I sat down and obeyed. When I had sealed my letter, I looked up, and
saw that Roland was lighting his bed-candle at my father's table; and my
father, taking his hand, said something to him in a low voice. I
guessed it related to his son, for he shook his head, and answered in a
stern, hollow voice, "Renew grief if you please; not shame. On that
subject--silence!"




CHAPTER IV.


Left to myself in the earlier part of the day, I wandered, wistful and
lonely, through the vast wilderness of London. By degrees I
familiarized myself with that populous solitude; I ceased to pine for
the green fields. That active energy all around, at first saddening,
became soon exhilarating, and at last contagious. To an industrious
mind, nothing is so catching as industry. I began to grow weary of my
golden holiday of unlaborious childhood, to sigh for toil, to look
around me for a career. The University, which I had before anticipated
with pleasure, seemed now to fade into a dull monastic prospect; after
having trod the streets of London, to wander through cloisters was to go
back in life. Day by day, my mind grew sensibly within me; it came out
from the rosy twilight of boyhood,--it felt the doom of Cain under the
broad sun of man.

Uncle Jack soon became absorbed in his new speculation for the good of
the human race, and, except at meals (whereat, to do him justice, he was
punctual enough, though he did not keep us in ignorance of the