this influence on the feelings, there was in Hill a distinct aversion to falsity that the blasphemous Landport cobbler had inculcated by strap and tongue from his earliest years.  Of one fact about professed atheists I am convinced; they may be—­they usually are—­fools, void of subtlety, revilers of holy institutions, brutal speakers, and mischievous knaves, but they lie with difficulty.  If it were not so, if they had the faintest grasp of the idea of compromise, they would simply be liberal churchmen.  And, moreover, this memory poisoned his regard for Miss Haysman.  For she now so evidently preferred him to Wedderburn that he felt sure he cared for her, and began reciprocating her attentions by timid marks of personal regard; at one time he even bought a bunch of violets, carried it about in his pocket, and produced it, with a stumbling explanation, withered and dead, in the gallery of old iron.  It poisoned, too, the denunciation of capitalist dishonesty that had been one of his life’s pleasures.  And, lastly, it poisoned his triumph in Wedderburn.  Previously he had been Wedderburn’s superior in his own eyes, and had raged simply at a want of recognition.  Now he began to fret at the darker suspicion of positive inferiority.  He fancied he found justifications for his position in Browning, but they vanished on analysis.  At last—­moved, curiously enough, by exactly the same motive forces that had resulted in his dishonesty—­he went to Professor Bindon, and made a clean breast of the whole affair.  As Hill was a paid student, Professor Bindon did not ask him to sit down, and he stood before the professor’s desk as he made his confession.

“It’s a curious story,” said Professor Bindon, slowly realising how the thing reflected on himself, and then letting his anger rise,—­“a most remarkable story.  I can’t understand your doing it, and I can’t understand this avowal.  You’re a type of student—­Cambridge men would never dream—­I suppose I ought to have thought—­why did you cheat?”

“I didn’t cheat,” said Hill.

“But you have just been telling me you did.”

“I thought I explained—­”

“Either you cheated or you did not cheat.”

“I said my motion was involuntary.”

“I am not a metaphysician, I am a servant of science—­of fact.  You were told not to move the slip.  You did move the slip.  If that is not cheating—­”

“If I was a cheat,” said Hill, with the note of hysterics in his voice, “should I come here and tell you?”

“Your repentance, of course, does you credit,” said Professor Bindon, “but it does not alter the original facts.”

“No, sir,” said Hill, giving in in utter self-abasement.

“Even now you cause an enormous amount of trouble.  The examination list will have to be revised.”

“I suppose so, sir.”

“Suppose so?  Of course it must be revised.  And I don’t see how I can conscientiously pass you.”