of the
ways. Val went to college, and I was left inconsolable.

But I was not allowed to nurse my griefs; plans had been made in my
regard also, it appeared.

"Ted," said Dad quite abruptly one day, "you'll have to go to Bonn.
That'll be the best place for you, since Oxford is out of the question.
You've got to take my place some day, and you mustn't grow up an
absolute dunce. Atfield" (an old school-chum of his) "is well pleased
with the place for his boy, Bill, so you may get ready to travel back
with him next week, when the vacation finishes."

In those days (how long ago I almost blush to record) Catholics were
not allowed access to our own universities as they now are, and we
Flemings were Catholics to the core, and of old staunch Jacobites, as
befitted our Scottish race and name.

So Bill Atfield took me under his wing, and to Bonn I went the very
next week. There I remained until the end of my course, returning home
for vacations, as a rule, but ending up with a week or two, in company
with Dad, in Paris, whither Val had gone for his philosophy. But such
rare meetings became rarer still when Val went off to Rome, and I had