The spark of hope was kindled, and again he
wished to live. Almost from that moment his thoughts began to turn
less to the horrors of the past, and more to the best way of meeting
the future.
His worst pain was on behalf of his father and mother, and how he
should again face them. It still seemed to him that the best thing
both for him and them would be that he should sever himself from
them completely, take whatever money he could recover from Pryer,
and go to some place in the uttermost parts of the earth, where he
should never meet anyone who had known him at school or college, and
start afresh. Or perhaps he might go to the gold fields in
California or Australia, of which such wonderful accounts were then
heard; there he might even make his fortune, and return as an old
man many years hence, unknown to everyone, and if so, he would live at
Cambridge. As he built these castles in the air, the spark of life
became a flame, and he longed for health, and for the freedom which,
now that so much of his sentence had expired, was not after all very
far distant.
Then things began to shape themselves more definitely. Whatever
happened he would be a clergyman no longer.
Pages:
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476