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20 class books down South Street to the Blackfriars, or across Gregory Green. He continued to be a student of the University till 1821. His mathematical teacher at the University, Robert Haldane, afterwards Principal of St. Mary's College, when the lad was about to leave St. Andrews, vouches under his own hand, on May 9, 1821, with much profusion of capitals, that 'during my Experience as a Professor I have but rarely witnessed so much strength as well as quickness of Talent, and so much Proficiency exhibited by a Person so young.'

In 1821 he left the University, and went south to reside with a tutor in Hampstead, who was to prepare him for Haileybury. Mrs. Binny had died in 1813; in 1818 Mr. Binny had left St. Andrews, and his nephews had been transferred to the charge of a medical man, an acquaintance of their uncle's. The Doctor's house, known as Ketchpeel House (Ketchpeel being, the initiated have it, a kind of tennis), still stands in North Street, little altered but for a new frontage and a change of tenants. The Doctor has long since moved to a better home. The residence at Hampstead was an experience similar to that which many Anglo-Indian children undergo, and from which not a few, John Colvin among them, turn in later life with repulsion. To exchange home for a pupil room, the love of relatives for the salaried affection of strangers, familiar surroundings and a congenial atmosphere for the unknown, often for the dingy, sometimes for the disreputable, is the lot of too many Anglo-Indian children. To the St. Andrews of