Page:Literary Landmarks of Oxford.djvu/125

95 made the shock intensely painful. . . . 'Thank you,' he said at last, dropping the paper, ' I shall go for a walk.' And away he strode, up the moor, at the back of the house, to be alone, and to master his grief, if possible."

He went to Rugby at once, did that overgrown Rugby school-boy. He was too late for the funeral and he knew that; but he wanted to stand over "all that was left of him he loved and honored, lying still and cold under the Chapel floor."

"If he could only have seen the Doctor again for one five minutes," he thought; "have told him all that was within his heart, what he owed to him, how he loved and reverenced him; and that he would, by God's help, follow his steps, in life and death, he could have borne it all without a murmur." And then he though: "But I am not sure that he does not know it all. May he not now be near me, in this very Chapel? If he be, am I sorrowing as he would have me sorrow—as I shall wish to have sorrowed when I shall meet him again?"

There are some of us who believe that the Good Teacher was near. And that he did hear, and that the Teacher and the Pupil did understand and explain it all—when they met again—many years later, as we count time.

It was not the imaginary "Tom Brown" who