But it behoved him to answer Harry, and to answer him in other spirit than this.

'Oh, Harry,' said he, 'you have some plot to ruin me by my own conceit; to make me blow myself out and destroy myself, poor frog that I am, in trying to loom as largely as that great cow, Fidus Neverbend. You know I am fully conscious how much inferior my education has been to yours.'

'Education is nothing,' said Harry.

Education is nothing! Alaric triumphantly re-echoed the words in his heart—'Education is nothing—mind, mind is everything; mind and the will.' So he expressed himself to his own inner self; but out loud he spoke much more courteously.

'It is the innate modesty of your own heart, Harry, that makes you think so highly of me and so meanly of yourself. But the proof of what we each can do is yet to be seen. Years alone can decide that. That your career will be honourable and happy, of that I feel fully sure! I wish I were as confident of mine.'

'But, Alaric,' said Norman, going on rather with the thread of his own thoughts, than answering or intending to answer what the other said, 'in following up your high ambition—and I know you have a high ambition—do not allow yourself to believe that the end justifies the means, because you see that men around you act as though they believed so.'

'Do I do so—do I seem to do so?' said Alaric, turning sharply round.

'Don't be angry with me, Alaric; don't think that I want to preach; but sometimes I fancy, not that you do so, but that your mind is turning that way; that in your eager desire for honourable success you won't scrutinize the steps you will have to take.'

'That I would get to the top of the hill, in short, even though the hillside be miry. Well, I own I wish to get to the top of the hill.'

'But not to defile yourself in doing so.'

'When a man comes home from a successful chase, with his bag well stuffed with game, the women do not quarrel with him because there is mud on his gaiters.'

'Alaric, that which is evil is evil. Lies are evil—— '

'And am I a liar?'

'Heaven forbid that I should say so: heaven forbid that I should have to think so! but it is by such doctrines as that that men become liars.'

'What! by having muddy gaiters?'

'By disregarding the means in looking to the end.'

'And I will tell you how men become mere vegetables, by filling their minds with useless—needless scruples—by straining at gnats—— '

'Well, finish your quotation,' said Harry.

'I have finished it; in speaking to you I would not for the world go on, and seem to insinuate that you would swallow a camel. No insinuation could be more base or unjust. But, nevertheless, I think you may be too over-scrupulous. What great man ever rose to greatness,' continued Alaric, after they had walked nearly the length of the building in silence, 'who thought it necessary to pick his steps in the manner you have described?'