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It was the dark part of the evening before tea-time, and the boys, sitting idly round the fire, were in an apt mood for folly and mischief. They began a vehement discussion about Paton's demerits, and called him every hard name they could invent.
Another day's journey through the same rugged and sterile scenery, in a direction due south, during which they passed the Demir-kapu, on Iron Gate, on the bank of the Ybar, where there is only room for a single led horse in a passage cut through the rock, brought them to the quarantine station on the river Raska, two hours' distance from Novibazar in Bosnia, which it was Mr Paton's intention to visit, attended by a Servian quarantine officer.
There was a general murmur through the form, out of which Mr Percival caught something about Mr Paton's papers having been burnt. Anxious to fend him, to ask what had happened, Mr Percival, leaving the room, caught sight of him pacing with hasty and uneven steps along a private garden walk which belonged to the masters. "I hope nothing unpleasant has occurred," he said, overtaking him.
"You mean that you haven't learnt the lesson." "Yes, sir." "A bad beginning, Evson; bring me no excuses in future. You must write the lesson out." And an ominous entry implying this fact was written by Walter's freshly-entered name. Most men would have excused the first punishment, and contented themselves with a word of admonition; but this wasn't Mr Paton's way. He held with Escalus that
There was something really admirable in the way he worked, and taxed himself even beyond his strength, to prove his regret for Mr Paton's loss, by doing all that was required of him. Naturally quick and lively as he was, he sat as quiet and attentive in school, as if he had been gifted with a disposition as unmercurial as that of Daubeny himself.
Nothing now was left but that crushed and haggard figure, stiffening on the bed; nothing, at least, that mortal senses could take cognizance of. It was a strange thought. Paton's funeral took place a few days afterward. I returned from the graveyard weary in body and mind. At the door of the house stood the portier, who nodded to me, and said,
to get over his lessons easily and successfully, and receive Mr Paton's quiet word of praise; to shake with laughing over the flood of nonsense with which Henderson always deluged everyone who sat near him at breakfast-time; to help little Eden in his morning's work, and to see with what intense affection and almost adoration the child looked up to him; to stroll with Kenrick under the pine woods, or have a pleasant chat in Power's pretty little study, or read a book in the luxurious retirement of Mr Percival's room, or, if it were a half-holiday, to join in the skating, hare and hounds, football, or whatever game might be on hand all these things were to Walter Evson one long unbroken pleasure.
Poor Miss Paton's noble husband was the only Englishman, that I know of, who committed that act of self-effacement. To go much further back in dramatic and social history, the old, accomplished, mad Earl of Peterborough married the famous singer Anastasia Robinson, and refused to acknowledge the fact till her death. To be sure, this was a more cowardly, but a less dirty meanness.
Paton's mission here has been a great success; and it has been followed up with such energy and promptitude in Nova Scotia, both in regard to the Ship and the Missionaries, that Mr. Paton's pledge to the Australian Churches has been fully redeemed.
And he never prayed for himself without praying also that Mr Paton's misfortune might in some way be alleviated; and even, impossible as the prayer might seem, that he, Walter, might himself have some share in rendering it more endurable. It may seem strange that Walter should be apparently excessive in his own self-condemnation.
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