still at Balliol, and had to bring up his two younger brothers. He had
done it. They were both in Canada now and prospering. But the signs of
the struggle were on this shabby house, and on this shabby, frugal,
powerfully built man. Yet now he might have been more at ease; the
living, though small, was by no means among the worst in the diocese.
Ah, well! Anne, the housekeeper and only servant, knew how the money
went--and didn't go, and she had passed on some of her grievances to
Barron. They two knew--though Barron would never have dared to show his
knowledge--what a wrestle it meant to get the Rector to spend what was
decently necessary on his own food and clothes; and Anne spent hours of
the night in indignantly guessing at what he spent on the clothes and
food of other people--mostly, in her opinion, "varmints."

These things flitted vaguely through the young man's sore mind. Then in a
flash they were absorbed in a perception of a wholly different kind. The
room seemed to him transfigured; a kind of temple. He thought of the
intellectual life which had been lived there; the passion for truth which
had burnt in it; the sermons and books that had been written on those
crowded tables; the personality and influence that had been gradually
built up within it, so that to him, as to many others, the dingy study
was a place of pilgrimage, breathing inspiration; and his heart went out,
first in discipleship, and then in a pain that was not for himself. For
over his friend's head he saw the gathering of clouds not now to be
scattered or dispersed; and who could foretell the course of the storm?

The young man gently closed the door and went his
way. He need not have left the house so quietly. The
Rector got no sleep that evening.