When one has in charge a treasure which one values greatly,
and which, if once made known one is pretty sure to lose, I
suppose the impulse of most men would be towards a hiding-
place. So, at any rate, felt one of the men in this history.
Schools had done their secluding work for a time; tutors and
governors had come and gone under an almost Carthusian vow of
silence, except as to their lessons; and now with seventeen
years of inexperience on his hands, Mr. Falkirk's sensations
were those of the man out West, who wanted to move off
whenever another man came within twenty miles of him.

Thus, in the forlorn hope of a retreat which yet he knew must
prove useless, Mr. Falkirk let the first March winds blow him
out of town; and at this present time was snugly hid away in a
remote village which nobody ever heard of, and where nobody
ever came.

So far so good: Mr. Falkirk rested and took breath.
Nevertheless the spring came, even there; and following close
in her train, the irrepressible conflict. Whoever succeeded in
running away from his duties--or his difficulties? There was a
flutter of young life within doors as without, and Mr. Falkirk
knew it: there were a hundred rills of music, a thousand
nameless flowers to which he could not close his senses. There
was a soft, indefinable stir and sweetness, that told of the
breaking of Winter bonds and the coming of Summer glories; and
he could not stay the progress of things in the one case more
than in the other.