the triumph had no savour for him, and for many a year he was
subject to a flush of mortification whenever this incident came back
to his mind.

Mr. Rawmarsh was not the only intelligent man who took an interest in
Godwin. In a house which the boy sometimes visited with a
school-fellow, lodged a notable couple named Gunnery the husband
about seventy, the wife five years older; they lived on a pension
from a railway company. Mr. Gunnery was a dabbler in many sciences,
but had a special enthusiasm for geology. Two cabinets of stones and
fossils gave evidence of his zealous travels about the British
isles; he had even written a little hand-book of petrology which was
for sale at certain booksellers' in Twybridge, and probably nowhere
else. To him, about this time, Godwin began to resort, always sure
of a welcome; and in the little uncarpeted room where Mr. Gunnery
pursued his investigations many a fateful lesson was given and
received. The teacher understood the intelligence he had to deal
with, and was delighted to convey, by the mode of suggested
inference, sundry results of knowledge which it perhaps would not
have been prudent to declare in plain, popular words.

Their intercourse was not invariably placid. The geologist had an
irritable temper, and in certain states of the atmosphere his
rheumatic twinges made it advisable to shun argument with him.
Godwin, moreover, was distinguished by an instability of mood
peculiarly trying to an old man's testy humour. Of a sudden, to Mr
Gunnery's surprise and annoyance, he would lose all interest in this
or that science. Thus, one day the lad declared himself unable to
name two stones set before him, felspar and quartz, and when his
instructor broke into angry impatience he turned sullenly away,