 success, whereas if
they had anything whatever to do with him, or even knew of his address, they
would hamper him and in the end ruin him. Absolute independence he believed to
be his only chance of very life itself.
    Over and above this - if this were not enough - Ernest had a faith in his
own destiny such as most young men, I suppose, feel, but the grounds of which
were not apparent to any one but himself. Rightly or wrongly, in a quiet way, he
believed he possessed a strength which if he were only free to use it in his own
way might do great things some day. He did not know when, nor where, nor how,
his opportunity was to come, but he never doubted that it would come in spite of
all that had happened, and above all else he cherished the hope that he might
know how to seize it if it came, for whatever it was it would be something that
no one else could do so well as he could. People said there were no dragons and
giants for adventurous men to fight with nowadays; it was beginning to dawn upon
him that there were just as many now as at any past time.
    Monstrous as such a faith may seem in one who was qualifying himself for a
high mission by a term of imprisonment, he could no more help it than he could
help breathing: it was innate in him, and it was even more with a view to this
than for other reasons that he wished to sever the connection between himself
and his parents; for he knew that if ever the day came in which it should appear
that before him too there was a race set in which it might be an honour to have
run among the foremost, his father and mother would be the first to let him and
hinder him in running it. They had been the first to say that he ought to run
such a race; they would also be the first to trip him up if he took them at
their word, and then afterwards upbraid him for not having won. Achievement of
any kind would be impossible for him unless he was free from those who would be
forever dragging him back into the conventional. The conventional had been tried
already and had been found wanting.
    He had an opportunity now, if he chose to take it, of escaping once for all
from those who at once tormented him and would hold him earthward should a
chance of soaring open before him; he should never have had it but for his
imprisonment; but for this, the force of habit and routine would
