Page:Tom Brown's School Days.djvu/376

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358
Finis.

walked to the chapel-door and unlocked it, fancying himself the only mourner in all the broad land, and feeding on his own selfish sorrow.

He passed through the vestibule, and then paused for a moment to glance over the empty benches. His heart was still proud and high, and he walked up to the seat which he had last occupied as a sixthform boy, and sat himself down there to collect his thoughts.

And, truth to tell, they needed collecting and setting in order not a little. The memories of eight years were all dancing through his brain, and carrying him about whither they would; while, beneath them all, his heart was throbbing with the dull sense of a loss that could never be made up to him. The rays of the evening sun came solemnly.through the painted windows above his head, and fell in gorgeous colours on the opposite wall, and the perfect stillness soothed his spirit by little and little. And he turned to the pulpit, and looked at it, and then, leaning forward with his head on his hands, groaned aloud. " If he could only have seen the Doctor again for one five minutes,—have told him all that was in his heart, what he owed to him, how he loved and reverenced him, and would by God's help follow his steps in life and death,—he could have borne it all without a murmur. But that he should have gone away for ever without knowing it all, was too much to bear."———"But am I sure that he does not know it all?"—the thought made him start—"May he not even now be near me, in this very chapel? If he be, am I sorrowing as he would have me sorrow—as I should wish to have sorrowed when I shall meet him again ."

He raised himself up and looked round; and