My Master. 73
learning Latin, while you will never get beyond
your reading and spelling! Or if you knew that I
am reading a real big history of England, and
learning all about the ancient Britons, and what
Wales was like in olden times!” And these thoughts
comforted me, so that I did not care for the boys’
mockery, but felt quite kindly towards them again.

Mr. Hurst was not only a scholar, he was a good
and holy man ; and the good effect of his influence
on me is hardly to be told. I loved and honoured
him as a father; and gradually he opened his heart
to me, and received me into his confidence. He
told me about his own childhood in his far-off
Yorkshire home ; of his mother and sister ; of school,
and its labours and prizes. His father he never
mentioned ; there must, I thought, have been some
disgrace attached to his name, for while Mr. Hurst
was still a boy, he had suddenly to leave school and
take to teaching—-Miss Churchill and her sisters
being his first and favourite pupils. His mother
had died, he once said, of sorrow; his sister had
died too, and he could no longer bear to remain in
the old neighbourhood. Miss Churchill had heard,
through Mrs. Prickard, of a home for him in
Rhydcewm, where he would be well cared for; and
here he remained, giving lessons, indeed, to any
pupils that chose to come to him, but possessed of