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ROBERT'S PLAN OF SALVATION.
For some time after the loss of his friend, Robert went loitering and mooning about, quite neglecting the lessons to which he had not, it must be confessed, paid much attention for many weeks.

Even when seated at his grannie's table, he could do no more than fix his eyes on his book: to learn was impossible; it was even disgusting to him.

But his was a nature which, foiled in one direction, must, absolutely helpless against its own vitality, straightway send out its searching roots in another.
Of all forces, that of growth is the one irresistible, for it is the creating power of God, the law of life and of being.

Therefore no accumulation of refusals, and checks, and turnings, and forbiddings, from all the good old grannies in the world, could have prevented Robert from striking root downward, and bearing fruit upward, though, as in all higher natures, the fruit was a long way off yet.