enough to consult anyone about, and as I had no wish for sidelights, we
did not talk about his school life at all. The set of boys in which he
lived was a curious one; they were fairly clever, but they must have
been, I gathered afterwards, quite extraordinarily critical and
quarrelsome. There was one boy in particular, a caustic, spiteful, and
extremely mischief-making creature, who turned the set into a series of
cliques and parties. Hugh used to say afterwards that he had never known
anyone in his life with such an eye for other people's weaknesses, or
with such a talent for putting them in the most disagreeable light. Hugh
once nearly got into serious trouble; a small boy in the set was
remorselessly and disgracefully bullied; it came out, and Hugh was
involved--I remember that Dr. Warre spoke to me about it with much
concern--but a searching investigation revealed that Hugh had really had
nothing to do with it, and the victim of the bullying spoke insistently
in Hugh's favour.

Hugh describes how the facts became known in the holidays, and how my
father in his extreme indignation at what he supposed to be proved, so
paralysed Hugh that he had no opportunity of clearing himself. But
anyone who had ever known Hugh would have felt that it was the last
thing he would have done. He was tenacious enough of his own rights, and
argumentative enough; but he never had the faintest touch of the
savagery that amuses itself at the sight of another's sufferings. "I
hate cruelty more than anything in the whole world," he wrote later;
"the existence of it is the only thing which reconciles my conscience to
the necessity of Hell."

Hugh speaks in his book, _The Confession of a Convert_, about the
extremely negative character of his religious impressions at school. I
think it is wholly accurate. Living as we did in an ecclesiastical