Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/24

 man in some ways, but the clock of his intellect was always set a little too fast. If he had not decided early in life to be a bishop, I think he would have been a writer of books. Even as it was, he wanted sometimes to write them. However, I managed to dissuade him. 'No, Henry,' I said, 'stick to your trade. You cannot combine the two. To write books you would have to look at things so closely that it would unfit you for your calling.' All the same, your father was a man of remarkable natural force. He would have succeeded in anything he had undertaken."

Northcote never recalled his mother—and it was seldom that a day passed in his life unless he did recall her in one shape or another—that this speech, and a hundred that were similar, did not fill his ears, his memory, and his imagination. As he sat now with his hands and feet growing colder, the pool on the floor growing larger, his vitality becoming less and with despair advancing upon him silently like the army of shadows that pressed every minute more strongly upon the feeble lamp, he saw that dauntless countenance, the firm lips, the gray eyes which darkened a little in the evenings as though accompanied by thought; the precise but inharmonious voice came into his ears; the vigorous intelligence was spread before him, calm but un-*beautiful, full of massive courage, but deficient in the finer shades of life.

At those seasons when the young advocate sat in his isolation and despair, that arch-enemy of high natures crept into his veins like a drug; he would seek the antidote in that courageous life. This penniless widow of a clergyman in a small village in