CHAPTER XXIII.
AT COLLEGE.
The summer and autumn had yet to pass before he left home for the university of the north.

He spent them in steady work with Mr.
Simon.

But the steadier his work, and the greater his enjoyment of it, the dearer was his liberty, and the keener his delight in the world around him.

He worked so well that he could afford to dream too; and his excursions and his imaginings alike took wide and wider sweeps; while for both, ever in the near or far distance, lay the harbour, the nest of his home.

It drew him even when it lay behind him, and he returned to it as the goal he had set out to seek.