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looking at the
examination papers which a day or two hence would be set before him
at school; he saw and recognised a passage from the book of Virgil
which his class had been reading.
    'That is sub rosa , you know,' whispered the old printer,
with half averted face.
    Godwin shrank away, and could not resume the conversation thus
interrupted. On the following day he went about with a feeling of
guilt. He avoided the sight of Mr. Rawmarsh, for whom he had
suddenly lost all respect, and suffered torments in the thought
that he enjoyed an unfair advantage over his class-mates. The Latin
passage happened to be one which he knew thoroughly well; there was
no need, even had he desired, to 'look it up'; but in sitting down
to the examination, he experienced a sense of shame and
self-rebuke. So strong were the effects of this, that he
voluntarily omitted the answer to a certain important question
which he could have 'done' better than any of the other boys, thus
endeavouring to adjust in his conscience the terms of competition,
though in fact no such sacrifice was called for. He came out at the
head of the class, but the triumph had no savour for him, and for
many a year he was subject to a flush of mortification whenever
this incident came back to his mind.
    Mr. Rawmarsh was not the only intelligent man who took an
interest in Godwin. In a house which the boy sometimes visited with
a school-fellow, lodged a notable couple named Gunnery the husband
about seventy, the wife five years older; they lived on a pension
from a railway company. Mr. Gunnery was a dabbler in many sciences,
but had a special enthusiasm for geology. Two cabinets of stones
and fossils gave evidence of his zealous travels about the British
isles; he had even written a little hand-book of petrology which
was for sale at certain booksellers' in Twybridge, and probably
nowhere else. To him, about this time, Godwin began to resort,
always sure of a welcome; and in the little uncarpeted room where
Mr. Gunnery pursued his investigations many a fateful lesson was
given and received. The teacher understood the intelligence he had
to deal with, and was delighted to convey, by the mode of suggested
inference, sundry results of knowledge which it perhaps would not
have been prudent to declare in plain, popular words.
    Their intercourse was not invariably placid. The geologist had
an irritable temper, and in certain states of the atmosphere his
rheumatic twinges made it advisable to shun argument with him.
Godwin, moreover, was distinguished by an instability of mood
peculiarly trying to an old man's testy humour. Of a sudden, to Mr
Gunnery's surprise and annoyance, he would lose all interest in
this or that science. Thus, one day the lad declared himself unable
to name two stones set before him, felspar and quartz, and when his
instructor broke into angry impatience he turned sullenly away,
exclaiming that he was tired of geology.
    'Tired of geology?' cried Mr. Gunnery, with flaming eyes. 'Then I am tired of you , Master Peak! Be off, and don't
come again till I send for you!'
    Godwin retired without a word. On the second day he was summoned
back again, but his resentment of the dismissal rankled in him for
a long time; injury to his pride was the wrong he found it hardest
to forgive.
    His schoolmaster, aware of the unusual pursuits which he added
to the routine of lessons, gave him as a prize the English
translation of a book by Figuier— The World before the
Deluge . Strongly interested by the illustrations of the volume
(fanciful scenes from the successive geologic periods), Godwin at
once carried it to his scientific friend. 'Deluge?' growled Mr.
Gunnery. ' What deluge? Which deluge?' But he
restrained himself, handed the book coldly back, and began to talk
of something else. All this was highly significant to Godwin, who
of course began the perusal of his prize in a suspicious mood. Nor
was he long before he sympathised with Mr Gunnery's distaste.
Though too young to