Born in Exile

Part I
CHAPTER I
The summer day in 1874 which closed the annual session of Whitelaw
College was marked by a special ceremony, preceding the wonted
distribution of academic rewards. At eleven in the morning (just as
a heavy shower fell from the smoke-canopy above the roaring streets)
the municipal authorities, educational dignitaries, and prominent
burgesses of Kingsmill assembled on an open space before the College
to unveil a statue of Sir Job Whitelaw. The honored baronet had
been six months dead. Living, he opposed the desire of his
fellow-citizens to exhibit even on canvas his gnarled features and
bald crown; but when his modesty ceased to have a voice in the
matter, no time was lost in raising a memorial of the great
manufacturer, the self-made millionaire, the borough member in three
Parliaments, the enlightened and benevolent founder of an institute
which had conferred humane distinction on the money-making Midland
town. Beneath such a sky, orations were necessarily curtailed; but
Sir Job had always been impatient of much talk. An interval of two
or three hours dispersed the rain-clouds and bestowed such grace of
sunshine as Kingsmill might at this season temperately desire; then,
whilst the marble figure was getting dried,--with soot-stains
which already foretold its negritude of a year hence,--again
streamed towards the College a varied multitude, official, parental,
pupillary. The students had nothing distinctive in their garb, but
here and there flitted the cap and gown of Professor or lecturer,
signal for doffing of beavers along the line of its progress.
Among the more deliberate of the throng was a slender, upright,