It will break my father's heart, and you will not be there to comfort him." Norman covered his face with his hands, and a fit of bitter grief came over him.

But his sorrow was now not what it had been before his father's resignation had tempered it, and soon it turned to prayer, resolution, and hope.
He would try again to reason quietly with him, when the alarm of detection and irritation should have gone off, and he sought for the occasion; but, alas! Tom had learned to look on all reproof as "rowing," and considered it as an additional injury from a brother, who, according to the Anderson view, should have connived at his offences, and turned a deafened ear and dogged countenance to all he said.

The foolish boy sought after the Andersons still more, and Norman became more dispirited about him, greatly missing Harry, that constant companion and follower, who would have shared his perplexities, and removed half of them, in his own part of the school, by the influence of his high, courageous, and truthful spirit.
In the meantime Richard was studying hard at home, with greater hopefulness and vigour than he had ever thrown into his work before.
"Suppose," Ethel had once said to him, "that when you are a clergyman, you could be Curate of Cocksmoor, when there is a church there." "When ?" said Richard, smiling at the presumption of the scheme, and yet it formed itself into a sort of definite hope.

Perhaps they might persuade Mr.Ramsden to take him as a curate with a view to Cocksmoor, and this prospect, vague as it was, gave an object and hope to his studies.

Every one thought the delay of his examination favourable to him, and he now read with a determination to succeed.