mers
penbosre ee
Spyies

 

 
CLIN
pie
707
H&

7G
6a

 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

All books are call after two weeks
Sie ie ate Libra ary

DATE DUE

 
ee [S70
a

TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,
 
‘v9h "G—,yonue Kava fjasuty -sholua yn
Guvscvm. ysvap 34 04 YIVE SIY YfIm worl 4 pang dnfasvo uaag soy oym ‘aatnbS IY ,, “494Vq Sty fo tnomoY Ut ,,IULY ,, SMOL

 

 

 
TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

BY THE AUTHOR OF

“TOM BROWN’S SCHOOL DAYS.” ' ae hy
Ja paueecaes dpnpete 3 yes

 

_ S NO ie ae 6s
rN Rw
INES TreTIMINAS

NEW EDITION.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY SYDNEY P. WALL.

London:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1870.

v

ao

gl
GRAFT,

o
O,

3
Awe

re

SAWER
Ya:

7
2311509357"
TO
THE REV. F. D. MAURICE,
IN MEMORY OF FOURTEEN YEARS’ FELLOW WORK,
AND IN TESTIMONY OF
t
EVER INCREASING AFFECTION AND GRATITUDE
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED

BY

THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.

Preraces written to explain the objects or meaning of a
book, or to make any appeal, ad misericordiam or other, in its
favour, are, in my opinion, nuisances. Any book worth
reading will explain its own objects and meaning, and the
more it is criticised and turned inside out, the better for it
and its author. Of all books, too, it scoms to me that novels
require profaces least—at any rate, on their first appearance.
Notwithstanding which belief, I must ask readers for three
minutes’ patience before they make trial of this book.

The natural pleasure which I felt at the unlooked-for
popularity of the first part of the present story, was much
lessened by the pertinacity with which many perseng, Xcquaint-
ance as well as strangers, would insist "(both in public and
private) on identifying the hero and the author. On the
appearance of the first few numbers of the present continua-
tion in Macmillan’s Magazine, the same thing occurred, and
in fact, reached such a pitch, as to lead me to make some
changes in the story. Sonsitivencss on such a point may

_m folly, but if readors had folt the sort of loathing and
Vill PREFACE.

disgust which one feels at the notion of painting a favourable
likeness of oneself in a work of fiction, they would not wonder
at it. So, now that this book is finished, and Tom Brown, so
far as I am concerned, is done with for ever, I must take this
my first and last chance of saying, that he is not I, either as
boy or man—in fact, not to beat about the bush, is a much
braver, and nobler, and purer fellow than I ever was.

When I first resolved to write the book, I tried to realize
to myself what the commonest type of English boy of the
upper middle class was, so far as my experience went ; and to
that type I have throughout adhered, trying simply to give a
good specimen of the genus. I certainly have placed him in
the country and scones which I know best myself, for the
simple reason, that I knew them better than any others, and
therefore was less likely to blunder in writing about them,

As to the name, which has been, perhaps, the chief “cause
of offence” in this matter, the simple facts are, that I chose
the name “ Brown,” because it stood first in the trio of “ Brown,
Jones, and Robinson,” which has become a sort of synonym
for the middle classes of Great Britain. It happens that my
own name and that of Brown have no single letter in common.
As to the Christian name of “Tom,” having chosen Brown, I
could hardly help taking it as the prefix. The two names
have gone together in England for two hundred years, and
the joint name has not enjoyed much of a reputation for
respectability. This suited me exactly. I wanted the com-
monest name I could get, and did not want any name which
had the least heroic, or aristocratic, or even respectable savour
about it. Therefore I had a natural leaning to the combina-
tion which I found ready to my hand. ‘Moreover, I believed
PREFACE. ix

“Tom” to be a more specially English name than John, the
only other as to which I felt the least doubt. Whether it be
that Thomas & Beckett was for so long the favourite English
saint, or from whatever other cause, it certainly seems to be
the fact, that the name “Thomas” is much commoner in
England than in any other country. The words “ tom-fool,”
“tom-boy,” &c. though, perhaps, not complimentary to the
“Toms” of England, certainly show how large a family they
must have been. ‘These reasons decided me to keep the
Christian name which had been always associated with
“ Brown ;” and I own, that the fact that it happened to be
my own, never occurred to me as an objection, till the mischief
was done, past recall.

TL have only, then, to say, that neither is the hero a portrait
of myself, nor is there any other portrait in either of the
books, except in the case of Dr. Arnold, where the true name
is given. My deop feeling of gratitude to him, and revorenco
for his memory, emboldencd mo to risk the attempt at a por-
trait in his caso, so far as the charactor was necessary for the
work, With these remarks, I leave this volume in the
hands of readers.

T. HUGHES.

Lincotn’s Inn,
October, 1861.
CONTENTS.

CUATTER
INTRODUCTORY . . . . ©

I.—sT. AMBROSE’s COLLEGE . .
Il.—a Row ON THE RIVER. .
III.—A BREAKFAST AT DRYSDALE’S

IV,.—THE 8ST. AMBROSE BOAT-OLUB:

THEIR BUDGET. . . ...
V.—HARDY, THE SERVITOR . .

VI.—HOW DRYSDALE AND BLAKE WENT FISHING

VIIL—AN EXPLOSION . . . .
VIII.—warpy's HISTORY . .. .
IX.—‘‘A BROWN BAIT”. . . .
X.—SUMMER TERM . 1...

XI.—MUSOULAR CHRISTIANITY. .
X1I.—rTHE CAPTAIN’S NOTIONS . .
XJIL—tTHE First BUMP...

ITS MINISTRY

.

.

XIV.—A CHANGE IN THE OREW, AND WHAT OAME
XV.—A sTORM BREWS AND BREAKS .

XVI.—THE STORM RAGES... .
XVIL—nEw GRounD .....
XVIII.—ENGLEBOURN VILLAGE. .

XIX.—A PROMISE OF FAIRER WEATHER

XX.—THE RECONCILIATION...

.

.

XXJ.—OAPTAIN HARDY ENTERTAINED BY ST. AMBROSE

XXII.—DEPARTURES EXPECTED AND UNEXPECTED

XXIII.—rHE ENGLEBOURN CONSTABLE
XXIV.—THE scHooris. . ... .
XXV.—coMMEMORATION . .. .

.

XXVI. —THE LONG WALK IN OHRISTCHURCH MEADOWS.

XXVII.—LECTURING A LIONESY. . .

XXVIII.—rHE END OF THE FRESHMAN’S YEAR .

PAGE

10
21

32

41

50

65

71

85

92
107
124
188
150
161
172
182
191
206
218
222
231
243
255
267
278
293
304
xii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
XXIX.—THE LONG VACATION LETTER-BAG. . . . . . 814
XXX.—AMUSEMENTS AT BARTON MANOR . . . . . . 828
XXXI.—BEHIND THE SOFENES . . . ...... . S34

XAXI—MA-ORISIS. @ 2 ee we ee he me we e eo BAB
XXXIII.—srown PATRONUS . . ........ . 9855
XXXIV.—MHAEN ATAN . . .. . 2. 6 ee eee 898

XXXV.—SECOND YEAR Sw ee we ew ~ = @ BBE
XXXVI.—THE RIVER SIDE. . . . . «1 + 6 «© © «= © 3898
XXXVII.—THE NIGHT WATOH. . . . «. ww. ws. « 407

XXXVITI.—Many IN MAYFAIR. . . 1. 7. ee eee ANT
XXXIX.—wuat OAME OF TUE NIGHT WATOH . . . . . 426
XL.—HUE AND ORY .......... 4 « 487
XLI.—THE LIEUTENANT’S SENTIMENTS AND PROBLEMS . 447
XLIY.—rToirp yeEaAaR. 2... 1 we we ee ee 458
XLIII.—arreRNoon VISITORS . . . . .... =. - 470
XLIV.—1n& INTEROEPTED LETTER-BAG. . . - . 480
XGLV.—MASTER’'S TERM 2 6 1 1 ww we ww 495

XLVI,—rrom INDIA TO ENGLHBOURN . . . . ww. (508

XLVII.—rHe weppIne-pay. . ......... Oll
XLVIII.—run BEGINNING OF THE END . . Se a 620

XLIX.—rHE END . . 1 6 6 ee ew we we we «52D
L.—THE POSTSORIPT. . . . 1 1 6 eo te ew «(888
TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

INTRODUCTORY.

In the Michaelmas term after leaving school, Tom Brown
received a summons from the authorities, and went up to
matriculate at St. Ambrose’s College, Oxford. He presented
himself at the college one afternoon, and was examined by
one of the tutors, who carried him, and several other youths
in like predicament, up to the Senate House the next morn-
ing. Here they went through the usual forms of subscribing
to the Articles, and otherwise testifying their loyalty to the
established order of things, without much thought perhaps, .
put in very good faith nevertheless. Having completed the
ceremony, by paying his fees, our hero hurried back home,
without making any stay in Oxford. He had often passed
through it, so that the city had not the charm of novelty for
him, and he was anxious to get home; where, as he had
never spent an autumn away from school till now, for the
first time in his life he was having his fill of hunting and
shooting.

He had left school in June, and did not go up to reside at
Oxford till the end of the following January. Seven good
months ; during a part of which he had indeed read for four
hours or so a week with the curate of the parish, but the
residue had been exclusively devoted to cricket and field
sports. Now, admirable as these institutions are, and bene-
ficial as is their influence on the youth of Britain, it is possible
for a youngster to get too much of them. So it had fallen
out with our hero. He was a better horseman and shot, but
the total relaxation of all the healthy discipline of school,
.the regular hours and regular work to which he had been used
so many years, had certainly thrown him back in other

: B
a TOM BROWN AT OXBORD.

ways. The whole man had not grown; so that we must not
be surprised to find him quite as boyish, now that we fall
in with him again, marching down to St. Ambrose’s with a
porter wheeling his luggage after him on a truck, as when we
left him at the end of his school career.

. Tom was in truth beginning to feel that it was high time
for him to be getting to regular work again of some sort. A
landing place is a famous thing, but it is only enjoyable for
a time by any mortal who deserves one at all. So it was
with a feeling of unmixed pleasure that he turned in at the
St. Ambrose gates, and inquired of the porter what rooms had
been allotted to him within those venerable walls.

While the porter consulted his list, the great college sun-
dial, over the lodge, which had lately been renovated, caught
Tom’s eye. The motto underneath, “ Pereunt et imputantur,”
stood out, proud of its new gilding, in the bright afternoon
sun of a frosty January day: which motto was raising sundry
thoughts in his brain, when the porter came upon the right
place in his list, and directed him to the end of his journey :
No. 5 staircase, second quadrangle, three-pair back. In which
new home we shall leave him to instal himself, while we

endeavour to give the reader some notion of the college
itself.

CHAPTER I.
ST. AMBROSH’S COLLEGE.

Sr. Amprosn’s CoLLEGH was a moderate-sized one, There
might have been some seventy or eighty undergraduates in
residence, when our hero appeared there as a freshman. Of
these, unfortunately for the college, there were a very large
proportion of gentlemen-commoners ; enough, in fact, with
the other men whom they drew round them, and who lived
pretty much as they did, to form the largest and leading set
in the college. So the college was decidedly fast,

The chief characteristic of this set was the most reckless
extravagance of every kind. London wine merchants fur-
nished them with liqueurs at a guinea a bottle, and wine at
five guineas a dozen ; Oxford and London tailors vied with
one another in providing them with unheard-of quantities of
the most gorgeous clothing. They drove tandems in all direc-
tions, scattering their ample allowances, which they treated
as pocket money, about roadside inns and Oxford taverns
with open hand, and “going tick ” for everything which
ST. AMBROSES COLLEGE. 3

could by possibility be booked. Their cigars cost two guineas
a pound ; their furniture was the best that could be bought ;
pine-apples, forced fruit, and the most rare presorves figured
at their wino parties ; they hunted, rode steeple-chases by
day, played billiards until the gates closed, and then were
ready for vingt-et-une, unlimited loo, and hot drink in their
own rooms, as long as any ‘She could be got to sit up and
lay.

The fast set then swamped, and gave the tone to, the college;
at which fact no persons were more astonished and horrified
than the authorities of St. Ambrose.

That thoy of all bodies in the world should be fairly run
away with by a set of reckless, loose young spendthrifts, was
indeed a melancholy and unprecedented fact ; for the body
of fellows of St. Ambrose was as distinguished for learning,
morality, and respectability, as any in the University. The
foundation was not indeed actually an open one. Oriel at
that time alone enjoyed this distinction ; but there were a
large number of open fellowships, and the income of the
college was large, and the livings belonging to it numerous;
so that the best men, from other colleges were constantly
coming in. Some of these of a former generation had been
eminently successful in their management of the college.
The St. Ambrose undergraduates at one time had carried off
almost all the university prizes, and filled the class lists, while
maintaining at the same time the highest character for manli-
ness and gentlemanly conduct. This had lasted long enough
to establish the fame of the college, and great lords and
statesmen had sent their sons there; head-masters had
struggled to get the names of their best pupils on the books:
in short, every one who had a son, ward, or pupil, whom he
wanted to push forward in the world—who was meant to cut
a figure, and take the lead among men—left no stone unturned
to get him into St. Ambrose’s ; and thought the first, anda
very long, step gained when he had succeeded.

But tho governing bodics of colleges are always on the
change, and in the course of things men of other ideas came
to rule at St. Ambrose—shrewd men of the world; men of
business some of them, with good ideas of making the most
of their advantages ; who said, “Go to: why should we not
make the public pay for the great benefits we confer on them?
Have we not the very best article in the educational market
to supply—almost a monopoly of it—and shall we not get
the highest price for it?” So by degrees they altered many
things in the college. In the first place, under their auspices,
gentlemen-commoners seca and multiplied ; in fact, the

B
4 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

'

eldest sons of baronets, even of squires, were scarcely admitted
on any other footing, As these young gentlemen paid double
fees to the college, and had great expectations of all sorts, it
could not bo expected that they should be subject to quite
the same discipline as the common run of men, who would
have to make their own way in the world. So the rules as
to attendance at chapel and lectures, though nominally the
same for them as for commoners, were in practice relaxed in
their favour ; and, that they might find all things suitable to
persons in their position, the kitchen and buttery were worked
up to a high state of perfection, and St. Ambrose, from having
been one of the most reasonable, had come to be about the
most expensive college in the university. These changes
worked as their promoters probably desired that they should
work, and the college was full of rich men, and commanded
in the university the sort of respect which riches bring with
them. But the old reputation, though still strong out of
doors, was beginning sadly to wane within the university
precincts. fewer and fewer of the St. Ambrose men appeared
in the class lists, or amongst the prize-men, They no longer
led the debates at the Union ; the boat lost place after place
on the river ; the eleven got beaten in all their matches. ‘he
inaugurators of these changes had passed away in their turn,
and at last a reaction had commenced. The fellows recently
elected, and who were in residence at the time we write of,
were for the most part men of great attainments, all of them
men who had taken very high honours. The electors natu-
rally enough had chosen them as the most likely persons to
restore, as tutors, the golden days of the college; and they
had been careful in the selection to confine themselves to very
quiet and studious men, such as were likely to remain up at
Oxford, passing over men of more popular manners and active
spirits, who would be sure to flit soon into the world, and be
of. little more service to St. Ambrose.

But these were not the men to get any hold on the fast set
who were now in the ascendant. It was not in the nature of
things that they should understand each other ; in fact, they
were hopelessly at war, and the college was getting more and
more out of gear in consequence.

What they could do, however, they were doing ; and under
their fostering care were growing up a small set, including
moat of the scholars, who were likely, as far as they were con-
cerned, to retrieve the college character in the schools. But
they were too much like their tutors, men who did little else
but read. They neither wished for, nor were likely to gain,
the slightest influence on the fast set. The best mon amongst
ST, AMBROSE’S COLLEGE. 5

them, too, were diligent readers of the Tracts for the Times,
and followers of the able leaders of the High-church party,
which was then a growing one; and this led them also to
form such friendships as they made amongst out-college
men of their own way of thinking—with high churchmen,
rather than St. Ambrose men. So they lived very much
to themselves, and scarcely interfered with the dominant
party. 2%

Lastly, there was the boating set, which was beginning to
revive in the college, partly from the natural disgust of any
body of young Englishmon, ot finding themselvos distanced
in an exercise requiring strength and pluck, and partly from
the fact, that the captain for the time being was one of the
best oars in the University boat, and also a deservedly popular
character. He was now in his third year of residence, had
won the pair-oar race, and had pulled seven in the great
yearly match with Cambridge, and by constant hard work had
managed to carry the St. Ambrose boat up to the fifth place
on the river. He will be introduced to you, gentle reader,
when the proper time comes; at present, we are only con-
cerned with a bird’s-eye view of the college, that you may
feel more or less at home in it. The boating set was not
so separate or marked as the reading set, melting on one
side into, and keeping up more or less connexion with,
the fast set, and also commanding a sort of half alle-
giance from most of the men who belonged to neither of
the other sets. The minor divisions, of which of course
there were many, need not be particularized, as the above
general classification will be enough for the purposes of this
history.

Our hero, on leaving school, had bound himself solemnly
to write all his doings and thoughts to the friend whom he
had left behind him: distance and separation were to make
no difference whatever in their friendship. This compact had
been made on one of their last evenings at Rugby. They
were sitting together in the six-form room, Tom splicing the
handle of a favourite cricket bat, and Arthur reading a volume
of Raleigh’s works. The Doctor had lately been alluding to
the “ History of the World,” and had excited the curiosity
of the active-minded amongst his pupils about the great
navigator, statesman, soldier, author, the fine gentleman. So
Raleigh’s works were seized on by various voracious young
readers, and carried out of the school library; and Arthur
was now deep in a volume of the “ Miscellanies,” curled up
on a corner of the sofa. Presently, Tom heard something
between o groan and a protest, and, looking up, demanded
6 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

explanations; in answer to which, Arthur, in a voice half
furious and half fearful, read out :—

“ And be sure of this, thou shalt never find a friend in thy
young years whose conditions and qualitics will please thee
after thou comest to more discretion and judgment; and then
all thou givest is lost, and all wherein thou shalt trust such a
one will be discovered.”

“You don’t mean that’s Raleigh’s ?”

“Yes—here it is, in his first letter to his son.”

“What a cold-blooded old Philistine,” said Tom.

“But it can’t be true, do you think?” said Arthur.

And, in short, aftor some personal reflections on Sir Walter,
they then and there resolved that, so far as they wero con-
cerned, it was not, could not, and should not be true; that
they would remain faithful, the same to each other, and the
greatest friends in the world, though I know not what separa-
tions, trials, and catastrophes. And for the better insuring
this result, a correspondence, regular as the recurring months,

-was to be maintained. It had already lasted through the
long vacation and up to Christmas without sensibly dragging,
though Tom’s letters had been something of the shortest in
November, when he had had lots of shooting, and two days a
week with the hounds. Now, however, having fairly got to
Oxford, he determined to make up for all short-comings. His
first letter from college, taken in connexion with the previous
sketch of the place, will probably accomplish the work of in-
troduction better than any detailed account by a third party;
and it is therefore given here verbatim :—

“*8t, Ambrose, Oxford,
“* February, 184—.
“My ppar GEORDIE,

“ According to promise, I write to tell you how I get on
up here, and what sort of a place Oxford is. Of course, I
don’t know much about it yet, having been only up some two
weeks ; but you shall have my first impressions.

“Well, first and foremost, it’s an awfully idle place; at any
tate, for us freshmen. Fancy now. I am in twelve lectures
a week of an hour each—Greek Testament, first book of
Herodotus, second Atneid, and first book of Euclid! There’s
a treat! Two hours a day; all over by twelve, or one at
latest; and no extra work at all, in the shape of copies of
verses, themes, or other exercises.

“T think sometimes I’m back in the lower fifth; for we
don’t get through more than we used to do there ; and if you
were to hear the men construe, it would make your hair stand
on end. ‘Where on earth can they have come frém? unless
8ST. AMBROSE’S COLLEGE. 7

they blunder on purpose, as I often think. Of course, I never
look at a lecture before I go in, I know it all nearly by heart,
so it would be sheer waste of time. I hope I shall take to
reading something or other by myself; but you know I never
was much of a hand at sapping, and, for the present, the light
work suits me well enough, for there’s plenty to see and learn
about in this place.

“We keep very gentlemanly hours. Chapel every morning
at eight, and evening at ‘seven. You must attend once a day,
and twice on Sundays—at least, that’s the rule of our college
—and be in gates by twelve o'clock at night. Bosides which,
if you’ro a decontly steady follow, you ought to dino in hall
perhaps four days a week. Hall is at fivo o'clock. And now
you have the sum total. All the rest of your time you may
just do what you like with.

“So much for our work and hours. Now for the place.
Well, it’s a grand old place, certainly; and I dare say, if a
fellow goes straight in it, and gets creditably through his three
years, he may end by loving it as much as we do the old
school-house and quadrangle at Rugby. Our college is a fair
specimen; a venerable old front of crumbling stone fronting
the street, into which two or three other colleges look also.
Over the gateway is a large room, where the college examina-
tions go on, when there are any ; and, as you enter, you pass
the porter’s lodge, where resides our janitor, a bustling little
man, with a pot belly, whose business it is to put down the
time at which the men come in at night, and to keep all dis-
commonsed tradesmen, stray dogs, and bad charactors generally,
out of the college.

“The large quadrangle into which you come first, is bigger
than ours at Rugby, and a much more solemn and sleepy sort
of a place, with its gables and old mullioned windows. One
side is occupied by the hall and chapel ; the principal’s house
takes up half another side ; and the rest is divided into stair-
casos, on cach of which are six or eight sets of rooms, inhabited
by us undorgraduntos, with hore and thero o tutor or follow
dropped down amongst us (in the first-floor rooms, of course),
not exactly to keep order, but to act as a sort of ballast. This
quadrangle is the show part of the college, and is generally
| respectable and quiet, which is a good deal more than can be
' gaid for the inner quadrangle, which you get at through a
passage leading out of the other. The rooms ain't half so
large or good in the inner quad ; and here’s where all we fresh-
men live, besides a lot of the older undergraduates who don’t
care to change their rooms. Only one tutor has rooms here ;
and I should think, if he’s a reading man, it won't be long
8 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

before he clears out ; for all sorts of high jinks go on on the
grass-plot, and the row on the staircases is often as bad, and
not half so respectable, as it used to be in the middle passage
in tho last week of tho half-year. :

“My rooms are what they call garrets, right up in the roof,
with a commanding view of college tiles and chimney pots,
and of houses at the back. No end of cats, both college Toms
and strangers, haunt the neighbourhood, and I am rapidly
learning cat-talking from them ; but I’m not going to stand it
—I don’t want to know cat-talk. The college Toms are pro-
tected by the statutes, I believe; but I’m going to buy an
air-gun for the benefit of tho strangers. My rooms are pleasant
enough, at the top of the kitchen staircase, and separated from
all mankind by a great, ivon-clamped, outer door, my oak,
which I sport when I go out or want to be quiet; sitting-
room eighteen by twelve, bed-room twelve by eight, and a
little cupboard for the scout,

“ Ah, Geordie, the scout is an institution! Fancy me waited
upon and valeted by a stout party in black, of quiet, gentle-
manly manners, like the benevolent father in a comedy. He
takes the deepest interest in all my possessions and proceedings,
and is evidently used to good society, to judge by the amount
of crockery and glass, wines, liquors, and grocery, which he
thinks indispensable for my due establishment. He has also
been good enough to recommend to me many tradesmen who
are ready to supply these articles in any quantities ; each of
whom has been here already a dozen times, cap in hand, and
vowing that it is quite immaterial when I pay—which is very
kind of them ; but, with the highest respect for friend Perkins
(my scout) and his obliging friends, I shall make some in-
quiries before “letting in” with any of them. He waits on
me in hall, where we go in full fig of cap and gown at five,:
and get very good dinners, and cheap enough. It is rather
a fine old room, with a good, arched, black oak ceiling and
high panelling, hung round with pictures of old swells, bishops
and lords chiefly, who have endowed the college in some way,
or at least have fed here in times gone by, and for whom,
“ceterisque benefactoribus nostris,” we daily give thanks in
a long Latin grace, which one of the undergraduates (I think
it must be) goes and rattles out at the end of the high table,
and then comes down again from the dais to his own place.
No one feeds at the high table except the dons and the
gentlemen-commoners, who are undergraduates in velvet caps
and silk gowns. -Why they wear these instead of cloth and
serge I haven’t yet made out—I believe it is because they pay
double fees ; but they seem uncommonly wretched up at the
ST, AMBROSE’S COLLEGE. 9

high table, and I should think would sooner pay double to
come to the other end of the hall. !

“Theo chapel is a quaint little place, about the size of the
chancel of Lutterworth Church. It just holds us all com-
fortably. The attendance is regular enough, but I don’t think
the men care about it a bit in general. Several I can see
bring in Euclids, and other lecture books, and the service is
gone through at a great pace. I couldn’t think at first why
some of the men seemed so uncomfortable and stiff about the
legs at the morning service, but I find that they are the
hunting set, and come in with pea-coats over their pinks, and
trousers over their leather breeches and top-boots; which
accounts for it. There are a few others who seem very devout,
and bow a good deal, and turn towards the altar at different.
parts of the service. These are of the Oxford High-church
school, I believe ; but I shall soon find out more about them.

. On the whole, I feel less at home at present, I am sorry to
say, in the chapel, than anywhere else.

“T was very nearly forgetting a great institution of the
college, which is the buttery-hatch, just opposite the hall-
door. Here abides the fat old butler (all the servants at St.
Ambrose’s are portly), and serves out limited bread, butter,
and cheese, and unlimited beer brewed by himself, for an hour
in the morning, at noon, and again at supper-time. Your
scout always fetches you a pint or so on each occasion, in case
you should want it, and if you don’t, it falls to him; but I
can’t say that my fellow gets much, for I am naturally a thirsty
soul, and cannot often resist the malt myself, coming up, as it
does, fresh and cool, in one of the silver tankards, of which
we seem to have an endless supply.

“T spent a day or two in the first week, before I got shaken
down into my place here, in going round and seeing the other
colleges, and finding out what great men had been at each

me got a taste for that sort of work from the Doctor, and
’d nothing else to do). ‘Well, I never was more interested :
fancy ferreting out Wycliffe, the Black Prince, our friend Sir
Walter Raleigh, Pym, Hampden, Laud, Ireton, Butler, and
Addison, in one afternoon. I walked about two inches taller
in my trencher cap after it. Perhaps I may be going to make
dear friends with some fellow who will change the history of
England. Why shouldn’t I? There must have been freshmen
once who were chums of Wycliffe of Queen’s, or Raleigh of
Oriel. I mooned up and down the High-street, staring at all
the young faces in caps, and wondering which of them would
turn out great generals, or statesmen, or poets. Some of them
will, of course, for there must be e dozen at least, I should
10 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

think, in every generation of undergraduates, who will have
a good deal to say to the ruling and guiding of the British
nation before they die.

“ But, after all, the river is the feature of Oxford, to my
mind ; a glorious stream, not five minutes’ walk from the
colleges, broad enough in most places for three boats to row
abreast. I expect I shall take to boating furiously: I have
been down the river three or four times already with some
other freshmen, and it is glorious exercise ; that I can see,
though we bungle and cut crabs desperately at present.

“ Hore’s a long yarn I’m spinning for you ; and I dare say
after all you'll say it tells you nothing, and you'd rather have
twenty lines about the mon, and what they’re thinking «bout,
and the meaning and inner life of the place, and all that.
Patience, patience! I don’t know anything about it myself
yet, and have only had time to look at the shell, which is a
very handsome and stately affair ; you shall have the kernel,
if I ever get at it, in due time.

“ And now write me a long letter directly, and tell me
about the Doctor, and who are in the Sixth, and how the
house goes on, and what sort of an eleven there'll be, and
what you are all doing and thinking about. Come up here
and try-for a scholarship; I'll take you in and show you
the lions. Remember me to all old friends—Ever yours
affectionately, T. B”

CHAPTER II.
A ROW ON THH RIVER.

Wiruin a day or two of the penning of this celebrated epistle,
which created quite a sensation in the sixth-form room as it
went the round after tea, Tom realized one of the objects of
his young Oxford ambition, and succeeded in embarking on
the river in a skiff by himself, with such results as are now
to be described. He had already been down several times in
pair-oar and four-oar boats, with an old oar to pull stroke,
and another to steer and coach the young idea, but he was not
satisfied with these essays. He could not believe that he was
such a bad oar as the old hands made him out to be, and
thought that it must be the fault of the other freshmen who
were learning with him that the boat made so little way and
rolled so much. He had been such a proficient in all the
A ROW ON THE RIVER. 11

Rugby games, that he couldn’t realize the fact of his unreadiness
ina boat. Pulling looked a simple thing enough—much easier
than tennis; and he bad made a capital start at the latter
game, and been highly complimented by the marker after his
first hour in the little court. He forgot that cricket and fives
are capital training for tennis, but that rowing is a speciality,
of the rudiments of which he was wholly ignorant. And s0,
in full confidence that, if he could only have a turn or two
alone, he should not only satisfy himself, but everybody else,
that he was a heaven-born oar, he refused all offers of com-
panionship, and started on the afternoon of a fine February
day down to the boats for his trial trip. He had watched his
regular companions well out of college, and gave them enough
start to make sure that they would he off before he himself
could arrive at the St. Ambrose’s dressing-room at Hall’s, and
chuckled, as he came within sight of the river, to see the
freshmen’s boat in which he generally performed, go plunging
away past the University barge, keeping three different times
with four oars, and otherwise demeaning itself so as to become
an object of mirthful admiration to all beholders.

Tom was punted across to Hall’s in a state of great content,
which increased when, in answer to his casual inquiry, the
managing man informed him that not a man of his college
was about the place. So he ordered a skiff with as much
dignity and coolness as he could command, and hastened up
stairs to dress. He appeared again, carrying his boating coat
and cap. They were quite new, so he would not wear them :
nothing about him should betray the freshman on this day if
he could help it.

“Ts my skiff ready ?”

« All right, sir; this way, sir;” said the manager, con-
ducting him to a good, safe-looking craft. ‘“ Any gentleman
going to steer, sir?”

“No,” said Tom, superciliously ; “You may take out the
rudder.”

“Going quite alone, sir? Better take one of our boys—
find you a very light one. Here, Bill!”—and he turned to
summons a juvenile waterman to take charge of our hero.

“Take out the rudder, do you hear?” interrupted Tom.
“T won't have a steerer.”

“Well, sir, as you please,” said the manager, proceeding to
remove the degrading appendage. “The river’s rather high,
please to remember, sir. You must mind the mill-stream at
IMley Lock. I suppose you can swim?”

“Yes, of course,” said Tom, settling himself on his cushion.
“ Now, shove her off.”
12 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

The next moment he was well out in the stream, and left to
his own resources. He got his sculls out successfully enough,
and, though feeling by no means easy on his seat, proceeded
to pull very deliberately past the barges, stopping his sculls
in the air to feather accurately, in the hopes of deceiving
spectators into the belief that he was an old hand just going
out for a gentle paddle. The manager watched him for a
minute, and turned to his work with an aspiration that he
might not come to grief.

But no thought of grief was on Tom’s mind as he dropped
gently down, impatient for the time when he should pass the
mouth of the Chorwell, and so, having no longer critical eyes
to foar, might put out his whole strongth, and give himself
at least, if not the world, assurance of a waterman.

The day was a very fine one, a bright sun shining, and a
nice fresh breeze blowing across the stream, but not enough
to ruffle the water seriously. Some heavy storms up Glouces-
tershire way had cleared the air, and swollen the stream at the
same time ; in fact, the river wasas full as it could be without
overflowing its banks—a state in which, of all others, it is the
least safe for boating experiments. Fortunately, in those days
there were no outriggers, Even the racing skiffs were com-
paratively safe craft, and would now be characterized as tubs ;
while the real tubs (in one of the safest of which the prudent
manager had embarked our hero) were of such build that it
required considerable ingenuity actually to upset them.

If any ordinary amount of bungling could have done it,
Tom’s voyage would have terminated within a hundred yards
of the Cherwell. While he had been sitting quiet and merely
paddling, and almost letting the stream carry him down, the
boat had trimmed well enough; but now, taking a long
breath, he leaned forward, and dug his sculls into the water,
pulling them through with all his strength. ‘The consequence
of this feat was that the handles of the sculls came into violent
collision in tho middle of tho boat, the knuckles of his right
hand were barked, hia left scull unshipped, and the head of
his skiff almost blown round by the wind before he could
restore order on board.

“Never mind ; try again,” thought he, after the first sensa-
tion of disgust had passed off, and a glance at the shore showed
him that there were no witnesses. “Of course, I forgot, one
hand must go over the other. It might have happened to
any one. Let me see, which hand shall I keep uppermost :
the left, that’s the weakest.” And away he weat again,
keeping his newly-acquired fact painfully in mind, and so
avoiding further collision amidships for four or five strokes,
A ROW ON THE RIVER. 13

But, as in other sciences, the giving of undue prominence to
one fact brings others inexorably on the head of the student
to avenge his neglect of them, so it happened with Tom in his
practical study of the science of rowing, that by thinking of
his hands he forgot his seat, and the necessity of trimming
properly. Whereupon the old tub began to rock fearfully,
and the next moment he missed the water altogether with his
right scull, and subsided backwards, not without struggles,
into the bottom of the boat; while the half stroke which he
had pulled with his left hand sent her head well into the
‘ bank,

Tom picked himself up, and settled himself on his bench
again, a sadder and a wiser man, as the truth began to dawn
upon him that pulling, especially sculling, does not, like
reading and writing, come by nature. However, he addressed
himself manfully to his task ; savage indeed, and longing to
drive a hole in the bottom of the old tub, but as resolved as
ever to get to Sandford and back before hall time, or perish in
the attempt.

He shoved himself off the bank, and, warned by his last
mishap, got out into mid stream, and there, moderating his
ardour, and contenting himself with a slow and steady stroke,
was progressing satisfactorily, and beginning to recover his
temper, when a loud shout startled him; and, looking over
his shoulder at the imminent risk of an upset, he beheld the
fast sailer the Dart, close hauled on a wind, and almost aboard
of him. Utterly ignorant of what was the right thing to do,
he held on his course, and passed close under the bows of the
miniature cutter, the steersman having jammed his helm hard
down, shaking her in the wind, to prevent running over the
skiff, and solacing himself with pouring maledictions on Tom
and his craft, in which the man who had hold of the sheets,
and the third, who was lounging in the bows, heartily joined.
Tom was out of ear-shot before he had collected vituperation
enough to hurl back at them, and was, moreover, already in
the difficult navigation of the Gut, whoro, notwithstanding all
his efforts, he again ran aground ; but, with this exception,
he arrived without other mishap at Iffley, where he lay on his
sculls with much satisfaction, and shouted, “ Lock—lock !”

The lock-keeper appeared to the summons, but instead of
opening the gates seized a long boat-hook, and rushed towards:
our hero, calling on him to mind the mill-stream, and pull his
right-hand scull; notwithstanding which warning, Tom was
within on ace of drifting past the entrance to tho lock, in
which case assuredly his boat, if not he, had never returned
whole. However, the lock-keeper managed to catch the stern
14 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

of his skiff with the boat-hook, and drag him back into the
proper channel, and then opened the lock-gates for him.
Tom congratulated himself as he entered the lock that there
were no other boats going through with him; but his evil
star was in the ascendant, and all things, animate and inani-
mate, seemed to be leagued together to humiliate him. As
the water began to fall rapidly, he lost his hold of the chain,
and the tub instantly drifted across the lock, and was in
imminent danger of sticking and breaking her back, when the
lock-keeper again came to the rescue with his boat-hook ; and,
guessing the state of the case, did not quit him until he had
safely shoved him and his boat well out into the pool below,
with an exhortation 10 mind and go outside of the barge which
was coming up. ,

Tom started on the latter half of his outward voyage with
the sort of look which Cato must have worn when he elected
the losing side, and all the gods went over to the winning
one. But his previous struggles had not been thrown away,
and he managed to keep the right side of the barge, turn the
corner without going aground, and zigzag down Kennington
reach, slowly indeed, and with much labour, but at any zate
safely. Rejoicing in this feat, he stopped at the island, and
recreated himself with a glass of beer, looking now hopefully
towards Sandford, which lay within easy distance, now up-
wards again along the reach which he had just overcome, and
solacing himself with the remembrance of a dictum, which he
had heard from a great authority, that it was always easier to
steer up stream than down, from which he argued that the
worst part of his trial trip was now over.

Presently he saw a skiff turn the corner at the top of the
Kennington reach, and, resolving in his mind to get to
Sandford before the new comer, paid for his beer, and betook
himself again to his tub. He got pretty well off, and, the
island shutting out his unconscious rival from hia view, worked
away at first under the pleasing delusion that he was holding
his own. But he was soon undceeived, for in monstrously
short time tho pursuing skiff showed round the corner, and
bore down on him. He never relaxed his efforts, but could
not help watching the enemy as he came up with him hand
over hand, and envying the perfect ease with which he seemed
to be pulling his long steady stroke, and the precision with
which he steered, scarcely ever casting a look over his shoulder,
He was hugging the Berkshire side himself, as the other skiff
passed him, and thought he heard the sculler say something
about keeping out, and minding the small lasher; but the
noise of waters and his own desperate efforts prevented his
A ROW ON THE RIVER. 15

heeding, or, indeed, hearing the warning plainly. In another
minute, however, he heard plainly enough most energetic
shouts behind him; and, turning his head over his right
shoulder, saw the man who had just passed him backing his
skiff rapidly up stream towards him. The next moment he
felt the bows of his boat whirl round, the old tub grounded
for a moment, and then, turning over on her side, shot him
out on to the planking of the steep descent into the small
Jasher. He grasped at the boards, but they were too slippery
to hold, and the rush of water was too strong for him, and,
rolling him over and over, like a piece of drift wood, plunged
him into the pool below.

After the first moment of astonishment and fright was over,
Tom left himself to the stream, holding his breath hard, and
paddling gently with his hands, feeling sure that, if he could
only hold on, he should come to the surface sooner or later ;
which accordingly happened after 2 somewhat lengthy sub-
mersion.

His first impulse on rising to the surface, after catching his
breath, was to strike out for the shore, but, in the act of doing
so, he caught sight of the other skiff coming stern foremost
down the descent after him, and he trod the water and drew
in his breath to watch. Down she came, as straight as an
arrow, into the tumult below ; the sculler sitting upright, and
holding his sculls steadily in the water. For a moment she
seemed to be going under, but righted herself, and glided
swiftly into the still water ; and then the sculler cast a hasty
and anxious glance round, till his eyes rested on our hero’s
half-drowned head.

“Oh, there you are!” he said, looking much relieved ; “all
right, I hope. Not hurt, eh?”

“No, thankee; all right, I believe,” answered Tom. “What
shall I do?”

“Swim ashore; I'll look after your boat.” So Tom took
the advice, swam ashore, and there stood dripping and watch-
ing the other as he righted the old tub, which was floating
quietly bottom upwards, little the worse for the mishap, and
no doubt, if boats can wish, earnestly desiring in her wooden
mind to be allowed to go quietly to pieces then and there,
sooner than be rescued to be again entrusted to the guidance
of freshmen.

The tub having been brought to the bank, the stranger
started again, and collected the sculls and bottom boards,
which were floating about here and there in the pool, and also
succeeded in making salvago of ‘T'om’s coat, the pockets of
which held his watch, purse, and cigar case. ‘These he brought

}
16 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

to the bank, and, delivering them over, inquired whether thera
was anything else to look after.

“Thank you, no; nothing but my cap. Never mind it,
Tt’s luck enough not to have lost the coat,” said Tom, holding
up the dripping garment to let the water run out of the arms
and pocket-holes, and then wringing it as well as he could.
“ At any rate,” thought he, “I needn't be afraid of its looking
too new any more.”

The stranger put off again, and made one more round, search-
ing for the cap and anything else which he might have over-
looked, but without success. While he was doing so, Tom
had time to look him well over, and see what sort of man had
come to his rescue. He hardly knew at the time the full '
extent of his obligation—at least if this sort of obligation is to
be reckoned not so much by the service actually rendered, as
by the risk encountered to be able to render it. There were
probably not three men in the University who would have
dared to shoot the lasher in a skiff in its then state, for it was
in those times a really dangerous place ; and Tom himself had
had an extraordinary escape, for, as Miller, the St. Ambrose
coxswain, remarked on hearing the story, “ No one who wasn’t

‘born to be hung could have rolled down it without knocking
his head against something hard, and going down like lead
when he got to the bottom.”

He was very well satisfied with his inspection, The other
man was evidently a year or two older than himself, his figure
was more set, and he had stronger whiskers than are generally
grown at twenty. He was somewhere about five feet ten in
height, very deep-chested, and with long powerful arms and
hands. There was no denying, however, that at the first
glance he was an ugly man; he was marked with small-pox,
had large features, high cheek-bones, deeply set eyes, and a
very long chin: and had got the trick which many underhung
men have of compressing his upper lip. Nevertheless, there
was that in his face which hit Tom’s fancy, and made him
anxious to know his rescuer better. He had an instinct that
good was to be gotton out of him, So he was very glad when
the search was ended, and the stranger came to the bank,
shipped his sculls, and jumped out with the painter of his
skiff in his hand, which he proceeded to fasten to an old
stump, while he remarked—

“Tm afraid the cap’s lost.”

“It doesn’t matter the least. Thank you for coming to
help me; it was very kind indeed, and more than I expected.
Don’t they say that one Oxford man will never save another _
from drowning unless they have beon introduced ?”
A ROW ON THE RIVER. 17

“T don’t know,” replied the other; “are you sure you're
not hurt?”

“Yes, quite,” said Tom, foiled in what he considered an
artful plan to get the stranger to introduce himself.

“Then were very well out of it,” said the other, looking
at the steep descent into the lasher, and the rolling tumbling
rush of the water below.

“Indeed we are,” said Tom; “but how in the world did
you manage not to upset?”

“TY hardly know myself—I have shipped a good deal of
water, you see. Perhaps I ought to have jumped out on the
bank and come across to you, Jeaving my skiff in tho river,
for if I had upset I couldn’t have helped you much. How-
ever, I followed my instinct, which was to come the quickest
way. I thought, too, that if I could manage to get down in
the boat I should be of more use. I’m very glad I did it,”
he added after a moment's pause; “I’m really proud of having
como down that place.”

“So ain’t J,” said Tom with a laugh, in which the other joined.

But now you're getting chilled,” and he turned from the
lasher and looked at Tom’s chattering jaws.

“Oh, it’s nothing. I’m used to being wet.”

“But you may just as well be comfortable if you can.
Here’s this rough jersey which I use instead of a coat; pull
off that wet cotton affair, and put it on, and then we'll get to
work, for we have plenty to do.”

After a little persuasion Tom did as he was bid, and got
into the great woollen garment, which was very comforting ;
and then the two set about getting their skiffs back into the
main stream. This was comparatively easy as to the lighter
skiff, which was soon baled out and hauled by main force on
to the bank, carried across and launched again. The tub gave
them much more trouble, for she was quite full of water and
very heavy ; but after twenty minutes or so of hard work,
during which the mutual respect of the labourers for the
strength ond willingness of each other was much increased,
she also lay in the main stream, leaking considerably, but
otherwise not much the worse for her adventure.

“Now what do you mean to do?” said the stranger. “T
don’t think you can pull home in her. One doesn’t know
how much she may be damaged. She may sink in the lock,
or play any prank.”

“ But what am I to do with her?”

“Oh, you can leave her at Sandford and walk up, and sond
one of Hall’s boys for her. Or, if you like, I will tow her up
behind my skiff.”

0

€
18 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“Won't your skiff carry two?”

“Yes; if you like to come I'll take you, but you must sit
very quict.”

“Can't we go down to Sandford first and havo a glass of
ale? What time is it?—the water has stopped my watch.”

“A quarter-past three. I have about twenty minutes to
spare.”

“Come along, then,” said Tom; “but will you let me pull
your skiff down to Sandford? TI resolved to pull to Sandford
to-day, and don’t like to give it up.”

“By all means, if you like,” said the other, with a smile ;
“jump in, and Pll walk along the bank.”

“Thank you,” said Tom, hurrying into the skiff, in which
he completed the remaining quarter of a mile, while the
owner walked by the side, watching him.

They met on the bank at the little inn by Sandford lock,
and had a glass of ale, over which Tom confessed that it was
the first time he had ever navigated a skiff by himself, and
gave a detailed account of his adventures, to the great amuse-
ment of his companion. And by the time they rose to go, it
was settled, at Tom’s earnest request, that ho should pull the
sound skilf up, while his companion sat in the stern and
coached him. The other consented very kindly, merely stipu-
lating that he himself should take the sculls, if it should prove
that Tom could not pull them up in time for hall dinner. So
they started, and took the tub in tow when they came up to
it. Tom got on famously under his new tutor, who taught
him to get forward, and open his knees properly, and throw
his weight on to the sculls at the beginning of the stroke,
He managed even to get into Iffley lock on the way up with-
out fouling the gates, and was then and there complimented
on his progress. Whereupon, as they sat, while the lock
filled, Tom poured out his thanks to his tutor for his instruc-
tion, which had been given so judiciously that, while he was
conscious of improving at every stroke, he did not feel that tho
other was asserting any superiority over him; and so, though
more humble than at the most disastrous period of his down-
ward voyage, he was getting into a better temper every minute.

It is a great pity that some of our instructors in more
important matters than sculling will not take a leaf out of the
same book. Of course, it is more satisfactory to one’s own
self-love, to make every one who comes to one to learn, feel
that he is a fool, and we wise men; but, if our object is to
teach well and usefully what we know ourselves there cannot
be a worse method. No man, however, is likely to adopt it,
so long as he is conscious that he has anything himself ta
A ROW ON THE RIVER. 19

learn from his pupils; and as soon as he has arrived at the
conviction that they can teach him nothing—that it is hence-
forth to be all give and no take—the sooner he throws up his
office of teacher, the better it will be for himself, his pupils,
and his country, whose sons he is misguiding,

On their way up, so intent were they on their own work
that it was not until shouts of “Hullo, Brown! how did you
get there? Why, you said you were not going down to-day,”
greeted them just above the Gut, that they were aware of the
presence of the freshmen’s four-oar of St. Ambrose College,
which had with some trouble succeeded in overtaking them.

“JT said I wasn’t going down with you,” shouted Tom,
grinding away harder than ever, that they might witness and
wonder at his prowess.

“Oh, I dare say! Whose skiff are you towing up? I
believe you've been upset.”

Tom made no reply, and the four-oar floundered on ahead.

“ Are you at St. Ambrose’s ?” asked his sitter, after a minute.

“Yes; that’s my treadmill, that four-oar. Ive been down
in it almost every day since I came up, and very poor fun it
is. So I thought to-day I would go on my own hook, and
see if I couldn’t make a better hand of it. And I have too,
I know, thanks to you.”

The other made no remark, but a little shade camo over
his face. He had had no chance of. making out Tom’s college,
as the new cap which would have betrayed him had disappeared
in tho lasher. He himself wore a glazed straw hat, which was
of no college; so that up to this time neither of them had
known to what colloge the other belonged.

When they landed at Hall’s, Tom was at once involved in
a wrangle with the manager as to the amount of damage done
to the tub; which the latter refused to assess before he knew
what had happened to it; while our hero vigorously and with
reason maintained, that if he knew his business it could not
matter what had happened to the boat. ‘There she v..:, and
he must say whether she was better or worse, or how much
worse than when she started. In the middle of which dia-
logue his new acquaintance, touching his arm, said, ‘“ You
can leave my jersey with your own things; I shall get it to-
morrow,” and then disappeared.

Tom, when he had come to terms with his adversary, ran
upstairs, expecting to find the other, and meaning to tell his
name, and find out who it was that had played the good Sama-
ritan by him. He was much annoyed when he found tho
coast ¢lear, and dressed in a grumbling humour. “TI wondor
why he should have gone off so quick. He might just aa

02
20 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

well have stayed and walked up with me,” thought he. “Let
me see, though; didn’t he say I was to leave his jersey in
our room, with my own things? Why, perhaps he is a
St. Ambrose man himself, But then he would have told mo
so, surely. I don’t remember to have seen his face in chapel
or hall; but then there are such a lot of new faces, and he
may not sit near me. However, I mean to find him out
before long, whoever he may be.” “With which resolve Tom
crossed in the punt into Christ’s Church meadow, and strolled
college-wards, feeling that he had had a good hard afternoon’s
exercise, and was much the better for it. He might have
satisfied his curiosity at once by simply asking the manager
who it was that had arrived with him; and this occurred to
him before he got home, whereat he felt satisfied, but would
not go back then, as it was so near hall time. He would be
sure to remember it the first thing to-morrow.

As it happened, however, he had not so long to wait for
the information which he needed; for scarcely had he sat
down in hall and ordored his dinnor, when he caught sight
of his boating acquaintance, who walked in habited in a gown
which ‘Tom took for a scholar’s. Ifo took his seat at a litile
table in the middle of the hall, near the bachelors’ table, but
quite away from the rest of the undergraduates, at which sat
four or five other men in similar gowns. He either did not
or would not notice the looks of recognition which Tom kept
firing at him until he had taken his seat.

“Who is that man that has just come in, do you know ?”
said Tom to his next neighbour, a second-term man.

“Which ?” said the other, looking up.

“That one over at the little table in the middle of the hall,
with the dark whiskers. There, he has just turned rather
from us, and put his arm on the table.”

“Oh; his name is Hardy.”

“Do you know him 1”

“No; I don’t think anybody does, They say he is a
clover fellow, but a very queor one.”

“Why doos ho sit at that table?”

“To is one of our servitors; they all sit there together.”

“Oh,” said Tom, not much wiser for the information, but
resolved to waylay Hardy as soon as the hall was over, and
highly delighted to find that they were after all of the same
college; for he had already begun to find out, that however
friendly you may be with out-college men, you must live
chiefly with those of your own. But now his scout brought
his dinner, and he fell to with the appetite of a freshman on
his ample commons,
A BREAKFAST AT DRYSDALE’S. 21

CHAPTER IIL
A BREAKFAST AT DRYSDALE’S.

No man in St. Ambrose College gave such breakfasts as
Drysdale. Not the great heavy spreads for thirty or forty,
which came once or twice a term, when everything was sup-
plied out of the college kitchen, and you had to ask leave of
the Dean before you could have it at all. In those ponderous
feasts the most hum-drum of undergraduate kind might rival
the most artistic, if ho could only pay his battel-bill, or got
credit with the cook. But the daily morning meal, when even
gentlemen-commoners were limited to two hot dishes out of
the kitchen, this was Drysdale’s forte. Ordinary men left the
matter in the hands of scouts, and were content with the ever-
recurring buttered toast and eggs, with a dish of broiled ham,
or something of the sort, and marmalade and bitter ale to
finish with ; but Drysdale was not an ordinary man, as you
felt in a moment when you went to breakfast with him for
the first time.

The staircase on which he lived was inhabited, except in
the garrets, by men in the fast set, and he and three others,
who had an equal aversion to solitary feeding, had established
a breakfast-club, in which, thanks to Drysdale’s genius, real
scientific gastronomy was cultivated. Jivery morning tho boy
from the Weirs arrived with freshly caught gudgeon, and now
and then an cel or trout, which the scouts on the staircase had
learnt to fry delicately in oil. Fresh watercresses came in the
same basket, and the college kitchen furnished a spitchcocked
chicken, or grilled turkey’s leg. In the season there were
plover’s eggs ; or, at the worst, there was a dainty omelette ;
and a distant baker, famed for his light rolls and high charges,
sent in the bread—the common domestic college loaf being
of course out of the question for any ono with tho slightest
pretensions to taste, and fit only for the perquisite of scouts.
Then there would be a deep Yorkshire pie, or reservoir of
potted game, as a piéce de résistance, and three or four sorts
of preserves ; and a large cool tankard of cider or ale-cup to
finish up with, or soda-water and maraschino for a change.
Tea and coffee were there indeed, but merely as a compliment
to those respectable beverages, for they were rarely touched
by the breakfast-eaters of No. 3 staircase. Pleasant young
gentlemen they were on No. 3 staircase ; I mean the ground
and first-floor men who formed tho breakfast-club, for the
garrets were nobodies. Three out of the four were gentlemen-
22 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

commoners, with allowances of 5002. a year at least each ;
and, as they treated their allowances as pocket-money, and
were all in their first ycar, ready money was plenty and credit
good, and they might have had potted hippopotamus for
breakfast if they had chosen to order it, which they would
most likely have done if they had thought of it.

Two out of the three were the sons of rich men who had
made their own fortunes, and sent their sons to St. Ambrose’s
because it was very desirable that the young gentlemen should
make good connexions. In fact, the fathers looked upon the
University as a good investment, and gloried much in hearing
their sons talk familiarly in the vacations of their dear friends
Lord Harry This and Sir George That.

Drysdale, the third of the set, was the heir of an old as
well as of a rich family, and consequently, having his con-
nexion ready made to his hand, cared little enough with
whom he associated, provided they were pleasant fellows, and
gave him good food and wines. His whole idea at present
was to cnjoy himself as much as possible ; but he had good
manly stuff in him at the bottom, and, had ho fallen into
any but the fast set, would have made a fine fellow, and done
credit to himself and his college.

The fourth man of the breakfast-club, the Hon. Piers St.
Cloud, was in his third year, and was a very well-dressed,
well-mannered, well-connected young man. His allowance
was small for the set he lived with, but he never wanted for
anything. He didn’t entertain much, certainly, but when-he
did, everything was in the best possible style. He was very
exclusive, and knew no man in college out of the fast set ;
and of these he addicted himself chiefly to the society of the
rich freshmen, for somehow the men of his own standing
seemed a little shy of him. But with the freshmen he was
always hand and glove, lived in their rooms, and used their
wines, horses, and other movable property as his own. Bein
a good whist and billiard player, and not a bad jockey, he
managed in one way or another to make his young friends pay
well for the honour of his acquaintance ; as, indeed, why should
they uot, at least those of them who came to college to form
eligible connexions ; for had not his remote lineal ancestor
come over in the same ship with William the Conqueror}
were not all his relations about the Court, as lords and ladies
in waiting, white sticks or black rods, and in the innermost
of all possible circles of the great world ; and was there a
better coat of arms than he bore in all Burke's Peerage ¢

Our hero had met Drysdale at a house in the country
shortly before the beginning of his first term, and they had
A BREAKFAST AT DRYSDALE'S. 2

C

rather taken to one another. ‘Drysdale had been amongst bis
first callers ; and, as he came out of chapel one morning
shortly after his arrival, Drysdale’s scout came up to him with
an invitation to breakfast. So he went to his own rooms, or-
dered his commons to be taken across to No. 3, and followed
himself a few minutes afterwards. No one was in the rooms
when he arrived, for none of the club had finished their
toilettes. Morning chapel was not meant for, or cultivated
by, gontlemen-commoners ; they paid double chapel fees, in
consideration of which, probably, they were not oxpected to
abtond so ofton as tho rest of tho undorgraduates ; at any
tate, they didn’t, and no harm camo to them in consoquence
of their absence. As ‘Tom entered, a great splashing in an
inner room stopped for a moment, and Drysdale’s voice
shouted out that he was in his tub, hut would be with him
ina minute. So Tom gave himself up to the contemplation
of the rooms in which his fortunate acquaintance dwelt ; and
very pleasant rooms they were. The large room, in which the
breakfast-table was laid for five, was lofty and well-propor-
tioned, and panelled with old oak, and the furniture wag
handsome and solid, and in keeping with the room.

There were four deep windows, high up in the wall, with
cushioned seats under them, two looking into the large quad-
rangle, and two into the inner one. Outside these windows,
Drysdale had rigged up hanging gardens, which were kept
full of flowers by tho first nurseryman in Oxford all the year
round ; so that even on this February morning, the scent of
gardania and violets pervaded the room, and strove for mastery
with the smell of stale tobacco, which hung about the curtains
and sofas. There was a large glass in an oak frame over the
mantelpiece, which was loaded with choice pipes and cigar
cases, and quaint receptacles for tobacco ; and by the side of
the glass hung small carved oak frames, containing lists of
the meets of the Heythrop, the Old Berkshire, and Drake’s
hounds, for the current wook. Thoro was a quocr assortment
of well-framed paintings and engravings on the walls ; some
of considerable merit, especially some water-colour sea-pieces
and engravings from Landseer’s pictures, mingled with which
hung Taglioni and Cerito, in short petticoats and impossible
attitudes; Phosphorus winning the Derby; the Death
of Grimaldi (the famous steeple-chase horse—not poor old
Joe); an American ‘Trotting Match, and Jem Belcher and
Deaf Burke in attitudes of self-defence. Several tandem and
riding whips, mounted in heavy silver, and a doublo-barrelled
gun, and fishing rods, occupied one cornor, and a polished
copper cask, holding about five gallons of mild ale, stood in
24 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

another. In short, there was plenty of everything except
books—the literature of the world being represented, so far
as ‘om could make out in his short scrutiny, by a few well-
bound but badly used volumes of classics, with the cribs
thereto appertaining, shoved away into a cupboard which stood
half open, and contained besides, half-emptied decanters, and
large pewters, and dog-collars, and packs of cards, and all
sorts of miscellaneous articles to serve as an antidote.

Tom had scarcely finished his short survey, when the door
of the bedroom opened, and Drysdale emerged in a loose
jacket lined with silk, his velvet cap on his head, and other-
wise gorgeously attired. He was a pleasant-looking fellow,
of middle size, with dark hair, and a merry brown eye, with
a twinkle in it, which spoke well for his sonse of humour ;
otherwise, his large features were rather plain, but he had
the look and manners of a thoroughly well-bred gentleman.

His first act, after nodding to Tom, was to seize on a pewter
and resort to the cask in the corner, from whence he drew a
pint or so of the contents, having, as he said, “‘a whoreson
longing for that poor creature, small beer.’ We were playing
Van-John in Blake’s rooms till three last night, and he gave
us devilled bones and mulled port. A fellow can’t enjoy his
breakfast after that without something to cool his coppers.”

. Tom was as yet ignorant of what Van-John might be, so
held his peace, and took a pull at the beer which the other
handed to him; and then the scout entered, and received
orders to bring up Jack and the breakfast, and not wait for
any one. In another minute, a bouncing and scrattling was
heard on the stairs, and a white bulldog rushed in, a gem in
his way ; for his brow was broad and massive, his skin was
as fine as a lady’s, and his tail taper and nearly as thin as a
clay pipe. His general look, and a way he had of going
‘snuzzling’ about the calves of strangers, were not pleasant
for nervous people. Tom, however, was used to dogs, and
soon became friends with him, which evidently pleased his
host. And then the breakfast arrived, all smoking, and with
it the two other ingenious youths, in velvet caps and far more
gorgeous apparel, so far as colours went, than Drysdale. They
were introduced to Tom, who thought them somewhat ordi-
nary and rather loud young gentlemen. One of them remon-
strated vigorously against the presence of that confounded
dog, and so Jack was sent to lie down in a corner, and then
the four fell to work upon the breakfast.

It was a good lesson in gastronomy, but the results are
scarcely worth repeating here. It is wonderful, though, how
you feel drawn to a man who foeds you well ; and, as Tom’s
A BREAKFAST AT DRYSDALES. 25

appetite got less, his liking and respect for his host undoubt-
edly increased.

When they had nearly finished, in walked the Honourable
Piers, a tall slight man, two or three years older than the rest
of them; good-looking, and very well and quietly dressed,
but with a drawing up of his nostril, and a drawing down of
the corners of his mouth, which set Tom against him at once.
The cool, supercilious half-nod, moreover, to which he treated
our hero when introduced to him, was enough to spoil his
digestion, and hurt his self-love a good deal more than he
would have liked to own.

“ Here, Henry,” said the Honourable Piers to the scout in
attendance, seating himself, and inspecting the half-cleared
dishes ; “what is there for my breakfast ?”

Henry bustled about, and handed a dish or two.

“T don’t want these cold things ; haven’t you kept me any
gudgeon ?”

“Why, sir,” said Henry, “there was only two dozen this
morning, and Mr. Drysdale told me to cook them all.”

“To be sure I did,” said Drysdale. “Just half a dozen for
each of us four: they were first-rate. If you can’t get here
at half-past nine, you won’t get gudgeon, I can tell you.”

“ Just go and get me a broil from the kitchen,” said the
Honourable Piers, without deigning an answer to Drysdale.

“Very sorry, sir; kitchen’s shut by now, sir,” answered
Henry.

“Then go to Hinton’s, and order some cutlots.”

“TJ say, Henry,” shouted Drysdale to the retreating scout ;
“not to my tick, mind! Put them down to Mr. St. Cloud.”

Henry seemed to know very well that in that case he might
save himself the trouble of the journey, and consequently re-
turned to his waiting ; and the Honourable Piers set to work
upon his breakfast, without showing any further ill-temper
certainly, oxcopt by tho stinging things which ho throw overy
now and then into the conversation, for the banofit of oach of.
the others in turn.

Tom thought he detected signs of coming hostilities be-
tween his host and St. Cloud, for Drysdale seemed to prick
up his ears and get combative whenever the other spoke, and
lost no chance of roughing him in his replies. And, indeed,
he was not far wrong ; the fact being, that during Drysdale’s
first term, the other had lived on him—drinking his wine,
smoking his cigars, driving his dog-cart, and winning his
money ; all which Drysdale, who was the easiest going and
best tempered fellow in Oxford, had stood without turning
a hair. But St. Cloud added to these little favours a half
26 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

patronizing, half contemptuous manner, which he used with
great success towards some of the other gentlemen-commoners,
who thought it a mark of high breeding, and the correct
thing, but which Drysdale, who didn’t care three straws about
knowing St. Cloud, wasn’t going to put up with.

However, nothing happened beyond a little sparring, and
the breakfast things were cleared away, and the tankards left
on the table, and the company betook themselves to cigars
and easy chairs. Jack came out of his corner to be gratified
with some of the remnants by his fond master, and then
curled himself up on the sofa along which Drysdale lounged.

“What are you going to do to-day, Drysdale?” said one
of the others. “TI’ve ordered « leader to be sont on over the
bridge, and mean to drive my dog-cart over, and dine at
Abingdon. Won't you come4”

“Who's going besides?” asked Drysdale.

* Oh, only St. Cloud and Farley here. There’s lots of room
for a fourth.”

“No, thank’ee ; teaming’s slow work on the back seat.
Besides, I’ve half promised to go down in the boat.”

“In the boat!” shouted the other. “Why, you don’t
mean to say you're going to take to pulling?”

“Well, I don’t know; I rather think Iam. I’m dog-
tired of driving and doing the High Street, and playing
cards and billiards all day, and our boat is likely to be
head of the river, I think.”

“By Jove! I should as soon have thought of your
taking to reading, or going to University Sermon,” put in
St. Cloud.

“And the boating-men, too,” went on Farley ; “did you
ever sce such a set, St. Cloud? with their everlasting flannels
and jerseys, and hair cropped like prize-fighters.”

“Tl bet a guinea there isn’t one of them has more than
200/. a year,” put in Chanter, whose father could just write
his name, and was making a colossal fortune by supplying
bad iron rails to the new railway companies.

“What the devil do I care,” broke in Drysdale ; “I know
they’re a deal more amusing than you fellows, who can do
nothing that don’t cost pounds.”

“ Getting economical !” sneered St. Cloud.

“ Well, I don’t see the fun of tearing one’s heart out, and
blistering one’s hands, only to get abused by that little brute
Miller the coxswain,” said Farley.

“Why, you won't be able to sit straight in your chair for a
month,” said Chanter ; “and the captain will make you dine
at one, and fetch you out of anybody’s rooms, confound his
A BREAKFAST AT DRYSDALE’S. 27

impudence, whether he knows them or not, at oleven o’clock
every night.”

“Two cigars a day, and a pint and a half of liquid,” and
Farley inserted his cod-fish face into the tankard; “ fancy
Drysdale on training allowance !”

Here a new comer entered in a bachelor’s gown, who was
warmly greeted by the name of Sanders by Drysdale. St.Cloud
and he exchanged the coldest possible nods; and the other
two, taking the office from their mentor, stared at him through
thoir smoke, and, after a minute or two's silence, and a few
tudo half-whispered remarks amongst themsclves, went off to
play © guno at pyramids till lunchcon time. Sandors took
a cigar which Drysdale offered, and began asking him about
his friends at home, and what he had been doing in the
vacation.

They were evidently intimate, though Tom thought that
Drysdalo didn’t scem quite at his easo at first, which he
wondered at, as Sanders took his fancy at once. However,
eleven o'clock struck, and Tom had to go off to lecture, where
we cannot follow him just now, but must remain with Drys-
dale and Sanders, who chatted on very pleasantly for some
twenty minutes, till a knock came at the door. It was
not till the third summons that Drysdale shouted “Come in,”
with a shrug of his shoulders, and an impatient kick at the
sofa-cushion at his feet, as though not half pleased at the
approaching visit.

Reader) had you not ever a friend a few years older than
yourself, whose good opinion you wero anxious to keep? A
fellow teres atque rotundus ; who could do everything better
than you, from Plato and tennis down to singing a comic song
and playing quoits? If you have had, wasn’t he always in
your rooms or company whenever anything happened to show
your little weak points? Sanders, at any rate, occupied this
position towards our young friend Drysdale, and the latter,
much as ho liked Sandors’s company, would havo proferred
it at any other time than on an idle morning just at the
beginning of term, when tho gentlemon-tradesmon, who look
upon undergraduates in general, and gentlemon-commoners
in particular, as their lawful prey, are in the habit of calling
in flocks.

The new arrival was a tall, florid man, with a half servile,
half impudent, manner, and a foreign accent; dressed in
sumptuous costume, with a velvet-faced coat, and a gorgeous
plush waistcoat. Under his arm ho carried a largo parcel,
which he proceeded to open, and placed upon a sofa the con-
tents, consisting of a couple of coats, and three or four waist-
28 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

coats and pairs of trousers. He saluted Sanders with a most
obsequious bow, looked nervously at Jack, who opened one
eye from between his master’s legs and growled, and then,
turning to Drysdalo, asked if ho should havo the honour of
seeing him try on any of the clothes 4

“No; I can’t be bored with trying them on now,” said
Drysdale ; “leave them where they are.”

Mr. Schloss would like very much on his return to town,
in a day or two, to be able to assure his principals, that Mr.
Drysdale’s orders had been executed to his satisfaction. He
had also some very beautiful new stuffs with him, which he
should like to submit to Mr. Drysdale, and without more ado
began unfolding cards of the most fabulous plushes and cloths.

Drysdale glanced first at the cards and then at Sanders,
who sat puffing his cigar, and watching Schloss’s proceeslings
with a look not unlike Jack’s when any one he did not
approve of approached his master.

“Confound your patterns, Schloss,” said Drysdale ; “I tell
you I have more things than I want already.”

“The large stripe, such as these, is now very much worn in
London,” went on Schloss, without heeding the rebuff, and
spreading his cards on the table.

“D trousers,” replied Drysdale ; “you seem to think,
Schloss, that a fellow has ten pairs of legs.”

“ Monsieur is pleasod to joke,” smiled Schloss ; “but, to be
in the mode, gentlemen must have varicty.”

“Well, L won’t order any now, that’s flat,” said Drysdale.

‘* Monsieur will do as he pleases ; but it is impossible that
he should not have some plush waistcoats ; the fabric is only
just out, and is making a sensation.”

“ Now look here, Schloss ; will you go if I order a waist-
coat ?”

“Monsieur is very good; he sees how tasteful these new
patterns are.”

“T wouldn't be seen at a cock-fight in one of them; they’re
as gaudy as a salmon-fly,” said Drysdale, feeling the stuff
which the obsequious Schloss held out. “ But it seems nice
stuff, too,” he went on; “TI shouldn’t mind having a couple
of waistcoats of it of this pattern;” and he chucked across to
Schloss a dark tartan waistcoat which was lying near him,
“Have you got the stuff in that pattern ?”

“Ah! no,” said Schloss, gathering up the waistcoat ; “but
it shall not hinder. I shall have at once a loom for Monsieur
set up in Paris.”

“Set it up at Jericho if you like,” said Drysdale; “and
now go!” .

 
A BREAKFAST AT DRYSDALE’. 29

“May I ask, Mr. Schloss,” broke in Sanders, “ what it will
cost to set up the loom?”

“Ah! indeed, a trifle only ; some twelve, or perhaps four-
teen, pounds.” Sanders gave a chuckle, and puffed away at
his cigar.

“By Jove,” shouted Drysdale, jerking himself in a sitting
posture, and upsetting Jack, who went trotting about the
room, and snuffling at Schloss’s legs; ‘do you mean to say,
Schloss, you were going to make me waistcoats at fourteen
guineas apiece ?”

“Not if Monsieur disapproves. Ah! tho large hound is
not friondly to strangors ; I will call again whon Monsicur is
more at leisure.” And Schloss gathered up his cards and beat
a hasty retreat, followed by Jack with his head on one side,
and casting an enraged look at Sanders, as he slid through the
door.

“Well done, Jack, old boy!” said Sanders, patting him ;
“what a funk the fellow was in. Well, you've saved your
master a pony this fine morning. Cheap dog you've got,
Drysdale.”

“D the fellow,” answered Drysdale, “he leaves a bad
taste in one’s mouth ;” and he went to the table, took a pull
at the tankard, and then threw himself down on the sofa
again, and Jack jumped up and coiled himself round by his
master’s legs, keeping one half-open eye winking at him, and
giving an occasional wag with the end of his taper tail.

Sanders got up, and began handling tho new things. First
he held up a pair of bright blue trousers, with a red stripe
across them, Drysdale looking on from the sofa. “TI say,
Drysdale, you don’t mean to say you really ordered these
thunder-and-lightning affairs ?”+ :

“ Heaven only knows,” said Drysdale; “I daresay I did.
Td order a full suit cut out of my grandmother’s farthingale
to get that cursed Schloss out of my rooms sometimes.”

“You'll never be ablo to wear them; even in Oxford the
boys would mob you. Why don’t you kick him down stairs?”
suggested Sanders, putting down the trousers, and turning to
Drysdale.

“Well, I've been very near it once or twice; but, I don’t
know—my name’s Easy—besides, I don’t want to give up the
beast altogether ; he makes the best trousers in England.”

“ And these waistcoats,” went on Sanders; “Jet me see;
three light silk waistcoats, peach-colour, fawn-colour, and
lavender. Well, of course, you can only woar these at your
weddings. You may be married the first time in the peach
or fawn-colour; and then, if you have luck, and bury your

 

‘
30 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

first wife soon, it will be a delicate compliment to take to
No. 2 in the lavender, that being half-mourning ; but still, you
see, we're in difficulty as to one of the three, either tho peach
or tho fuwn-colour—”

Here ho was interrupted by another knock, and a boy
entered from the fashionable tobacconist’s in Oriel Lane, who
had general orders to let Drysdale have his fair share of any-
thing very special in the cigar line. He deposited a two-
pound box of cigars at three guineas the pound, on the table,
and withdrew in silence.

Then came a boot-maker with a new pair of top-boots, which

Drysdale had ordered in November, and had forgotten next
. day. This artist, wisely considering that his young patron
must have plenty of tops to last him through the hunting
season (he himself having supplied three previous pairs in
October), had retained the present pair for show in his win-
dow ; and every one knows that boots wear much better for
being kept some time before use. Now, however, as the
hunting season was drawing to a close, and the place in the
window was wanted for spring stock, he judiciously sent in
the tops, rnerely adding half-a-sovereign or so to the price for
interest on his outlay since the order. He also kindly left on
the table a pair of large plated spurs to match the boots.

Jt never rains but it pours. Sanders sat smoking his cigar
in provoking silenco, while knock succeeded knock and trades-
man followod tradesman ; each depositing some article ordered,
or supposed to have been ordered, or which ought in the
judgment of the depositors to have been ordered, by the luck-
less Drysdale: and new hats, and ties, and gloves, and pins,
jostled balsam of Neroli, and registered shaving-soap, ard
fancy Ictter-paper, and Eau de Cologne, on every available
table. A visit from two livery-stable-keepers in succession
followed, each of whom had several new leaders which they
were anxious Mr, Drysdale should try as soon as possible.
Drysdale growled and grunted, and wished them or Sanders
at the bottom of the sea; however, he consoled himself with
the thought that the worst was now past,—there was no other

possible supplier of undergraduate wants who could arrive.

Not so; in another minute a gentle knock came*&t the
door. Jack pricked up his ears and wagged his tail ; Drysdale
recklessly shouted, “Come in!” the door slowly opened about
eighteen inches, and a shock head of hair entered the room,
from which one lively little gimlet eye went glancing about
into every corner. The other eye was closed, but whether as
a perpetual wink to indicate the unsleeping wariness of the
owner, or because that hero had really lost the power of using
 

 
     

 

 

«YI04Q VD MOA ,, Of YUE snoss0g SASIN]Y 20£—,,18Vfy. It ,, V 49jfv uwoy sqvpshag

 

i

ta |

 

“It

 
THE ST. AMBROSE BOAT-CLUB. 33

the slightest difficulty in carrying out this resolve. After
such a passage as they two had had together that afternoon,
he felt that the usual outworks of acquaintanceship had been
cleared at a bound, and looked upon Hardy already as an old
friend to whom he could talk out his mind as freely as he had
been used to do to his old tutor at school, orto Arthur. More-
over, as there were already several things in his head which
he was anxious to ventilate, he was all the more pleased that

chance had thrown him across a man of so much older stand- _

ing than himself, and one to whom he instinctively felt that
ho could look up.

Accordingly, after grace had been said, and he saw that
Hardy had not finished his dinner, but sat down again when
the fellows had left the hall, he strolled out, meaning to wait
for his victim outside, and seize upon him then and there ; so
he stopped on the steps outside the hall-door, and, to pass the
time, joined himself to one or two other men with whom he
had a speaking acquaintance, who were also hanging about.
While they were talking, Hardy came out of hall, and Tom
turned and stepped forward, meaning to speak to him. To
his utter discomfiture, Hardy walked quickly away, look-
ing straight before him, and without showing, by look or
gesture, that he was conscious of our hero’s existence, or had
ever seen him before in his life. bigs

Tom was so taken aback that he made no effort to @illow.
He just glanced at his companions to see whether they,had
noticed the occurrence, and was glad to see that they had not
(being deep in the discussion of the merits of 2 new hunter
of Simmons’s, which one of them had been riding); so he
walked away by himself to consider what it could mean. But
the more he puzzled about it, the less could he understand it.
Surely, he thought, Hardy must have seen me ; and yet, if
he had, why did he not recognise me? My cap and gown
can’t be such a disguise as all that. And yet common decency
must have led him to ask whether I was any the worse for
my ducking, if he knew me.

He scouted the notion, which suggested itself once or twice,
that Hardy meant to cut him; and so, not being able to
come to any reasonable conclusion, suddenly bethought him
that he was asked to a wine-party ; and, putting his specula-
tions aside for the moment, with the full intention noverthe-
less of clearing up the mystery as soon as possible, he belook
himself to the rooms of his entertainer.

They were fair-sized rooms in the second quadrangle,
“wnished plainly but well, sc far as Tom could judge ; but,

3 they were now laid out fur the wine-party, they had lost
D
34 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

all individual character for the time. Every one of us, I
suppose, is fond of studying the rooms, chambers, dens in
short, of whatever sort they may be, of our friends and ac-
quaintance—at least, I know that I myself like to see what
sort of a chair a man sits in, where he puts it, what books lie
or stand on the shelves nearest his hand, what the objects are
which he keeps most familiarly before him, in that particular
nook of the earth’s surface in which he is most at home,
where he pulls off his coat, collar, and boots, and gets into
. an old easy shooting-jacket, and his broadest slippers. Tine
houses and fine rooms have litile attraction for most men, and
those who have the finest drawing-rooms are probably the
most bored by them; but the den of a man you like, or are
disposed to like, has the strongest and the strangest attraction
for you. However, an Oxford undergraduate’s room, set out
for a wine-party, can tell you nothing. All the characteristics
are shoved away into the background, and thero is nothing to
be seen but a long mahogany set out with bottles, glasses, and
dessert. In the present instance the preparations for festivity
were pretty much what they ought to be: good sound port
and sherry, biscuits, and a plate or two of nuts and dried
fruits. The host, who sat at the head of the board, was one
of the mainstays of the College boat-club. Te was treasurer
of the club, and also a sorb of bouting nurse, who looked-up
andv4ggined the young oars, and in this capacity had been in
con d of the freshmen’s four-oar, in which Tom had been
learning his rudiments. He was a heavy, burly man, naturally
, awkward in his movements, but gifted with a sort of steady
« dogged enthusiasm, and by dint of hard and constant train-
ing had made himself into a most useful oar, fit for any place
in the middle of the boat. In the two years of his residence
he had pulled down to Sandford every day except Sundays, and
much farther whenever he could get anybody to accompany
him. He was the most good-natured man iu the world, very
badly dressed, very short-sighted, and called everybody “ old
fellow.” His name was simple Smith, generally known as
Diogenes Smith, from an eccentric habit which he lad of
muking an easy chair of his hip-bath. Malicious acyuaintance
declared that when Smith first came up, and, having paid the
valuation for the furniture in his rooms, came to inspect the
same, the tub in question had been loft by chance in the
sitting-room, and that Smith, not having the faintest idea of
its proper use, had by the exercise of his natural reason come
to the conclusion that it could only be meant for a man to sit
in, and so had kept it in his sitting-room, and taken to it
as an arm-chair. This I have reason to believe was a libel.

m8

 
TILE ST. AMBROSE BOAT-CLUB. 35

Certain it is, however, that in his first term he was discovered
sitting solemnly in his tub, by his fire-side, with his spectacles
on, playing the flute—the only other recreation besides boating
in which he indulged ; and no amount of quizzing could get
him out of the habit. When alone, or with only one or two
friends in his room, he still occupied the tub ; and declared
that it was the most porfect of soats hitherto invented, and,
above all, adapted for the recreation of a boating man, to
whom cushioned seats should be an abomination. He was
naturally a very hospitable man, and on this night was par-
ticularly anxious to make his rooms pleasant to all comers, as
it was a sort of opening of the boating season. This wine of
his was a business matter, in fact, to which Diogenes had
invited officially, as treasurer of the boat-club, every man who
had ever shown the least tendency to pulling,—many with
whom ho had scarecly a nodding acquaintance. For Miller,
the coxswain, had come up at last. He had taken his B.A.
degree in the Michaelmas term, and had been very near
starting for a tour in the Fast. Upon turning the matter
over in his mind, however, Miller had come to the conclusion
that Palestine, and Egypt, and Greece could not run away,
but that, unless he was there to keep matters going, the St.
Ambrose boat would lose the best chance it was ever likely
to have of getting to the head of the river. So hg
patriotically resolved to reside till Juno, read divinif
coach the racing crew; and had written to Diogenes
together the whole boating interest of the College, that
might set to work at once in good earnest. ‘Tom, and the
three or four other freshmen present, were duly presented to
Miller as they came in, who looked them over as the colonel
of a crack regiment might look ‘over horses at Horncastle-fair,
with a single eye to their bone and muscle, and how much
work might be got out of them. They then gathered towards
the lower end of the long table, and surveyed the celebrities
at the upper end with much respect. Miller, the coxswain,
sat on the host’s right hand,—a slight, resolute, fiery little
man, with curly black hair. He was peculiarly qualified by
nature for the task which ho had set himself; and it takes
no mean qualities to keep a boat’s crew well together and in
order. Perhaps he erred a little on the side of over-strictness
and severity ; and he certainly would have been more popular
had his manner been a thought more courteous ; but the men
who rebelled most against his tyranny grumblingly confessed
that he was a first-rate coxswain.

* A very different man was the captain of the boat, who sat
opposite to Miller; altogether, a noble specimen of a very

D2

  
  
 

 
36 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

noble type of our countrymen. Tall and strong of body;
courageous and even-tempered ; tolerant of all men ; sparing
of speech, but ready in action; a thoroughly well-balanced,
modest, quiet Englishman ; one of those who do a good stroke
of the work of the country without getting much credit for
it, or ever becoming aware of the fact; for the last thing
such men understand is how to blow their own trumpets.
He was perhaps too easy for the captain of St. Ambrose’s
boat-club ; at any rate, Miller was always telling him so. But,
if he was not strict enough with others, he never spared him-
self, and was as good as three men in the boat at a pinch.
But if IT venture on more introductions, my readers will get
bewildered ; so I must close the list, much as I should like to
make them known to “fortis Gyas fortisque Cloanthus,” who
sat round the chiefs, laughing and consulting, and speculating
on the chances of the coming races. No; stay, there is one
other man they must make room for. Ifere he comes, rather
late, in a very glossy hat, the only man in the room not in
cap and gown. He walks up and takes his place by the side
of the host as a matter of course; a handsome, pale man,
with a dark, quick eye, conscious that he draws attention
wherever he goes, and apparently of opinion that it is his
right.
“Who is that who has just como in in beaver 4” said Tom,
‘ p¢ the next man to him.
Mm, don’t you know? that’s Blake ; he’s the most won-
depitellow in Oxford,” answered his neighbour.

“ How do you mean 1” said Tom.

ee “Why, he can do everything better than almost anybody,

“and without any trouble at all. Miller was obliged to have
him in the boat last year, though he never trained a bit.
Then he’s in the eleven, and is a wonderful rider, and tennis-
player, and shot.”

“Ay, and he’s so awfully clever with it all,” joined in the
man on the other side. “ He'll be a safe first, though I don’t
believe he reads more than you or I. He can write songs,
too, as fast as you can talk nearly, and sings them won-
derfully.”

“Ts he of our College, then 4”

“Yes, of course, or he couldn’t have been in our boat last
year.”

; ‘But I don’t think T ever saw him in chapel or hall.”

“No, 1 daresay not. le hardly ever goes to either, and
yet he manages never to get hauled up much, uo one knows
how. He never gets up now till the afternoon, and sits up
nearly all night playing cards with the fastest fellows, or

   
TUE ST. AMBROSE BOAT-CLUB. 37

going round singing glees at three or four in the morn-
ing.’

“Tom sipped his port and looked with great interest at the
admirable Crichton of St. Ambrose’s; and, after watching
him a few minutes, said in a low voice to his neighbour,—

“Tow wretched he looks! I never saw a sadder face.”

Poor Blake! one can’t help calling him “ poor,” although
he himself would have winced at it more than at any other
name you could have called him. You might have admired,
feared, or wondered at him, and he would have been pleased ;
the object of his life was to raise such feelings in his neigh-
bours ; but pity was the last which he would have liked to
excite.

Ile was indeed a wonderfully gifted fellow, full of all sorts
of energy and talent, and power and tenderness ; and yet, as
his faco told only too truly to any one who watched him when
he was exerting himself in society, one of the most wretched
men in the College. He had a passion for success—for beat-
ing everybody else in whatever he took in hand, and that,
too, without seeming to make any great effort himself. The
doing a thing well and thoroughly gave him no satisfaction
unless he could feel that he was doing it better and more
easily than A, B, or C, and that they folt and acknowledged
this. Ho had had his full swing of success for twee
and now the Nemesis was coming. sa Ga

For, although not an extravagant man, many “Oi
pursuits in which ho had eclipsed. all rivals were far beyond, wits
the means of any but a rich one, and Blake was not rich. % 4
He had a fair allowance, but by the end of his first year was
considerably in debt, and, at the time we are speaking of, the
whole pack of Oxford tradesmen into whose books he had
got (having smelt ont tho leanness of his expectations), were
upon him, besieging him for payment. This miserable and
constant annoyance was wearing his soul out. This was the
reason why his oak was sported, and he was never seen till
the afternoons, and turned night into day. Ilo was too proud
to como to an understanding with his persecutors, even had it
been possible ; and now, at his sorest need, his whole scheme
of life was failing him ; his love of success was turning. into
ashes in his mouth ; he felt much more disgust than pleasure
at his trinmphs over other men, and yet the habit of striving
for sudh successes, notwithstanding its irksomeness, was too
strong to be resisted.

Poor Blake! he was living on from hand to mouth, flash-
ing out with all his old brilliancy and power, and forcing
himself to take the lead in whatever company he might be ;

   
 
 

 
or
vito
"es aa he
«aml

38 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

but utterly lonely and depressed when by himself—reading
feverishly in secret, in a desperate effort to retrieve all by
high honours and a fellowship, As Tom said to his neigh-
pour, there was no sadder face than his to be seen in Ox-
ford.

And yet at this vory winc-party he was tho lite of every-
thing, as he sat up there between Diogenes—whom he kept
in a constant sort of mild epileptic fit, from laughter, and
wine going the wrong way (for whenever Diogenes raised his
glass Blake shot him with some joke)—and the Captain,
who watched him with the most undisguised admiration, <A
singular contrast, the two men! Miller, though Blake was
the’ torment of his life, relaxed after the first quarter of an
hour ; and our hero, by the same time, gave himself credit
for being a much greater ass than he was, for laving ever
thought Blake’s face a sad one.

When the room was quite full, and enough wine had been
drunk to open the hearts of the guests, Diogenes rose on a
signal from Miller, and opened the budget. The financial
statement was a satisfactory one; the club was almost free
of debt; and, comparing their position with that of other
colleges, Diogenes advised that they might fairly burden
thgmasclves a little more, and then, if thoy would sland a

; ten shillings a man, they might have a new boat,

e believed they all would agree had become necessary.

supported the new boat in a pungent litile speech ; and
the Captain, when appealed to, nodded and said he thought
they must have one. So the small supplies and the large
addition to the club debt were voted unanimously, and the
Captain, Miller, and Blake, who had many notions as to the
flooring, lines, and keel of a racing boat, were appointed to
order and superintend the building.

Soon afterwards, coffee came in and cigars were lighted ;
a large section of the party went off to play pool, others to
stroll about the streets, others to whist ; a few, let us hope,
to their own rooms to read; but these latter were a sadly
small minority oven in the quietest of St. Ambrose parties.

Tom, who was fascinated by the heroes at the head of the
table, sat steadily on, sidling up towards them as the inter-
mediate places became vacant, and at last attained the next
chair but one to the Captain, where for the time he sat in
perfect bliss. Blake and Miller wero tolling boating stories
of the Henley and Thames regattas, the latter of which had
been lately started with great éclat; and from these great
yearly events, and the deeds of prowess dono thereat, the talk
came gradually round to the next races.
THE ST. AMBROSE BOAT-OLUB. 39

“ Now, Captain,” said Miller, suddenly, “have you thought
yet what now men we are to try in the crew this year?”

“No, ’pon my honour I haven't,” said the Captain, “I’m
reading, and have no time to spare. Besides, after all, there’s
lots of time to think about it. Ifere, wo're only half through
Lent term, and the races don’t begin till the end of Faster
tev.”

“Tb wows do,” said Miller, “we must get the crew to-
gether this term.”

“Woll, you and Smith put your heads together and manage

it,” said the Captain. “TI will go down any day, and as often
as you like, at.tiwo o'clock.”

“Let’s see,” said Miller to Smith, “how many of the old crew
have we left?”

“Five, counting Blake,” answered Diogenes.

“Counting me! well, that’s cool,” laughed Blake; “you
old tub haunting flute-player, why am I not to be counted ?”

“You never will train, you see,” said Diogenes.

“Smith is quite right,” said Miller ; “there’s no counting
on you, Blake. Now, be a good fellow, and promise to be
regular this year.”

“Tl promise to do my work in a race, which is more than
some of your best-trained men will do,” said Blake, rather
piqued. vg

“Well, you know what I think on the subject,” said
“but who have we got for the other three places?”

“There’s Drysdale would do,” said Diogenes ; “I heard he
was a capital oar at Eton; and so, though I don’t know him,
I managed to get him onco down last term. He would do
famously for No. 2, or No. 3 if he would pull.”

“Do you think he will, Blake? You know him, I suppose,”
said Miller.

“Yes, I know him well enough,” said Blake ; and, shrugging
his shoulders, added, “I don’t think you will get him to train
much.”

“Woll, we must try,” said Miller. “Now, who else is
there ?”

Smith went through four or five names, at each of which
_ Miller shook his head.

' Any promising freshmen?” said he at last.

“None better than Brown here,” said Smith; “I think
he'll do well, if he will only work, and stand being coached.”

“Have you ever pulled much?” said Miller.

“No,” said Tom, “never till this last’ month—since ite
been up here.”

“ All the better,” said Miller; “now, Captain, you hear ;

 
40 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

we may probably have to go in with three new hands; they
mus? get into your stroke this term, or we shall be nowhere.”

“Very well,” said the Captain ; “I'll give from two till five
any days you like.” .

“ And now let’s go and have one pool,” said Blake, getting
up. “Come, Captain, just one little pool after all this
business.”

Diogenes insisted on staying to play his flute; Miller was
engaged ; but the Captain, with a little coaxing, was led away
by Blake, and good-naturedly asked Tom to accompany them,
when he saw that he was looking as if he would like it. So
the three went off to the billiard-rooms ; Tom in such spirits
at the chance of being tried in the crew, that he hardly noticed
the exceedingly bad exchange which he had involuntarily
made of his new cap and gown for a third-year cap with the
board broken into several pieces, and a fusty old gown which
had been about college probably for ten generations. Under-
graduate morality in the matter of caps and gowns seems to be
dounded on the celebrated maxim, “ Propriété c’est le vol.”

They found the St. Ambrose pool-room full of the fast set ;
and Tom enjoyed his game much, though his three lives were
soon disposed of. The Captain and Blake were the last lives
on the board, and divided the pool at Blako’s suggestion. He
hag#searcely nerve for playing out a single-handed match with
such n iron-nerved, steady piece of humanity as the Captain,
thei, he was the more brilliant player of the two. ‘The party
then broke up, and Tom returned to his rooms ; and, when he
was by himself again, his thoughts recurred to Hardy. How
odd, he thought, that they never mentioned him for the boat !
Could he have done anything to be ashamed of? How was
it that nobody seemed to know him, and he to know nobody ?

Most readers, I doubt not, will think our hero very green
for being puzzled at so simple a matter; and, no doubt, the
steps in the social scale in England are very clearly marked
out, and we all come to the appreciation of the gradations
svoner or later. But our hero’s previous education must be
taken into consideration. He had not been instructed at
home to worship mere conventional distinctions of rank or
wealth, and had gone toa school which was not frequented by
persons of rank, and where no one knew whether a hoy was
heir to a principality, or would have to jight his own way in
the world. So he was rather taken by surprise at what ho
found to be the state of things at St. Ambrose’s and didn’t
easily realize it,
HARDY, THE SERVITOR. : 41

CHAPTER V.
HARDY, THE SERVITOR.

Ir was not long before Tom had effected his object in part.
That is to say, he had caught Hardy several times in the
Quadrangle coming out of Lecture, Hall, or Chapel, and had
fastened himself upon him ; often walking with him even up
to the door of his rooms. But there matters ended. Hardy
was very civil and gentlemanly ; he even seemed pleased with
the volunteered companionship ; but there was undoubtedly
a coolness about him which Tom could not make out. But,
as he only liked Hardy more, the more he saw of him, he very
soon made up his mind to break ground himself, and to make
a dash at any rate for something more than a mere speaking
acquaintance.

One evening he had as usual walked from Hall with Hardy
up to his door. They stopped a moment talking, and then
Hardy, hall-opening the door, said, “Well, good-night ;
perhaps we shall meet on the river to-morrow,” and was going
in, when Tom, looking him in the face, blurted out, “TI say,
Hardy, I wish you'd Ict me come in and sit with you a bit.”

“JT nevor ask a man of our college into my rooms,” answered
the other, “but come in by all means if you like ;” and so
they entered.

The room was the worst, both in situation and furniture,
which Tom had yet seen. It was on the ground floor, with
only one window, which looked out into a back yard, where
were the offices of the college. All day, and up to nine o’clock
at night, the yard and offices were filled with scouts ; boys
cleaning boots and knives; bed-makers emptying slops and
tattling seandal; scullions peeling potatoes and listening ;
and the butchers’ and green-grocers’ men who supply the
college, and loitered about to gossip and get a taste of the
college ale before going about their business. The room was
large, but low and close, and the floor uneven. The furniture
did not add to the cheerfulness of the apartment. It consisted
of one large table in the middle, covered with an old chequered
table-cloth, and an Oxford table near the window, on which
lay half-a-dozen books with writing materials. A couplo- of
plain Windsor chairs occupied the two sides of the fireplace,
and half-a-dozen common wooden chairs stood against the
opposite wall, three on each side of a pretty-well-filled book-
case ; while an old rickety sofa, covered with soiled chintz,
leaned against the wall which fronted the window, as if to
42 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

rest its lame leg. The carpet and rug were dingy, and de-
cidedly the worse for wear; and the college had evidently
neglected to paper the room or whitewash the ceiling for
several generations. On the mantel-piece reposed a few long
clay pipes, and a brown earthenware receptacle for tobacco,
togothor wilh a japamned tin case, shaped like a digure of
eight, the use of which puzzled Tom exceedingly. One
modestly-framed drawing of a 10-gun brig hung above, and
at the side of the fireplace a sword and belt. All this Tom
‘had time to remark by the light of the fire, which was burning
| brightly, while his host produced a couple of brass candlesticks
‘from his cupboard and lighted up, and drew the curtain before
his window. ‘Then Tom instinctively left off taking his notes,
for fear of hurting the other’s feclings (just as he would have
gone on doing so, and making remarks on everything, had the
rooms been models of taste and comfort), and throwing his
cap and gown on the sofa, sat down on one of the Windsor
chairs.

“ What a jolly chair,” said he; “where do you get them?
I should like to buy one.”

“Yes, they’re comfortable enough,” said Hardy, “but the
reason I have them is, that they’re the cheapest arm-chaire
one can get. I like an arm-chaiz, and can’t afford to have any
other than these,”

Tom dropped the subject of the chairs at once, following
his instinct again, which, sad to say, was already teaching
him that poverty is a disgrace to a Briton, and that, until you
know a man thoroughly, you must always seem to assume
that he is the owner of unlimited ready money. Somehow
or another, he began to feel embarrassed, and couldn’t think
of anything to say, as his host took down the pipes and
tobacco from the mantel-picce, aud placed them on the table.
However, anything was better than silence; so he began
again. -

“Very good-sized rooms yours seem,” said he, taking up a
pipe mechanically.

“Big enough, for the matter of that,” answered the other,
“but very dark and noisy in the day-time.”

“So I should think,” said Tom ; “do you know, I’d sooner,
now, have my freshman’s rooms up in the garrets. I wondar
you don’t change.”

“T get these for nothing,” said his host, putting his long
clay to the candle, and puffing out volumes of smoke. Ton:
felt more and more unequal to the situation, and filled his
pipe in silence. The first whiff made him cough, as he
wasn’t used to the fragrant weed in this shape.
HARDY, THE SERVITOR. 43

“ [’m afraid you don’t smoke tobacco,” said his host from
behind his own cloud; “shall I go out and fetch you a
cigar? I don’t smoke them myself; I can’t afford it.”

“No, thank you,” said Tom, blushing for shame,:as if he
had come there only to insult his host, and wishing himself
heartily out of it, “I’ve got my case here; and the fact is, I
will smoke a cigar if you'll allow me, for I’m not up to pipes
yet. I wish you’d take some,” he went on, emptying his
cigars on to the table.

“ Thank’ee,” replied his host, “I profor a pipe. And now
what will you havo to drink? I don’t kcep wine, but I can
got a bottle of anything you like from the common room.
That’s one of our privileges,”—he gave a grim chuckle as he
emphasised the word “ our.”

“Who on earth are we?” thought Tom; “servitors, I
suppose,” for he knew already that undergraduates in general
could not get wine from the college cellars.

“‘T don’t care a straw about wine,” said he, feeling very hot
about the ears ; “a glass of beer, or anything you have here—
or tea.”

“Well, I can give you a pretty good glass of whiskey,”
said his host, going to the cupboard, and producing a black
bottle, two tumblers of different sizes, some little wooden
toddy ladles, and sugar in an old cracked glass. ae

Tom vowed that, if there was ono thing in the world he
liked moro than another, it was whiskey ; and began measuring
out tho liquor carefully ‘into his tumblor, and rolling it round
between his eye and the candle, and smelling it, to show what
a treat it was to him; while his host put the kettle on the
fire, to ascertain that it was quite boiling, and then, as it
spluttered and fizzed, filled up the two tumblers, and restored
it to its place on the hob.

Tom swallowed some of the mixture, which nearly made
him cough again—for, though it was very good, it was also
very potent. However, by an effort he managed 1o swallow
his cough ; he would about as soon have lost a little finger as let
it out. Then, to his great relief, his host took the pipe from
his lips, and inquired, “‘ How do you like Oxford ?”

“J hardly know yet,” said Tom ; “the first few days I was
delighted with going about and seeing the buildings, and find-
ing out who had lived in each of the old colleges, and pottering
about in the Bodleian, and fancying I should like to be a great
scholar. Thon I met several old schoolfcllowa going about,
who are up of other colleges, and went to their rooms and
talked over old times. But nono of my very intimate frionds
are up yet, and unless you care very much about a man
44 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

already, you don’t scem to be likely to get intimate with him
up horo, unless he is at your own college.”

Ho paused, as if expecting an answer.

“T daresay not,” said Tardy ; “ but T novor was at a public
school, unluckily, and so am no judge.”

“Well, then, as to the college life,” went on Tom, “it’s all
very well as far as it goes. There’s plenty of liberty, and
good food. And the men seem nice fellows—many of them,
at least, as far as I can judge. But I can’t say that I like it
as much as I liked our school life.”

“T don’t understand,” said Hardy. ‘ Why not?”

“Oh! T hardly know,” said Tom laughing ; “I don’t seem
as if I had anything to do here ; that’s one reason, I think.
And then, you see, at Rugby I was rather a great man.
There one had a share in the ruling of 300 boys, and a good
deal of responsibility ; but here one has only just to take
care of oneself, and keep out of scrapes; and that’s what I
never could do. What do you think a fellow ought to do,
now, up here?”

“Oh, I don’t soo much difficulty in that,” said his host,
smiling ; “get up your lectures well, to begin with.”

“ But my lectures are a farce,” said Tom ; “I’ve done all
the books over and over again. They don’t take me an hour
a day to get up.”

“Well, then, sct to work reading something regularly—
reading for your degree, for instance.”

“Oh, hang it! I can’t look so far forward as that; I
sha’n’t be going up for three years.”

“You can’t begin too early. You might go and talk to
your college-tutor about it.”

“So I did,” said Tom ; “at least I meant to do it. For he
asked me and two other freshmen to breakfast the other
morning, and I was going to open out to him; but when I
got there I was quite shut up. He never looked one of us
in the face, and talked in set sentences, and was cold, and
formal, and condescending. ‘ The only bit of advice he gave
us was to have nothing to do with boating—just the one
thing which I feel a real interest in. I couldn’t get out a
word of what I wanted to say.”

‘Tt is unlucky, certainly, that our present tutors take so
little interest in anything which the men care about. But it
is more from shyness than anything else, that manner which
you noticed. You may be sure that he was more wretched
and embarrassed than any of you.”

“Well, but now J should really like to know what you
did yourself,’ said Tom; “you are the only man of much
HARDY, THE SERVITOR. 46

older standing than myself whom I know at all yet—I mean
I don’t know anybody else well enough to talk about this
sort of thing to them. What did you do, now, besides
learning to pull, in your first year?”

“T had learnt to pull before I came up here,” said Hardy.
“JT really hardly remember what I did besides read. You
see, I came up with a definite purpose of reading. My father
was very anxious that I should be a good scholar. Then my
position in the college and my poverty naturally kept me out
of many things which other men do.”

Yom flushed again at the ugly word, but not so much as at
first. Hardy couldn’t mind tho subject, or he would never
be forcing it up at every turn, he thought.

“You wouldn’t think it,” he began again, harping on the
same string, “but I can hardly tell you how I miss the sort
of responsibility I was talking to you about. I have no
doubt I shall get the vacuum filled up before long, but for
the life of me I can’t see how yet.”

“You will be a very lucky fellow if you don’t find it quite
as much as you can do to keep yourself in order up here.
It is about the toughest part of a man’s life, I do believe,
the time he has to spend here. My university life has been
so different altogether from what yours will be, that my
experience isn’t likely to benefit you.”

“J wish you would try me, though,” said Tom; “ you
don’t know what a teachable sort of fellow I am, if anybody
will take me the right way. You taught me to scull, you
know ; or at Icast put me in the way to learn. But sculling,
and rowing, and cricket, and all the rest of it, with such
reading as I am likely to do, won’t be enough. I feel sure of
that already.”

“T don’t think it will,” said Hardy. “No amount of
physical or mental work will fill the vacuum you were talking
of just now. It is the empty house swept and garnished,
which the boy might have had glimpses of, but the man finds
yawning within him, and which must be filled somehow. It’s
a pretty good three years’ work to learn how to keep the devils
out of it, more or less, by the time you take your degree. At
least I have found it so.”

Hardy rose and took a turn or two up and down his room.
He was astonished at finding himself talking so unreservedly
to one of whom he knew 50 little, and half-wished the words
recalled. He lived much alone, and thought himself morbid
and too self-conscious; why should ho be filling a youngster’s
head with puzzles? How did he know that they were think
ing of the samo thing?
46 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

But the spoken word cannot be recalled; it must go on its
way for good or evil ; and this one set the hearer staring into
the ashes, and putting many things together in his head.

It was some minutes before he broke silence, but at last he
gathered up his thoughts, and said, “Well, I hope T sha’n’t
shirk when the time comes. You don’t think a fellow need
shut himself up, though? I’m sure I shouldn’t be any the
better for that.”

“No, I don’t think you would,” said Hardy.

“Because, you see,” Tom went on, waxing bolder and
more confidential, “if I were to take to moping by myself, I
shouldn’t read as you or any sensible fellow would do; I
know that well enough. I should just begin, sitting with
my legs up on the mantel-piece, and looking into my own
inside. I see you are laughing, but you know what I mean,
don’t you, now ?”

“Yes; staring into the vacuum you were talking of just
now; it all comes back to that,” said Hardy.

“Well, perhaps it does,” said Tom; “and I don’t believe it
does a fellow a bit of good to be thinking about himsclf and
his own doings.”

“Only he can’t help himself,” said Hardy. “Let him
throw himself as he will into all that is going on up here,
after all he must be alone for a great part of his time—all
night at any rate—and when he gets his oak sported, it’s all
up with him. Ife must be looking more or less iuto his own
inside, as you call it.”

“Then I hope he won’t find it as ugly a business as I do.
If he does, I’m sure he can’t be worse employed.”

“T don’t know that,” said Hardy ; “he can’t learn anything
worth learning in any other way.”

“Qh, T like that!” said Tom; “it’s worth learning how to
play tennis, and how to speak the truth. You can’t learn
either by thinking about yourself ever so much.”

“You must know the truth before you can speak it,” said
Hardy.

“So you always do in plenty of time.”

“Tow ?” said Hardy.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Tom; “by a sort of instinct, I
suppose. I never in my life felé any doubt about what I
ought .to say or do; did you?”

“Well, yours is a good, comfortable, working belief, at any
tate,” said Hardy, smiling; “and I should advise you to hold
on to it as long as you can.”

“But you don’t think I can for very Jong, eh?”

“No: but men aro very different. There's no saying. If
   
 
  
   
 

MWARDY, Jt SERVITOR, 47

of the self-dissecting business alto-
ould you have brought the subject up
t looks awkward for you, doesn’t it?”

to feel rather forlorn at this suggestion, and

you were going to get
gether though, w
at all to-night 4

“Tow do you get on in the boat? I saw you going down
to-day, and thought the time much better.”

Tom felt greatly relieved, as he was beginning to find him-
self in rather deep water: so he rushed into boating with
great zest, and the two chatted on very pleasantly on that and '
other like matters.

The college clock struck during a pause in their talk, and
Tom looked at his watch.

“ight o'clock, I declare,” he said; “why I must have
been here more than two hours. I’m afraid, now, you have
been wanting to work, and I have kept you from it with my
talk.”

“No, its Saturday night. Besides, I don’t get much
society that I care about, and so I enjoy it all the more.
Won’t you stop and have some tea?”

Tom gladly consented, and his host produced a somewhat
dilapidated set of crockery, and proceeded to brew the drink
Icast appreciated at St. Ambrose’s. Tom watched him in
silence, much exercised in his mind as to what mannor of
man he had fallen upon; very much astonished at himself
for having opened out so freely, and feeling a desire to know
more of Hardy, not unmixcd with a sort of nervousness as to
how he was to accomplish it.

When Hardy sat down again and began pouring out the
tea, curiosity overcame, and he opened with—

“So you read most nights, after Hall?”

“Yos, for two or three hours; longer, when I am in a
good humour.”

“What, all by yourself?”

“Generally ; but once or twice a week Grey comes in to
compare notes. Do you know him?”

“No; at least he hasn’t called on me. I have just spoken
to him.”

“IIe is a quiet fellow, and I daresay doesn’t call on any
man unless he knew something of him before.”

“Don’t you?”

“Never,” said Hardy, shortly; and added after a short
pause, “very few men would thank me if I did ; most would
think it impertinent, and I’m too proud to risk that.”

Tom was on the point of asking why; but the uncom-
48 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

fortable feeling which he had ~~ came back on

hin.
“J suppose one very soon gets tired of the wine and

supper-party life, though I own I find it pleagant enough
now.” ;

“T have never been tired,” said Hardy; “servitors are not
troubled with that kind of thing. If they were I wouldn’t
go unless I could return them, and that I can’t afford.”

“There he goes again,” thought Tom; “why will he be
throwing that old story in my face over and over again? he
can’t think I care about his poverty; I won’t change the sub-
ject this time, at any rate.” And so he said:

“You don’t mean to say that it makes any real difference to
a man in society up here, whether he is poor or rich; I mean,
of course, if he is a gentleman and a good fellow?”

“Yes, it does—the very greatest possible. But don’t take
my word for it. Keep your eyes open and judge for yourself;
I daresay I’m prejudiced on the subject.”

“Well, I shan’t believe it if I can help it,” said Tom ;
“you know you said just now that you never called on any
one. Perhaps you don’t give men a fair chance. They might
be glad to know you if you would let them, and may think
it’s your fault that they don’t.”

“Very possibly,” said Hardy; “TI tell you not to take my
word for it.”

“Tt upsets all one’s ideas so,” went on Tom: “why, Oxford
ought to be the place in England where money should count
for nothing. Surely, now, such a man as Jervis, our captain,
has more influence than all the rich men in the college put
together, and is more looked up to?”

“He's one of a thousand,” said Hardy ; “handsome, strong,
good-tempered, clever, and up to everything. Besides, he
isn’t a poor man; and mind, I don’t say that if he were he
wouldn’t be where he is. J am speaking of the rule, and not
of the exceptions.”

Here Hardy’s scout came in to say that the Dean wanted to
speak to him. So he put on his cap and gown, and Tom rose
also.
“Well, ’'m sorry to turn you out,” said Hardy, “and I’m
afraid I’ve been very surly and made you very uncomfortable.
You won’t come back again in a hurry.”

“Indeed I will though, if you will let me,” said Tom i
“T have enjoyed my evening immensely.”

“Then come whenever you like,” said Hardy.

a “But I am afraid of interfering with your reading,” said
om, :
HARDY, THE SERVITOR. 49

“Qh, you needn’t mind that; I have plenty of time on my
hands; besides, one can’t read “all night, and from eight till
ten youll find me generally idle.”

“Then you'll see me often enough. But promise, now, tu
turn me out whenever I am in the way.”

“Very well,” said Hardy, laughing; and so they parted for
the time.

Some twenty minutes afterwards Hardy returned to his
room after his interview with the Dean, who merely wanted
to speak to him about some matter of college business. He
flung his cap and gown on to tho sofa, and began to walk up
and down his room, at first hurriedly, but soon with his usual
regular tramp. However expressive a man’s face may be,
and however well you may know it, it is simply nonsense to
say that you can tell what he is thinking about by looking at
it, as many of us are apt to boast. Still more absurd would
it be to expect readers to know what Hardy is thinking about,
when. they have never had the advantage of seeing his face
even in a photograph. Wherefore, it would seem that the
author is bound on such occasions to put his readers on equal
vantage-ground with himself, and not only to tell them what
a man does, but, so far as may be, what he is thinking about
also.

His first thought, then, was one of pleasure at having been
sought out by one who seemed to be just the sort oftfriend he
would like to have. He contrasted our hero with the few
men with whom he generally lived, and for some of whom ho
had a high esteem—whose only idea of exercise was a two
hours’ constitutional walk in the afternoons, and whose life
was chiefly spent over books and behind sported oaks—and
felt that this was more of a man after his own heart. Then
came doubts whether his new friend would draw back when
he had been up a little longer, and knew more of the place.
At ony rate he had said and done nothing to tempt him ;
“if he pushes the acquaintance—and I think he will—it will
be because he likes me for myself. And I can do him good
too, I feel sure,” he went on, as he ran over rapidly his own
life for tho last three years. “Perhaps he won't flounder
into all the sloughs that I have had to drag through ; he will
get too much of the healthy, active life up here for that,
which I have never had; but some of them he must get into.
All the companionship of boating and cricketing, and wine-
parties and supper-parties, and all the reading in the world
won't keep him from many a long hour of mawkishness,
and discontent, and emptiness of heart; he feels that already
aimself, . Am I sure of that, eae I may be only reading
50 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

myself into him. At any rate, why should I have helped to
trouble him ‘before the time? ‘Was that a friend’s part?
‘Well, he must face it, and the sooner the better perhaps.
At any rate it is done. But what a blessed thing if one can
only help a youngster like this to fight his way through the
cold clammy atmosphere which is always hanging over him,
and ready to settle down on him—can help to keep some
living faith in him, that the world, Oxford and all, isn’t a
respectable piece of machinery set going some centuries back !
Ah! it’s an awful business, that temptation to believe, or
think you believe, in a dead God. Tt has nearly broken my
back a score of times. What are all the temptations of the
world, the flesh, and the devil to this? It includes thom all.
Well, I bolievo I can help him, and, please God, I will, if he
will only let me; and the very sight of him does me good; so
I won’t believe we went down the lasher together for no-
thing.”

And so at last Hardy finished his walk, took down a volume
of Don Quixote from his shelves, and sat down for an hour’s
enjoyment before turning in.

 

CHAPTER VI.
HOW DRYSDALE AND BLAKE WENT FISHING.

“ DrysDALE, what’s a servitor ?”

“How the deuce should I know?”

This short and pithy dialogue took place in Drysdale’s
rooms one evening soon after the conversition recorded in the
last chapter. He and Tom were sitting alone there, for a
wonder, and so the latter seized the occasion to propound this
question, which he had had on his mind for some time. He
was scarcely satisfied with the above rejoinder, but while he
was thinking how to come at the subject by another road,
Drysdale opened a morocco fly-book, and poured its contents
on the table, which was already covered with flies of all sorts
and patterns, hanks of gut, delicate made-up casts, reels, min-
nows, and tackle enough to kill all ‘the fish in the: four
neighbouring counties. Tom began turning them over and
scrutinizing the dressings of the flies.

‘Tt has been so mild, the fish must be in season, don’t you
think? Besides, if they’re not, it’s a jolly drive to Fairford, °
at any rate. You've never been behind my team Brown.
You'd better come, now, to-morrow.”
HOW DRYSDALE AND BLAKE WENT FISHING. 51

“T can’t cut my two lectures.” .

“Bother your lectures! Put on an mger, then.”

“No! that doesn’t suit my book, you know.”

“T can’t see why you should be so cursedly particular.
Well, if you won’t, you won’t; I know that well enough.
But what cast should you fish with to-morrow ?”

“How many flies do you use ?”

“ Sometimes two, sometimes three.”

“Two's enough, I think; all depends on the weather:
but, if it’s at all like to-day, you can’t do better, I should
think, than the old March brown and a palmer to begin with.
Then, for change, this hare’s ear, and an alder fly, perhaps;
or,—let me see,” and he began searching the glittering heap
to select a colour to go with the dull hare’s ear.

“Isn't it early for the alder?” said Drysdale.

“Rather, perhaps; but they can’t resist it.”

“ These bang-tailed little sinners any good ?” said Drysdale,
throwing some cock-a-bondies across the table.

“Yes; I never like to be without them, and a governor or
two. Here, this is a well-tied lot,” said Tom, picking out
half-a-dozen. ‘You never know when you may not kill with
either of them. But I don’t know the Fairford water; so
my opinion isn’t worth much.”

Tom. soon returned to the old topic.

“ But now, Drysdale, you must know what a servitor is.”

“Why should I? Do you mean one of our college servi-
tors ?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, something in the upper-servant line. I should put
him above the porter, and below the cook and butler. He
does the dons’ dirty work, and gets their broken victuals;
and I believe he pays no college fees.”

Tom rather drew into himself at this insolent and off-hand
definition. He was astonished and hurt at the tone of his
friend. However, presently, he resolved to go through with
it, and began again.

‘But servitors are gentlemen, I suppose?”

“A good deal of the cock-tail about them, I should think.
But I have not the honour of any acquaintance amongst
them.”

“ At-any rate, they are undergraduates, are not they?”

“Yes.”

“ And may take degrees, just like you or me?”

“They may have all the degrees to themselves, for anything
Leare. I wish they would let one pay a servitor for passing
little-go for one. It would be deuced, comfortable. I wouder

BQ
§2 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

it don’t strike the dons, now; they might get clever beggars
for servitors, and farm them, and so make loads of tin.”

“But, Drysdale, seriously, why should you talk like that?
If they can take all the degrees we can, and are, in fact, just’
what we are, undergraduates, I can’t see why they're not as
likely to be gentlemen as we. It can surely make no dif-
ference, their being poor men ?”

“Tt must make them devilish uncomfortable,” said the
incorrigible payer of double fees, getting up to light his
cigar.

“The name ought to carry respect here, at any rate. The
Black Prince was an Oxford man, and he thought the noblest

“motto he could take was, ‘Ich dien,’ I serve.”

“Tf he were here now, he would change it for ‘Je paye.’”

“T often wish you would tell me what you really and truly
think Drysdale.”

“My dear fellow, I am telling you what I do really think.
Whatever the Black Prince might be pleased to observe if he
were here, I stick to my motto. I tell you the thing to be
able to do here at Oxford is—to pay.”

“T don’t believe it.”

“T knew you wouldn't.”

“T don’t believe you do either.”

“T do, though. But what makes you so curious about
servitors +”

“Why, I’ve made friends with Hardy, one of our servitors.

‘He is such a fine fellow !”

I am sorry to relate that it cost Tom an effort to say this
ta Drysdale ; but he despised himself that it was so.

“You should have told me so before you began to pump
me,” said Drysdale. ‘“ ILowever, I partly suspected some-
thing of the sort. You've a good bit of a Quixote in you.
But really, Brown,” he added, seeing Tom redden and look
angry, “I’m sorry if what I said pained you. I dare say
this friond of yours is a gentleman, and all you say.”

“Ho is more of a gontloman by a long way than most of
the——”

“«Gentlemen-commoners,’ you were going to say. Don't
erane at such a small fence on my account. I will put it in
another way for you. He can’t be a greater snob than many
of them.”

“Well, but why do you live with them so much, then 4”

“Why? Because they happen to do the things I like
» doing, and live up here as I like to live. I like hunting and
driving, and drawing badgers, and playing cards, and good
wines and cigars. They hunt and drive, and keep dogs and
HOW DRYSDALE AND BLAKE WENT FISHING. 53

good cellars, and will play unlimited loo or Van John as long
as I please.”

“But I know you get very sick of all that often, for I’ve
heard you say as much half-a-dozen times in the little time
I've been here.”

“Why, you don’t want to deny me the Briton’s privilege
of grumbling, do you?” said Drysdale, as he flung his legs
up on the sofa, crossing one over the other as he lounged on
his back—his favourite attitude ; “but suppose I am getting
tired of it all—which I am not—what do you propose as a
substitute ?”

“Tako to boating. IT know you could be in the first boat
if you liked ; I heard them say so at Smith’s wine the other
night.”

“But what’s to prevent my getting just as tired of that?
Besides, it’s such a grind. And then there’s the bore of
changing all one’s habits.”

“Yes, but it’s such splendid hard work,” said Tom, who
was bent on making a convert of his friend.

“Just so; and that’s just what I don’t want; the ‘ books,
and work, and healthful play’ line don’t suit my complaint.
No, as my old uncle says, ‘a young follow must sow his wild
oats,’ and Oxford seoms a place specially set apart by Pro-
vidence for that operation.”

In all the wild range of accepted British maxims there is
none, take it for all in all, more thoroughly abominable than
this onc as to the sowing of wild oats. Look at it on what
side you will, and you can make nothing but a devil’s maxim
of it. What a man—be he young, old, or middle-aged—
sows, that, and nothing else, shall he reap. The one only
thing to do with wild oats, is to put them carefully into the
hottest part of the fire, and get them burnt to dust, every
seed of them. If you sow them, no matter in what ground,
up they will come, with long tough roots like couch-grass,
and luxuriant stalks and loaves, os sure as there is 2 sun in
heaven—a crop which it turns one’s heart cold to think of.
The devil, too, whose special crop they are, will see that they
thrive, and you, and nobody else, will have to reap them ;
and no common reaping will get them out of the soil, which
must be dug down deep again and again. Well for you if
with all your care you can make the ground sweet again by
your dying day. ‘Boys will be boys” is not much better,
but that has a true side to it ; but this encouragement to the
sowing of wild oats is simply devilish, for it means that a
young man is to give way to the temptations and follow the
lusts of his age. What are we to do with the wild oats of
54 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

manhood and old age—with ambition, over-reaching, the false
weights, hardness, suspicion, avarice—if the wild oats of
youth are to be sown, and not burnt? What possible dis-
tinction can we draw between them? If we may sow the
one, why not the other ?

( But to get back to our story. Tom went away from
Drysdale’s rooms that night (after they had sorted all the
tackle, which was to accompany the fishing expedition, to
their satisfaction) in a disturbed state of mind. He was
very much annoyed at Drysdale’s way of talking, because he
was getting to like the man. He was surprised and angry
at being driven more and more to the conclusion that the
worship of the golden calf was verily and indeed rampant in
Oxford—side by side, no doubt, with much that was manly
and noble, but tainting more or less the whole life of the
place. In fact, what annoyed him most was, the conscious-
ness that he himself was becoming an idolater. For he
couldn’t help admitting that he felt much more comfortable
when standing in the quadrangles or strolling in the High
Street with Drysdale in his velvet cap, and silk gown, and
faultless get-up, than when doing the same things with Hardy
in his faded old gown, shabby loose overcoat, and well-worn
trousers. He wouldn’t have had Hardy suspect the fact for
all he was worth, and hoped to get over the feeling soon ;
but there it was unmistakably. He wondered whether Hardy
had ever felt anything of the kind himself.

Nevertheless, these thoughts did not hinder him from sleep-
ing soundly, or from getting up an hour earlier than usual to
go and see Drysdale start on his expedition.

Accordingly, he was in Drysdale’s rooms next morning
betimes, and assisted at the early breakfast which was going
on there. Blake was the only other man present. He was
going with Drysdale, and entrusted Tom with a message
to Miller and the Captain, that he could not pull in the boat
that day, but would pay a waterman to take his place. As
soon as the gato opened, the throe, accompanied by the
faithful Jack, and followed by Drysdale’s scout, bearing over-
coats, a splendid water-proof apron lined with fur, and the
rods and creels, sallied out of college, and sought the
livery stables patronised by the men of St. Ambrose’s. Here
they found a dog-cart all ready in the yard, with a strong
Roman-nosed, vicious-looking, rat-tailed horse in the shafts,
called Satan by Drysdale ; the leader had been sent on to the
first turnpike. The things were packed, and Jack, the bull-
dog, hoisted into the interior in a few minutes. Drysdale
produced a long straight horn, which he called his yard of tin
HOW DRYSDALE AND BLAKE WENT FISHING. 55

(probably because it was made of brass), and after refreshing
himself with a blast or two, handed it over to Bloko, and thon
mounted the dog-cart, and took the reins. Blake seated
himself by his side ; the help who was to accompany them,
got up behind ; and Jack looked wisely out from his inside
place over the back-board.

“Are we all right?” said Drysdale, catching his long,
tandem whip into a knowing double thong.

“ All right, sir,” said the head ostler, touching his cap.

“ You'd better have come, my boy,” said Drysdale to Tom,
as they trotted off out of the yard ; and Tom couldn’t help
cnvying them as ho followed, and watched the dog-cart lessen-
ing rapidly down the empty street, and heard the notes of the
yard of tin, which Blake managed to make really musical,
borne back on the soft western breeze. It was such a splen-
did morning for fishing.

However, it was too late to repent, had he wished it; and
so he got back to chapel, and destroyed the whole effect
of the morning service on Miller's mind, by delivering
Blake’s message to that choleric coxswain as soon as chapel
was over. Miller vowed for the twentieth time that Blake
should be turned out of the boat, and went off to the Captain’s
rooms to torment him, and consult what was to be done,

The weather continued magnificent—a soft, dull grey March
day, and a steady wind ; and the thought of the lucky fisher-
man, and visions of creels filled with huge three-pounders,
haunted Tom at lecture, and throughout the day.

At two o'clock he was down at the river. The college
eight was to go down for the first time in the season to
the reaches below Nuneham, for a good training pull, and
he had had notice, to his great joy, that he was to be tried in
the boat. But, great, no doubt, as was the glory, the price
was a heavy one. This was the first time he had been
subjected to the tender mercies of Miller, the coxswain, or
had pulled behind the Captain ; and it did not take long
‘ to convince him that it was a very different style of thing
from anything he had as yet been accustomed to in the fresh-
men’s crew. The long steady sweep of the so-called paddle
tried him almost as much as the breathless strain of the spurt.

Miller, too, was in one of his most relentless moods. He
was angry at Blake’s desertion, and seemed to think that Tom
had had something to do with it, though he had simply
doliverod tho mossago which had beon ontrustod to him ; and
so, though ho distributcd rebuke and objurgation to every
man in the boat except the Captain, he seemed to our hero to
take particular delight in working him. There he stood in
a .
56 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

the stern, the fiery little coxswain, leaning forward with a
tiller-rope in each hand, and bending to every stroke, shouting
his warnings, and rebukes, and monitions to Tom, till he
drove him to his wits’ end. By the time the boat came back
to Hall’s, his arms ‘were so numb that he could hardly tell
whether his oar was in or out of his hand; his legs were
stiff and aching, and every muscle in his body felt as if it had
been pulled out an inch or two. As he walked up to College,
he felt as if his shoulders and legs had nothing to do with one
another ; in short, he had had a very hard day’s work, and,
after going fast asleep at a wine-party, and trying in vain to
rouse himself by a stroll in the streets, fairly gave in about
ton o'clock, and wont to bod without remembering to sport
his oak.

For some hours he slept the sleep of the dead, but at last
began to be conscious of voices, and the clicking of glasses,
and laughter, and scraps of songs; and after turning himself
once or twice in bed, to ascertain whether he was awake or
no, rubbed his eyes, sat up, and became aware that something
very entertaining to the parties concerned was going on in his
sitting-room. After listening for a minute, he jumped up,
threw on his shooting-coat, and appeared at the door of his
‘own sitting-room, where he paused a moment to contemplate
the scene which met his astonished vision. His fire, recently
replenished, was burning brightly in the grate, and his candles
on the tablo, on which stood his whiskey bottle, and tumblers,
and hot water. On his sofa, which had been wheeled round
before the fire, reclined Drysdale, on his back, in his pet
attitude, one leg crossed over the other, with a paper in his
hand, from which he was singing, and in the arm-chair sat
Blake, while Jack was coiled on the rug, turning himself
every now and then in a sort of uneasy protest against his
master’s untimely hilarity. At first, Tom felt inclined to be
angry, but the jolly shout of laughter with which Drysdale
received him, as he stepped out into the light in night-shirt,
shooting coat, and dishovelled hair, appeased him at onco.

“Why, Brown, you don’t mean to gay you have boon in
bed this last half-hour? We looked into the bed-room, and
thought it was empty. Sit down, old fellow, and make
yourself at home. Have a glass of grog; it’s first-rate
whiskey.”

“Well, youre a couple of cool hands, I must say,” said
Tom. “ How did you get in?”

“Through the door, like honest men,” said Drysdale.
“ You're the only good fellow in college to-night. When we
got back our fires were out, and we've been all round college,
HOW DRYSDALE AND BLAKE WENT FISHING, 57

and found all the oaks sported but yours. Never sport your
oak, old boy ; it’s a bad habit. You don’t know at what
time in the morning you may entertain angels unawares.”

“You're a rum pair of angels, anyhow,” said Tom, taking
his seat on the sofa, ‘ But what o’clock is it?”

“Oh, about half-past one,” said Drysdale. ‘‘ We've had a
series of catastrophes. Never got into college till near one.
I thought we should never have waked that besotted little
porter. However, here we are at last, you see, all right.”

“So it seems,” said Tom ; ‘but how about the fishing?”

“Fishing ! we've never thrown a fly all day,” said Drys-
dale.

“He is so cursedly conceited about his knowledge of the
country,” struck in Blake. ‘ What with that, and his awful
twist, and his incurable habit of gossiping, and his blackguard
dog, and his team of a devil and a young female—”’

“ Hold your scandalous tongue,” shouted Drysdale. ‘To
hear you talking of my twist, indeed ; you ate four chops and
a whole chicken to-day, at dinner, to your own cheek, you
know.”

“ Thats quite another thing,” said Blake. ‘‘T like to see
a fellow on honest grubber at breakfast and dinner ; but
youve always got your noso in the manger. ‘Lhat’s how
we got all wrong to-day, Brown. You saw what a breakfast
he ate before starting ; well, nothing would satisfy him but
another at; Whitney. There we fell in with a bird in maho-
gany tops, and, as usual, Drysdale began chumming with him.
He knew all about the fishing of the next three counties.
I daresay he did. My private belief is, that he is one of the
Hungerford town council, who let the fishing there ; at any
rate, he swore it was no use our going to Fairford ; the only
place where fish would be in season was Hungerford. Of
course Drysdale swallowed it all, and nothing would serve
him but that we should turn off for Hungerford at once.
Now, I did go once to Hungerford races, and I ventured to
suggest that we should never get near the place. Not a bit
of use; he knew every foot of the country. It was then
about nine; he would guarantee that we should be there by
twelve, at latest.”

“So we should have been, but for accidents,” struck in
Drysdale.

“Well, at any rate, what we did was to drive into Far-
ringdon, instead of Hungerford, both horses dead done
up, at twelve o'clock, after missing our way uli. t twonty
times.”

« Because you would put in your oar,” said Drysdale,
58 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“Then grub again,” went on Blake, “and an hour to bait
the horses. I knew we were as likely to get to Jericho as
to Hungerford. However, he would start; but, luckily,
about two miles from Farringdon, old Satan bowled quietly
into a bank, broke a shaft, and deposited us then and there.
He wasn’t such a fool as to be going to Hungerford at that

~ time of day ; the first time in his wicked old life that I ever
* remember seeing him do anything that pleased me.”

“Come, now,” said Drysdale, ‘do you mean to say you

‘ever sat behind a better wheeler, when he’s in a decent
* temper?”

“Can’t say,” said Blake ; “never sat behind him in a good
temper, that I can remember.”

“Tl trot him five miles out and home in a dog-cart, on
any road out of Oxford, against any horse you can bring, for
a fiver.”

“Done!” said Blake.

“But were you upset?” said Tom. ‘“ How did you get into
the bank ¢”

“Why, you see,” said Drysdale, “ Jessy,—that’s the little
blood-mare, my leader,—is very young, and as shy and
skittish as the rest of her sex. We turned a corner sharp,
and came right upon a gipsy encampment. Up she went into
the air in a moment, and then turned right round and came
head on at the cart. I gave her the double thong across her face
to send her back again, and Satan, seizing the opportunity,
rushed against the bank, dragging her with him, and snapped
the shaft.”

“And so ended our day’s fishing,” said Blake. “And
next moment out jumps that brute Jack, and pitches into
the gipsy’s dog, who had come up very naturally to have a
look at what was going on. Down jumps Drysdale, to see
that his beast gets fair play, leaving me and the help to look
after the wreck, and keep his precious wheeler from kicking
the cart into little pieces.”

“Come now,” said Drysdale, “you must own we fell on our
logs after all. Hadn't we a jolly afternoon? I’m thinking of
turning tramp, Brown. We spent three or four hours in that
camp, and Blake got spooney on a gipsy girl, and has written
I don’t know how many songs on them. Didn't you hear us
singing them just now?”

“ But how did you get the cart mended ?” said Tom.

“Oh, the tinker patched up the shaft for us,—a cunning
old beggar, the pére de famille of the encampment; up to
every move on the board. He wanted to have a deal with
me for Jessy. But’pon my honour, we had a good time of
HOW DRYSDALE AND BLAKE WENT FISHING. 59

it. There was the old tinker, monding the shaft, in his fur
cap, with a black pipe, one inch long, sticking out of his
mouth: and the old brown parchment of a mother, with her
head in a red handkerchief, smoking a ditto pipe to the tinker’s,
who told our fortunes, and talked like a printed book. Then
there was his wife, and the slip of a girl who bowled over
Blake there, and half a dozen ragged brats; and a fellow on
tramp, not a gipsy—some runaway apprentice, I take it, but a
jolly dog—with no luggage but an old fiddle, on which he
scraped away uncommonly well, and set Blake making rhymes
as wo sat in the tent. You never heard any of his songs.
Here’s one for each of us; we're going to get up the characters
and sing them about the country ;—now for a rehearsal ; I'll
be the tinker.”

“No; you must take the servant girl,” said Blake.

* Well, we'll toss up for characters when the time comes.
You begin then ; here’s the song ;” and he handed one of the
papers to Blake, who began singing—

‘¢ Squat on a green plot,
e scorn a bench or settle, oh,

Plying and trying,

A spice of every trade ;
Razors we grind,

Ring o pig, or mend a kettle, oh:
Come, what d’ye lack ?

Speak it out, my pretty maid.

‘* T'll set your scissors, while
My granny tells you plainly,
Who stole your barley meal,
Your butter or your heart ;
Tell if your husband will
Be handsome or ungainly,
Ride in a coach and four, or
Rough it in a cart.”

“Inter Silly Sally ; that’s I, for the present, you see,” said
Drysdale ; and he began—

‘¢Oh, dear! what can the matter be ?

Dear, dear! what can the matter be?

Oh, dear! what can the matter be?
All in a pucker be I; ,

I’m growing uneasy about Billy Martin,

For love is a casualty desper’t’ unsartin,

Law! yonder’s the gipsy as tells folk’s fortin ;
I’m half in the mind for to try.”

“Thon you must be tho old gipsy woman, Mother Patrico ;
here’s your part, Brown.”
“ But what's the tune?” said Tom.
60 TOM BRUWN AT OXFORD,

“Oh, you can’t miss it; go ahead ;” and so Tom, who was
dropping into the humour of the thing, droned out from the
MS, handed to him—

‘* Chairs to mend,
Old chairs to mend,
Rush bottom’d, cane bottom’d,
Chairs to mend.
Maid, approach,
If thou wouldst know
What the stars
May deignu to show.”

“Now, tinker,” said Drysdale, nodding at Blake, who
rattled on,—

‘6 Chance feeds us, chance leads us
Round the land in jollity ;
Rag-dealing, nag-stealing,
verywhere we roam ;
Bra.s mending, ass vending,
Happier than the ree ;
Swipes soaking, pipes smoking,
Iiv'ry barn a home ;
Tink, tink, a tink a tink,
Our life is full of fun, boys ;
Clink tink, a tink a tink,
Our busy hammers ring ;
Clink tink, a tink a tink,
Our job will soon be done, boys ;
Then tune we merril
The bladder and the string.”

Dryrspate, as Silly Sally.

‘© Oh, dear! what can the matter be?

Dear, dear! what can the matter be?

Oh, dear! what can the matter be?
There’s such a look in her eye.

Oh, lawk! I declare I be all of a tremble ;

My mind it misgives mo about Sukey Wimble,

A eylotie ae wonch noithor civil nor nimble t
Sho'll bring Billy to boggary.”

Tom, as Mother Patrico.

“* Show your hand ;
Come, show your hand !
Would you know
What fate hath planned ?
Heaven forefend,
Ay, heav’n forefend |
What may these
Cross lines portend?”
HOW DRYSDALE AND BLAKE WENT FISHING. 61

Buaxs, as the Tinker.

Owl, pheasant, all’s pleasant ;
Nothing comes amiss to us;
Hare, rabbit, snare, nab it;
Cock, or hen, or kite;
Tom cat, with strong fat,
A dainty supper is to us ;
Hedge-hog ant sedge-frog
To stew is our delight ;
Bow, wow, with angry bark
My lady’s dog assails us ;
We sack him bt and clap
A stopper on his din.
Now pop him in the pot ;
His store of meat avails us ;
Wife cooks him nice and hot,
And granny tans his skin.”

Dryrspaty, as Silly Sally.

Oh, lawk! what a calamity !
Oh, my! what a calamity !
Oh, dear! what a calamity !
Lost and forsaken be I.
I’m out of my senses, and nought will content me,
But pois’ning Poll Ady who helped circumvent me ;
Como tell me the means, for no power shall prevent me ;
Oh, give me revenge, or I die.”

Tom, as Mother Patrico.

*¢ Pause awhile !
Anon, anon!
Give mo time
The stars to con.
True love’s course
Shall yet run smooth ;
True shall provo
The favour’d youth.”

,

Buaxz, as the Tinker.

Tink tink, 0 tink o tink,

We'll work ond then get tipsy, oh!
Clink tink, on each chink,

Our busy hammers ring.
Tink tink, a tink a tink,

How merry lives a gipsy, oh!
Chanting and ranting ;

As happy as a king.”

Dryspaty, as Silly Sally.

Joy! joy! all will end happily!

Joy! joy! all will end happily!

J ov joy! all will end happily!
ill will be constant to I.
62 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

Oh, thankee, good dame, here’s my purse and my thimble ;
A fig for Poll Ady and fat Sukey Wimble ;
T now could jump over the steeple so nimble ;

With joy i be ready to cry.”

Tom, as Mother Patrico.

“¢ William shall
Be rich and great ;
And shall prove
A constant mate.
Thank not me,
But thank your fate,
On whose high
Decrees I wait.”

“Well, won’t that do? won’t it bring the house down?
Pm going to send for dresses to London, and we'll start next
week.”

“ What, on the tramp, singing these songs ?”

“Yes; we'll begin in some out-of-the-way place till we get
used to it.”

“¢ And end in the lock-up, I should say,” said Tom; “it'll
be a good lark, though. Now, you haven’t told me how you
got home.”

“Oh, we left camp at about five—”

“The tinker having extracted a sovereign from Drysdale,”
interrupted Blake.

“What did you give to the little gipsy yourself?” retorted
Drysdale; “I saw your adieus under the thorn-bush.—Well,
we got on all right to old Murdoch’s, at Kingston Inn, by
about seven, and there we had dinner; and after dinner the
old boy came in. He and I are great chums, for I’m often there,
and always ask him in. But that beggar Blake, who never
saw him before, cut me clean out in five minutes. Fancy his
swearing he is Scotch, and that an ancestor of his in the six-
teenth century married a Murdoch !”

“Well, when you come to think what a lot of ancestors
one must have had at that time, it’s probably true,” said
Blake.

“At any rate, it took,” went on Drysdale, “I thought
old Murdoch would have wept on his neck. As it was, he
scattered snuff enough to fill a pint pot over him out of his
mull, and began talking Gaelic. And Blake had the cheek
to jabber a lot of gibberish back to him, as if he understood
every word.”

_ “Gibberish! it was the purest Gaelic,” said Blake, laugh-

ing.
“T heard a lot of Greek words myself,’ said Drysdale ;
HOW DRYSDALE AND BLAKE WENT FISHING. 63

“but old Murdoch was too plensod at hearing his own
clappor going, and too full of whiskoy, to find him out.”

“ Let alone that I doubt whether he remembers more than
about five words of his native tongue himself,” said Blake.

“The old boy got so excited that he went upstairs for his
plaid and dirk, and dressed himself up in them, apologising
that he could not appear in the full garb of old Gaul, in
honour of his new-found relative, as his daughter had cut up
his old kilt for ‘trews for the bairnies’ during his absence
from home. Then they took to more toddy and singing Scotch
songs, till at eleven o'clock they wore standing on thoir chairs,
right hands clasped, each with one foot on the table, glasses
in the other hands, the toddy flying over the room as they
swayed about roaring like maniacs, what was it?—oh, I have
it:

‘ Wug-an-toorey all agree,

Wug-an-toorey, wug-an-toorey.’”

“He hasn’t told you that he tried to join us, and tumbled
over the back of his chair into the dirty-plate basket.”

“A libel! a libel!” shouted Drysdale; “the leg of my
chair broke, and I stepped down gracefully and safely, and
when I looked up and saw what a tottery performance it was,
I concluded to give them a wide berth. It would be no joke
to have old Murdoch topple over on to you. I left thom
‘wug-an-tooreying,’ and went out to look after tho trap, which
was ordered to be at the door at half-past ten. I found
Murdoch’s ostler very drunk, but sober compared with that
rascally help whom we had been fools enough to take with us.
They had got the trap out and the horses in, but that old
rascal Satan was standing so quiet that I suspected something
wrong. Sure enough, when I came to look, they had him up
to the cheek on one side of his mouth, and third bar on the
other, his belly-band buckled across his back, and no kicking
strap. The old brute was chuckling to himself what he
would do with us as soon as we had started in that trim.
It took half-an-hour getting all right, as I was the only one
able to do anything.”

“Yes, you would have said so,” said Blake, “if you had
seen him trying to put Jack up behind. He made six shots
with the old dog, and dropped him about on his head and the
broad of his back as if he had been a bundle of eels.”

“The fact is, that that rascally ostler had made poor old
Jack drunk too,” explained Drysdale, “and ho wouldn’t be
lifted straight. ILowever, we got off at last, and hadn't gono
a mile before the help (who was maundering away some
cursed sentimental ditty or other behind), lurched more
te

64 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

heavily than usual, and pitched off into the night somewhere.
Blake looked for him for half-an-hour, and couldn’t find a hair
of him.”

“You don’t mean to say the man tumbled off, and you
nover found him ?” said Tom, in horror.

“Woll, that’s about tho fact,” said Drysdale; “but if
isn’t so bad as you think. We had no lamps, and it was an
uncommon bad night for running by holloas.”

“But a first-rate night for running by scent,” broke in
Blake; “the fellow leant against me until he made his exit,
and I'd have backed myself to have hit the scent again half-
a-mile off, if the wind had only been right.”

“He may have broken his neck,” said Tom.

“Cun a fellow sing with a broken neck?” said Drysdale ;
“hanged if I know! But don’t I tell you, we heard him
maundering on somewhere or other? and when Blake shouted,
he answered in endearing terms; and when Blake swore, he
rebuked him piously out of the pitch darkness, and told him
to go home and repent. I nearly dropped off the box for
laughing at them; and then he ‘uplifted his testimony,’ as
he called it, against me, for driving a horse called Satan. I
believe he’s a ranting methodist spouter.”

“T tried hard to find him,” said Blake; “for I should
dearly have liked to have kicked him safely into the ditch.”

“At last Black Will himself couldn’t have held Satan
another minute. So Blake scrambled up, and away we came,
and knocked into college at one for a finish: the rest you
know.”

“Well, you’ve had a pretty good day of it,” said Tom,.
who had been hugely amused ; “but I should feel nervous
about the help, if I were you.”

“Oh, he’ll come to no grief, Pl be bound,” said Drysdale ;
“but what o’clock is it ?”

“ Three,” said Blake, looking at his watch and getting up ;
“time to turn in.”

“The first time I ever heard you say that,” said Drysdale.

“Yes ; but you forgot we were up this morning before tho
world was aired. Good-night, Brown.”

And off the two went, leaving Tom to sport his oak this
time, and retire in wonder to bed.

Drysdale was asleep, with Jack curled up on the foot of
the bed, in ten minutes. Blake, by the help of wet towels
and a knotted piece of whipcord round his forehead, read
Pindar till the chapel bell began to ring.
AN EXPLOSION. 65

CHAPTER VII.
AN BXPLOSION.

Our hero soon began to feel that he was contracting his first
college friendship. The great, strong, badly-dressed, badly-
appointed servitor, who seemed almost at the same time
utterly reckless of, and nervously alive to, the opinion of all
around him, with his bursts of womanly tenderness and
Berserker rage, alternating like the storms and sunshine of a
July day on a high moorland, his keen sense of humour and
appreciation of all the good things of this life, the use and
enjoyment of which he was so steadily denying himself from
high principle, had from the first seized powerfully on all
Tom’s sympathies, and was daily gaining more hold upon
him.

Blessed is the man who has the gift of making friends ;
for it is one of God’s best gifts. It involves many things,
but above all, the power of going out of oneself, and seeing
and appreciating whatever is noble and living in another man.

But even to him who has the gift, it is often a great puzzle
to find out whether a man is really a friend or not. The
following is recommended as a test in the case of any man
about whom you are not quite sure ; especially if he should
happen to have more of this world’s goods, either in the
shape of talents, rank, money, or what not, than you—

Fancy the man stripped stark naked of ovorything in the
world, except an old pair of trousers and a shirt, for decency’s
sake, without even a name to him, and dropped down in the
middle of Holborn or Piccadilly. Would you go up to him
then and there, and lead him out from amongst the cabs and
omnibuses, and take him to your own home, and feed him,
and’ clothe him, and stand by him against all the world, to
your last sovereign, and your last leg of mutton? If you
wouldn’t do this, you have no right to call him by the sacred
name of friend. If you would, the odds are that he would
do the same by you, and you may count yourself a rich man.
For, probably, were friendship expressible by, or convertible
into, current coin of the realm, one such friend would be
worth to a man, at least 100,0002. How many millionaires
are there in England? I can’t even guess; but more by a
good many, I féar, than there are men who have ten real
friends. But friendship is not so exprossiblo or convertible.
It is more precious than wisdom ; and wisdom “cannot be
“gotten for gold, nor shall rubies be mentioned in com-

F
66 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

_ parison thereof.” Not all the riches that ever came out of
earth and sca are worth the assurance of one such real abiding
friendship in your heart of hearts.

But for the worth of a friendship commonly so called—
moaning thereby a sentiment founded on the good dinners,
good stories, opera stalls, and days’ shooting you have gotten
or hope to get out of a man, the snug things in his gift, and
his powers of procuring enjoyment of one kind or another to
your miserable body or intellect—why, such a friendship as
that is to be appraised easily enough, if you find it worth
your while ; but you will have to pay your pound of flesh
for it one way or another—you may take your oath of that.
If you follow my advice, you will take a 102. note down, and
retire to your crust of bread and liberty.

Tom was rapidly falling into friendship with Hardy. He
was not bound hand and foot and carried away captive yet,
put he was already getting deep in the toils.

One evening he found himself ‘as usual at Hardy’s door
about eight o’clock. The oak was open, but he got no answer
when he knocked at the inner door. Nevertheless he entered,
having quite got over all shyness or ceremony by this time.
The room was empty, but two tumblers and the black bottle
stood on the table, and the kettle was hissing away on the
hob. “Ah,” thought Tom, “he expects me, I see ;” so he
turned his back to the fire and made himself at home. A
quarter of an hour passed, and still Hardy did not return.
“ Never knew him out so long before at this time of night,”
thought Tom. “ Perhaps he’s at some party. I hope so. It
would do him a deal of good; and I know he might go out
if he liked. Next term, see if I won’t make him more
sociable. It’s a stupid custom that freshmen don’t give parties
in their first term, or I’d do it at once. Why won't he be
more sociable? No, after all, sociable isn’t the word ; he’s a
very sociable fellow at bottom, What in the world is it that
he wants?”

And so Tom balanced himself on the two hind legs of one
of tho Windsor chairs, and betook himself to pondoring what
ib was oxactly which ought to be udded to Hardy to make
him an unexceptionable object of hero-worship ; when the
man himself came suddenly into the room, slamming his oak
behind him, and casting his cap and gown fiercely on to the
sofa before he noticed our hero,

Tom jumped up atonce. “ My dear fellow, what’s the
matter?” he said; “I’m sorry I came in; shall I got”

“No—don’t go—sit down,” said Hardy, abruptly ; ‘and
then began to smoke fast without saying another word.
AN EXPLOSION. 67

Tom waited a few minutes watching him, and then broke
silence again,—

“T am suro somothing is the matter, Hardy ; you look
dreadfully put ount—what is it?”

“What is it?” said Hardy, bitterly ; “ Oh, nothing at all
—nothing at all ; a gentle lesson to servitors as to the duties
of their position ; not pleasant, perhaps, for a youngster to
swallow ; but I ought to be used to such things at any rate
by this time. I beg your pardon for seeming put out.”

“Do tell me what it is,” said Tom. “I’m sure I am very
sorry for anything which annoys you.”

“T believe you are,” said Hardy, looking at him, “and
Tm much obliged to you for it. What do you think of that
fellow Chanter’s offering Smith, the junior servitor, a boy
just come up, a bribe of ten pounds to prick him in at chapel
when he isn’t there ?”

“The dirty blackguard,” said Tom ; “by Jove, he ought to
be cut. He will be cut, won’t he? You don’t mean that he
really did offer him the money ?”

“T do,” said Hardy, ‘and the poor little fellow came here
after hall to ask me what he should do, with tears in his
eyes.”

“Chanter ought to be horsewhipped in quad,” said Tom.
“T will go and call on Smith directly. What did you do?”

“Why, as soon as I could master myself enough not to lay
hands on him,” said Hardy, “I went across to his rooms
where he was entertaining a select party, and just gave him
his choice between writing an abject apology then and there
to my dictation, or having the whole business laid before the
principal to-morrow morning. He chose the former alterna-
tive, and I made him write such a letter as I don’t think h
will forget in a hurry.”

“That's good,” said Tom; “but he ought to have been
horsewhipped too. It makes one’s fingers itch to think of it.
However, Smith’s all right now.”

“All right!” said Hardy, bitterly. “I don’t know what
you call ‘all right.’ Probably the boy’s self-respect is hurt
for life. You can’t salve over this sort of thing with an
apology-plaster.”

“Well, I hope it isn’t so bad as that,” said Tom.

“Wait till you’ve tried it yourself,” said Hardy. “TU
tell you what it is; one or two things of this sort—and I’ve
seen many more than that in my time—sink down into you,
and loave marks like a red-hot iron.”

“But, Hardy, now, really, did you ever know a bribe
offered before?” said Tom.

r2
68 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

Hardy thought for a moment. “No,” he said, “TI can’t
say that I have; but things as bad, or nearly as bad, often.”
He paused a minute, and then went on: “TI tell you, if it
were not for my dear old father, who would break his heart
over it, I would cut the whole concern to-morrow. I’ve been
near doing it twenty times, and enlisting in a good regiment.”

“ Would it be any better there, though?” said Tom, gently,
for he felt that he was in a magazine.

“Better! yes, it must be better,” said Hardy: “at any
rate the youngsters there are marchers and fighters ; besides,
one would be in the ranks and know one’s place. Here one
is by way of being a gentleman—God save the mark! A
young officer, be he nevor such a fop or profligate, must take
his turn at guard, and carry his life in his hand all over the
world, wherever he is sent, or ho has to leave the service.
Service !—yes that’s the word; that’s what makes every
young red-coat respectable, though he mayn’t think it. He
is serving his Queen, his country—the devil, too, perhaps—
very likely—but still the other in some sort. He is bound to
it, sworn to it, must do it; more or less. But a youngster up
here, with health, strength, and heaps of money—bound to no
earthly service, and choosing that of the devil and his own
lusts, becauso some service or other he must have—T want to
know where else under the sun you can see such a sight
as that?”

Tom mumbled something to the effect that it was by no
means necessary that men at Oxford, either rich or poor,
need embark in the service which had been alluded to;
which remark, however, only seemed to add fuel to the fire.
For Hardy now rose from his chair, and began striding up
and down the room, his right arm behind his back, the hand
gripping his left elbow, his left hand brought round in front
close to his body, and holding the bowl of his pipe, from
which he was blowing off clouds in puffs like an engine just
starting with a heavy train. The attitude was one of a man
painfully trying to curb himself. His eyes burnt like coals
under his deep brows. ‘Tho man altogether looked awful,
and ‘Tom folé particularly uncomfortable and puzzled. After
a turn or two, Hardy burst out again—

“ And who are they, I should like to know, these fellows
who dare to offer bribes to gentlemen? How do they livo?
What do they do for themselves or for this University? By
heaven, they are ruining themselves body and soul, and
making this place, which was meant for the. training of
learned and brave and righteous Englishmen, a lie and a
snare. And who tries to stop them? Here and there a don
AN EXPLOSION. 69

is doing his work like a man; the rest are either washing
their hands of the business, and spending their time in
looking after those who don’t want looking after, and cram-
ming those who would be better without the cramming, or
else standing by, cap in hand, and shouting, ‘Oh young men
of large fortune and great connexions! you future dispensers
of the good things of this realm! come to our colleges, and
all shall be made pleasant!’ and the shout is taken up by
undergraduates, and tradesmen, and horse-dealers, and cricket-
cads, and dog-fanciers, ‘Come to us, and us, and us, and wo
will bo your tondics !’ Lot thom; let them toady and cringe
to their precious idols, till they bring this noble old place
down about their ears. Down it will come, down if must
come, for down it ought to come, if it can find nothing
better to worship than rank, money, and intellect. But to
live in the place and love it too, and see all this going on,
and groan and writhe under it, and not be able -

At this point in his speech Hardy came to the turning-
point in his march at the farther end of the room, just oppo-
site his crockery cupboard ; but, instead of turning as usual,
he paused, let go the hold on his left elbow, poised himself
for a moment to get a purchase, and then dashed his right
fist full against one of the panels. Crash went the slight
deal boards, as if struck with a sledge-hammer, and crash
went glass and crockery behind. Tom jumped to his feet, in
doubt whether an assault on him would not follow; but the
fit was over, and Hardy looked round at him with a rueful
and deprecating face. For a moment Tom tried to look
solemn and heroic, as befitted the occasion ; but, somehow,
the sudden contrast flashed on him, and sent him off, before
he could think about it, into a roar of laughter, ending in a
violent fit of coughing; for in his excitement he had swal-
lowed a mouthful of smoke. Hardy, after holding out for a
moment, gave in to the humour of the thing, and the appeal-
ing look passed into a smile, and the smile into a laugh, as
he turned towards his damaged cupboard, and began opening
it carefully in a legitimate manner.

“T say, old fellow,” said Tom, coming up, “I should think
you must find it an expensive amusement. Do you often
walk into your cupboards like that?”

“You see, Brown, I am naturally a man of a very quick
temper.” *

_ “So it scoma,” said Tom; “but docan’t it hurt your
knuckles? I should have something softer put up for me if
I were you ; your bolster, with a velvet cap on it, or a doctor
of divinity’s gown, now.”

 
70 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“You be hanged,” said Hardy, as he disengaged thd last
splinter, and gently opened the ill-used cupboard door. “Oh,
thunder and turf, look here,” he went on, as the state of
affairs inside disclosed itself to his view ; “how many times
heve I told that thief George never to put anything on this
side of my cupboard! Two tumblers smashed to bits, and
I’ve only four in the world. Lucky we had those two out on
the table.” ;

‘And here’s a great piece out of the sugar-basin, you see,”
said Tom, holding up the broken article ; “and, let me see,
one cup and three saucers gone to glory.”

“Woll, it’s lucky it’s no worse,” said Hardy, peering over
his shoulder ; “I had a lot of odd saucers, and there’s enough
left to last my time. Never mind tho smash, let’s sit down
again and be reasonable.”

Tom sat down in high good humour. He felt himself
more on an equality with his host than he had done before,
and even thought he might venture on a little mild expostu-
lation or lecturing. But while he was considering how to
improve the occasion Hardy began himself.

“T shouldn’t go so furious, Brown, if I didn’t care about
the place so much. [I can’t bear to think of it as a sort of
learning machine, in which I am to grind for three years to
get certain degrees which I want. No—this place, and
Cambridge, and our great schools, are the heart of dear old
England. Did you ever read Secretary Cook’s address to the
Vice-Chancellor, Doctors, &c. in 1636—more critical times,
perhaps, even than ours? No? Well, listen then ;” and he
went to his bookcase, took down a book, and read; “*‘ The
‘very truth is, that all wise princes respect the welfare of
‘their estates, and consider that schools and universities are
‘(as in a body) the noble and vital parts, which being vigorous
‘and sound send good blood and active spirits into the veins
‘and arteries, which cause health and strength ; or, if feeble
‘or ill-affected, corrupt all the vital parts ; whereupon grow
‘diseases, and in the ond, death itself.’ A low standard up

here for ten years may corrupt half the parishos in the king-
dom.”

“That's true,” said Tom, “ but——”

“Yes; and so one has a right to be jealous for Oxford.
Every Englishman ought to be.”

“But 1 really think, Hardy, that you're unreasonable,”
said Tom, who had no mind to be done out of his chance of
lecturing his host.

“T am very quick-tempered,” said Hardy, “as I told you
just now.”
HARDY'S HISTORY. 71

“But you're not fair on the fast set up hero. They can’t
help being rich men, after all.”

“No; so one oughtn’t to expect them to be going through
the eyes of needles, I suppose. But do you mean to say you
ever heard of a more dirty, blackguard business than this?”
said Hardy ; “he ought to be expelled the University.”

“T admit that,” said Tom ; “but it was only one of them,
you know. I don’t believe there’s another man in the set
who would have done it.”

“Well, I hope hot,” said Hardy; “I may be hard on them
—ans you say, they can’t help being rich. But, now, I don’t
want you to think mo a violent one-sided fanatic ; shall I tell
you some of my experiences up htre—some passages from the
life of a servitor ?”

“Do,” said Tom ; “I should like nothing so well.”

CHAPTER VIII.
TMARDY’S' HISTORY.

“My father is an old commander in the Royal Navy. He
was a second cousin of Nelson’s Hardy, and that, I believe,
was what led him into the navy, for he had no interest what-
ever of his own. It was a visit which Nelson's Hardy, then
a young lieutenant, paid to his relative, my grandfather,
which decided my father, he has told me: but he always had
a strong bent to sea, though he was a boy of very studious
habits.

“However, those were times when brave men who knew
and loved their profession couldn’t be overlooked, and my
dear old father fought his way up step by step—not very
fast certainly, but still fast enough to keep him in heart about
his chances in life. I could show you the accounts of some
of the affairs he was in, in James’s History, which you see up
on my shelf there, or I could tell them you myself; but I
hope some day you will know him, and then you will hear
' them in perfection.

“My father was made commander towards the end of the
war, and got a ship, in which he sailed with a convoy of
merchantmen from Bristol. It was the last voyage he ever
made in active service ; but the Admiralty was so well satis-
fied with his conduct in it that they kept his ship in commis-
sion. two years after peace was declared. And well they
72 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

might be ; for in the Spanish main he fought an action which
lasted, on and off, for two days, with a French sloop of war,
and a privateer, which he always thought was an American,
either of which ought to have been a match for him. But he
had been with Vincent in the Arrow, and was not likely to
think much of such small odds as that. At any rate he beat
them off, and nota prize could either of them make out of his
convoy, though I believe his ship was never fit for anything
afterwards, and was broken up as soon as she was out of com-
mission. We have got her compasses, and the old flag which
flew at the peak through the whole voyage, at home now. It _
was my father’s own flag, and his fancy to have it always
flying. More than half the men were killed, or badly hit—
the doar old father amongst the rest. A ball took off part of
his knee-cap, and he had to fight the last six hours of the
action sitting in a chair on the quarter-deck ; but he says it
made the men fight better than when he was among them,
seeing him sitting there sucking oranges.

“Well, he came home with a stiff leg The Bristol mer-
chants gave him the freedom of the city in a gold box, and a
splendidly-mounted sword with an inscription on the blade,
which hangs over the mantel-piece at home. When I first
left home, I asked him to give me his old service sword, which
used to hang by the other, and he gave it me at once, though
I was only a lad of seventeen, as he would give me his right
eye, dear old father, which is the only one he has now ; the
other he lost from a cutlass-wound in a boarding party. There
it hangs, and those are his epaulettes in the tin case. They
used to lie under my pillow before I had a room of my own,
and many a cowardly down-hearted fit have they helped to
pull me through, Brown ; and many a mean act have they
helped to keep me from doing. There they are always; and
the sight of them brings home the dear old man to me as
nothing else does, hardly even his letters. I must be a great
scoundrel to go very wrong with such a father.

“ Let’s see—where was I? Oh, yes; I remember. Well,
my futher got his box ond sword, and some very handsome
letters from several great men. We have them all in a book
at home, and I know them by heart. The ones he values
most are from Collingwood, and his old captain, Vincent, and
from his cousin, Nelson’s Hardy, who didn’t come off very
well himself after the war. But my poor old father never got
another ship. For some time he went up every year to
London, and was always, he says, very kindly received by
the people in power, and often dined with one and another
Lord of the Admiralty who had been an old messmate. But he
HARDY’S HISTORY, 73

was longing for employ:nent ; and it used to prey on him while
he was in his prime to feel year after year slipping away and
he still without a ship. But why should I abuse people, and
think it hard, when he doesn’t? ‘You see, Jack,’ he said to
me the last time we spoke about it, ‘after all, I was a battered
old hulk, lame and half blind. So was Nelson, you'll say:
but every man isn’t a Nelson, my boy. And though I might
think I could con or fight a ship as well as ever, I can’t say
other folk who didn’t know me were wrong for not agreeing
with me. Would you now, Jack, appoint a lame and blind
man to command your ship, if you had one?’ But he left
off applying for work soon after he was fifty (I just remember
the time), for he began to doubt then whether he was quite so
fit to command a small vessel as a younger man ; and, though
he had a much better chance after that of getting a ship (for
William IV. came to the throne, who knew all about him), he
never went near the Admiralty again. ‘God forbid,’ he said,
‘that his Majesty should take me if there’s a better man to be
had.’

“But I have forgotten to tell you how I came into the
world, and am telling you my father’s story instead of my
-own. You seem to like hearing about it though, and you
can’t understand one without the other. However, when my
father was made commander, he married, and bought, with
his prize-money and savings, a cottage and piece of land, in
a village on the south coast, where he left his wife when he
went on his last voyage. They had waited some years, for
neither of them had any money; but there never were two
people who wanted it less, or did more good without it
to all who came near them. They had a hard time of it, too,
for my father had to go on half-pay ; and a commander's
half-pay isn’t much to live upon and keep a family. For
they had a family ; three, besides me ; but they are all gone.
And my mother, too; she died when I was quite a boy, and
left him and me alone ; and since then I have never known
whet a woman’s love is, for I have no near relations; and a
man. with such prospects as mine had better keep down all—
however, there’s no need to go into my notions; I won't
wander any more if I can help it.

“I know my father was very poor when my mother died,
and I think (though he never told me so) that he had mort-
gaged our cottage, and was very near having to sell it at one :
time. The expenses of my mother’s illness had been very
heavy ; I know a good deal of the best furniture was sold—
all, indeed, except a handsome arm-chair, and a little work-
table of my mother’s. She used to sit in the chair, in her
74 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

last illness, on our lawn, and watch the sunsets. And he sat
by her, and watched her, and sometimes read the Bible to
her; while I played about with a big black dog we had then,
named Vincent, after my father’s old captain ; or with Burt,
his old boatswain, who came with his wife to live with my
father before I can recollect, and lives with us still. He did
everything in the garden and about the house ; and in the
house, too, when his wife was ill, for he can turn his hand to
anything, like most old salts. It was he who rigged up the
mast and weather-cock on the lawn, and used to let me run
up the old flag on Sundays, and on my father’s wedding-day,
and on the anniversary of his action, and of Vincent's action
in the Arrow.

“After my mother’s death my fathor sent away all the
servants, for the boatswain and his wife are more like friends.
I was wrong to say that no woman has loved me since my
mother’s death, for I believe dear old Nanny loves me as if I
were herown child. My father, after this, used to sit silent
for hours together, doing nothing but look over the sea ; but,
except for that, was not much changed. After a short time
he took to teaching me to read, and from that time I never
was away from him for an hour, except when I was asleep,
until I went out into the world.

“As I told you, my father was naturally fond of study.
He had kept up the little Latin he had learnt as a boy, and
had always been reading whatever he could lay his hands on ;
so that I couldn’t have had a better tutor. They were no
lessons to me, particularly the geography ones; for there was
no part of the world’s sea-coast that he did not know, and
could tell me what it and the people who lived there were
like; and often when Burt happened to come in at such
times, and heard what my father was talking about, he would
give us some of his adventures and ideas of geography, which
were very queer indeed.

“When I was nearly ten, a new vicar came. He was about
my father’s age, and a widower, like him; only he had no
child. Like him, too, he had no private fortune, and the
living is a very poor one. He soon became very intimate
with us, and made my father his churchwarden ; and, after
being present at some of our lessons, volunteered to tedch me
Greek, which, he said, it was time I should begin to learn.
This was a great relief to my father, who had bought a Greek
grammar and dictionary, and a delectus, some time before;
and I could see him often, dear old father, with his gless in
his eye, puzzling away over them when I was playing, or read-
ing Cook’s Voyages, for it had grown to be the wish of his
HARDY’S HISTORY. "5

heart that I should be a scholar, and should go into orders.
So he was going to teach mo Greek himself, for there was no
one in the parish except the Vicar who knew a word of any-
thing but English—so that he could not have got me a tutor,
and the thought of sending me to school had never crossed
his mind, even if he could have afforded to do either. My
father only sat by at the Greek lessons, and took no part ; but

--first he began to put in a word here and there, and then would
repeat words and sentences himself, and look over my book
while I construed, and very soon was just as regular a pupil
of the Vicars as I.

“The Vicar was for the most part very proud of his pupils,
and the kindest of masters ; but every now and then he used
to be hard on my father, which made me furious, though he
never seemed to mind it. I used to make mistakes on pur-
pose at those times to show that I was worse than ho at any
rate. But this only happened after we had had a political
discussion at dinner ; for we dined at three, and took to our
Greek afterwards, to suit the Vicar’s time, who was generally
a guest. My father is a Tory, of course, as you may guess,
and the Vicar was a Liberal, of 1 very mild sort, as I have
since thought; ‘a Whig of ’88, he used to call himself.
But he was in favour of the Reform Bill, which was enough
for my father, who lectured him about loyalty, and opening
the flood-gates to revolution ; and used to call up old Burt
from the kitchen, where he was smoking his pipe, and. ask
him what he used to think of the Radicals on board ship ;
and Burt’s regular reply was—

“¢Skulks, yer honour, regular skulks. I wouldn’t give
the twist of a fiddler’s elbow for all the lot of °em as ever pre-

* tended to handle a swab, or hand a topsail.’

“The Vicar always tried to argue, but, as Burt and I were
the only audience, my father was always triumphant ; only
he took it out of us afterwards at the Greek. Often I used
to think, when they were reading history, and talking about
the characters, that my father was much the most liberal of
the two.

“ About this time he bought a small half-decked boat of
ten tons, for he and Burt agreed that I ought to learn to
handle a boat, although I was not to go to sea; and when
they got the Vicar in the boat on the summer evenings (for
he was always ready for a sail though he was a very bad
sailor), I believe they used to stoor as near the wind ns pos-
sible, and get into short chopping seas on purpose. But I
don’t think he was ever frightened, though he used sometimes
to be very ill.
76 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“ And so I went on, learning all I could from my father,
and the Vicar, and old Burt, till I was sixteen. By that time
Thad begun to think for myself; and I had made up my
mind that it was timo I should do something. No boy ever
wanted to leave home less, I believe; but I saw that I must
make a move if I was ever to be what my father wished me
to be. So I spoke to the Vicar, and he quite agreed with me,
and made inquiries amongst his acquaintance ; and so, before
I was seventeen, I was offered the place of under-master in a
commercial school, about twenty miles from home. The
Vicar brought the offer, and my father was very angry at
first ; but we talked him over, and so I took the situation.

“And Iam very glad I did, although there wero many
dvawbacks. ‘The salary was 35. a year, and for that I had to
drill all the boys in English, and arithmetic, and Latin, and
to teach the Greek grammar to the five or six who paid extra
to learn it. Out of school I had to be always with them,
and was responsible for the discipline. It was weary work
very often, and what seemed the worst part of it to me, at
the time, was the trade spirit which leavened the whole of
the establishment. The master and owner of the school, who
was a keen vulgar man, but always civil enough to me,
thought of nothing but what would pay. And this seemed
to be what filled the school. Fathers sent their boys, because
the place was so practical, and nothing was taught (except
as extras) which was not to be of so-called real use to the
boys in the world. We had our work quite clearly laid
down for us ; and it was, not to put the boys in the way
of gtting real knowledge or understanding, or any of the
things Solomon talks about, but to put them in the way of
getting on.

“T spent three years at that school, and in that time I
grounded myself pretty well in Latin and Greek—better, I
believe, than I should have done if I had been at a first-
rate school myself; and I hope I did the boys some good,
and taught some of them that cunning was not the best
quality to start in life with. And I was not often very un-
happy, for I could always look forward to my holidays with
my father. ee

“ However, I own that I never was better pleased than one
Christmas, when the Vicar came over to our cottage, and
brought with him a letter from the Principal of St. Ambrose
College, Oxford, appointing me to a servitorship. My father
was even more delighted than I, and that evening produced a
bottle of old rum, which was part of his ship’s stock, and had
gone all through his action, and been in his cellar ever since.
HARDY’S HISTORY. 77

And we three in the parlour, and old Burt and his wife in the
kitchen, finished it that night ; the boatswain, I must own,
taking the lion’s share. The Vicar took occasion, in the
course of the evening, to hint that it was only poor men who
took these places at the University ; and that I might find
some inconvenience, and suffer some annoyance, by not being
exactly in the same position as other men. But my dear old
father would not hear of it ; I was now going to be amongst the
very pick of English gentlemen—what could it matter whether
I had money or not? That was the last thing which real
gentlemon thought of. Besides, why was I to be so vory
poor? he should be able to allow me whatever would be
necessary to make me comfortable. ‘But, Jack,’ he said
suddenly, later in the evening, ‘one meets low fellows every-
where. You have met them, I know, often at that con-
founded school, and will meet them again. Never you be
ashamed of your poverty, my boy.’ JI promised readily
enough, for I didn’t think I could be more tried in that way
than I had been already. I had lived for three years amongst
people whose class notoriously measured all things by a money
standard ; now that was all over, I thought. It’s easy making
promises in the dark. The Vicar, however, would not let the
matter rest; so we resolved ourselves into a Committee of
‘Ways and Means, and my father engaged to lay before us an
exact statement of his affairs next day. I went to the door
with the Vicar, and he told me to come and sce him in the
morning.

T half-guossed what he wanted to sco mo for. He knew
all my father’s affairs perfectly well, and wished to prepare me
for what was to come in the evening. ‘ Your father,’ he said,
‘is one of the most liberal men I have ever met; he is almost
the only person who gives anything to the schools and other
charities In this parish, and he gives to the utmost. You
would not wish him, I know, to cut off these gifts, which
bring the highest reward with them, when they are made in
the spirit in which he makes them. Then he is getting old,
and you would never like him to deny himself the comforts
(and few enough they are) which he is used to. He has
nothing but his half-pay to live on; and out of that he pays
501. a year for insurance ; for he has insured his life, that
you may have something beside the cottage and Jand when he
dies. I only tell you this that you may know the facts before-
hand. Iam suro you would nevor take a ponny from him if
you could help it. But ho won't bo happy unless ho makes
you some allowance ; and he can do it without crippling him-
self, He has been paying off an old mortgage on his property
‘78 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

here for many years, by instalments of 402. a year, and the
last was paid last Michaelmas; so that it will not incon-
venience him to make you that allowance. Now, you will
not be able to live properly upon that up at Oxford, even as
aservitor. I speak to you now, my dear Jack, as your oldest
friend (except Burt), and you must allow me the privilege of
an old friend. I have more than I want, and I propose
to make up your allowance at Oxford to 80/. a year, and upon
that I think you may manage to get on. Now, it will not
be quite candid, but I think, under the circumstances, we
shall be justified in representing to your father that 407. a
year will be ample for him to allow you. You see what I
mean’

“T remember almost word for word what the Vicar said ;
for it is not often in one’s life that one meets with this sort of:
friend. At first I thanked him, but refused to take anything
from him. I had saved enough, I said, to carry me through
Oxford. But he would not be put off; and I found that his
heart was as much set on making me an allowance himself as
on saving my father. So I agreed to take 252. a year from
him.

“When we met again in the evening, to hear my father’s
statement, it was as good as a play to see the dear old man,
with his spectacles on and his papers before him, proving in
some wonderful way that he could easily allow me at least 80/.
or 100/. a year. I believe it cost the Vicar some twinges of
conscience to persuade him that all I should want would be
401. a year ; and it was very hard work ; but at last we suc-
ceeded, and it was so settled. During the next three weeks
the preparations for my start occupied us all. The Vicar
looked out all his old classics, which he insisted that I should
take. There they stand on that middle shelf—all well bound,
you see, and many of them old college prizes. My father
made an expedition to the nearest town, and came back with
a large new portmanteau and hat-box ; and the next day the
leading tailor came over to fit me out with new clothes. In

. fact, if I had not resisted stoutly, I should have come to

collogo with half the contents of the cottage, and Burt as a
valet; for the old boatswain was os bad ag the other two.
But I compromised the matter with him by accepting his
pocket compass and the picture of the brig which hangs there ;
the two things, next to his old wife, which he values, I
believe, most in the world.

“Well, it is now two years last October since I came to
Oxford as a servitor ; so you see I have pretty nearly finished
my time here. I was more than twenty then—much older,
HARDY’S HISTORY. 79

as you know, than most freshmen. I daresay it was partly
owing to the difference in age, and partly to the fact that I
knew no one when I came up, but mostly to my own bad
management and odd temper, that I did not get on better
than I have done with the men here. Sometimes I think
that our college is a bad specimen, for I have made several
friends amongst out-college men. At any rate, the fact is, as
you have no doubt found out—and I hope I haven’t tried at
all to conceal it—that I am out of the pale, as it were. In
fact, with the exception of one of the tutors, and one man who
was a freshman with me, I do not know o man in college
excopt as a more speaking acquaintance.

“T had been rather thrown off my balance, I think, at the
change in my life, for at first I made a great fool of myself.
I had believed too readily what my father had said, and
thought that at Oxford I should see no more of what I had
been used to. Here I thought that tho last thing 1 man
would be valued by would be the length of his purse, and
that no one would look down upon me because I performed
some services to the college in return for my keep, instead of
paying for it in money.

“Yes, I made a great fool of myself, no doubt of that; and,
what is worse, I broke my promise to my father—I ofton was
ashamed of my poverty, and tried at first to hide it, for some-
how the spirit of the place carried me along with it. I
couldn’t help wishing to be thought of and treated as an equal
by the men. It’s a very bitter thing for a proud, shy, sensi
tive fellow, as I am by nature, to have to bear the sort of
assumption and insolence one meets with. I furnished my
rooms well, and dressed well. Ah! you may stare; but this °
is not the furniture I started with ; I sold it all when I came
to my senses, and put in this tumble-down second-hand stuff,
and I have worn out my fine clothes. I know I’m not well
dressed now. (Tom nodded ready acquiescence to this posi-
tion.) Yes, though I still wince a little now and thon—a
good deal oftener than I like—I don’t carry any false colours.
I can’t quite conquer the feeling of shame (for shame it is, I
am afraid), but at any rate I don’t try to hide my poverty
any longer, I haven’t for these eighteen months. I have a
grim sort of pleasure in pushing it in everybody’s face.”
(Tom assented with a smile, remembering how excessively
uncomfortable Hardy had made him by this little peculiarity
the first time he was in his rooms.) “The first thing which
opened my eyes a little was the conduct of the tradesmen.
My bills all came in within a week of the delivery of the
furniture and clothes ; some of them wouldn’t leave the things
80 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

without payment I was very angry and vexed ; not at the
bills, for I had my savings, which were much more than enough
to pay for everything. But I knew that these same tradesmen
never thought of asking for payment under a year, oftener two,
from other men. Well, it was a lesson. Credit for gentlc-
mon-commoners, ready-money dealings with servitors! I owe
the Oxford tradesmen much for that lesson. If they would
only treat every man who comes up as a servitor, it would
save a deal of misery.

“My cure was completed by much higher folk, though. I
can’t go through the whole treatment, but will give you a
specimen or two of the doses, giving precedence (as is the way
here) to those administered by the highest in rank. I got
thom from all sorts of people, but none did mo more good
than the lords’ pills. Amongst other ways of getting on, I
took to sparring, which was then very much in vogue. I ani
a good hand atit, and very fond of it, so that it wasn’t alto-
gether flunkeyism, I’m glad to think. In my second term
two or three fighting men came down from London, and gave
a benefit at tho Weirs, I was there, and set to with one of
them. Wo wore woll matched, and both of us did our very
best ; and when we had had our turn we drew down the house,
as they say. Several young tufts and others of the faster
men came up to me afterwards and complimented me. They
did the same by the professional, but it didn’t occur to me at
the time that they put us both in the same category.

“Tam free to own that I was really pleased two days after-
wards, when a most elaborate flunkey brought a card to my
door inscribed, ‘The Viscount Philippine, Ch. Ch, at home
to-night, eight o’clock—sparring.’ Luckily, I made a light
dinner, and went sharp to time into Christ Church. The
porter directed me to the noble Viscount’s rooms ; they were
most splendid, certainly—first-floor rooms in Peckwater. I
was shown into the large room, which was magnificently fur-
nished and lighted. A good space was cleared in the centre ;
there were all sorts of bottles and glasses on the sidcboard.
There might have been twelve or fourteen men present, almost
all in tufts or gontlomen-commonors’ caps. Ono or two of
our college I recognised. ‘The fighting man was also there,
stripped for sparring, which none of the rest were. It was
plain that the sport had not begun; I think he was doing
some trick of strength as I came in. My noble host came
forward with a nod, and asked me if I would take anything,
and when I declined, said, ‘Then will you put on the gloves 4’
I looked at him, rather surprised, and thought it an odd way
to treat the only stranger in his own rooms. However, I:
HARDY’S HISTORY. 81

stripped, put on the gloves, and one of the others came forward
to tie them for me. While he was doing it I heard my host
say to the man, ‘A five-pound note, mind, if you do it within
the quarter-of-an-hour.’ ‘Only half-minute time, then, my
lord,’ he answered. The man who was tying my gloves said,
in a low voice, ‘Be steady ; don’t give him a chance to knock
you down.’ It flashed across me in a moment now why I
was there ; but it was too late to draw back, so we stood up
and began sparring. I played very steadily and light at first
to see whether my suspicions were well founded, and in two
minutos I was satisfied. My opponent tricd every dodgo to
bring on a rally, and when ho was foiled I could see that ho
was shifting his glove. I stopped and insisted that his gloves
should be tied, and then we went on again.

“I kept on the defensive. The man was in bad training,
and luckily I had the advantage by an inch or so in length
of arm. Before five minutes were over, I had caught enough
of the bystanders’ remarks to know that my noble host had
betted a pony that I should be knocked down in a quarter-
of-an-hour. My one object now was to make him lose his
money. My opponent did his utmost for his patron, and
fairly winded himself in his efforts to get at me. He had to
call time twice himself. I said not a word; my time would
come, I knew, if I could keep on my legs, and of this I had
little fear. I held myself together, made no attack, and my
length of arm gave me the advantage in every counter. It
was all I could do, though, to keep clear of his rushes as the
time drew on. On he came time after time, careless of guard-
ing, and he was full as good a man as J. ‘Time's up; it’s
past the quarter.” ‘No, by Jove, half a minute yet; now's
your time,’ said my noble host to his man, who answered by
a last rush. I met him as before with a steady counter, but
this time my blow got home under his chin, and he staggered,
lost his footing, and went fairly over on to his back.

“Most of tho bystanders scemod dolightod, and some of
them hurried towards me. But I tore off the gloves, flung
them on the ground, and turned to my host. I could hardly
speak, but I made an effort, and said quietly, ‘You have brought
a stranger to your rooms, and have tried to make him fight
for your amusement ; now I tell you it is a blackguard act of
yours—an act which no gentleman would have done.’ My
noble host made no remark. I threw on my coat and waist-
coat, and then turned to the rest and said, ‘Gentlemen would
not havo stood by and scen it done.’ I went up to tho side-
hoard, uncorked a bottle of champagne, and half filled a
tumbler, before 2 word was spoken. Then one of the visitors

G
82 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

stepped forward and said, ‘Mr. Hardy, I hope you won't go,
there has been a mistake; we did not know of this. I am
sure many of us are very sorry for what has occurred ; stay
and look on, we will all of us spar.’ I looked at him, and then
at my host, to sce whether the latter joined in the apology.
Not he; he was doing the dignified sulky, and most of the
rest seemed. to me to be with him. ‘ Will any of you spar
with me?’ I said, tauntingly, tossing off the champagne.
‘Certainly,’ the new speaker said directly, ‘if you wish it,
and are not too tired. I will spar with you myself; you will,
won't you, James?’ and he turned to one of the other men.
If any of them had backed him by a word I should probably
havo stayed. Several of them, I learnt afterwards, would
have liked to have done so, but it was an awkward scene to
interfere in. I stopped a moment, and then said, with a sneer,
‘You're too small, and none of the other gentlemen seem
inclined to offer.’

“T saw that I had hurt him, and felt pleased at the mo-
ment that I had done so. I was now ready to start, and I
could not think of anything more unpleasant to say at the
moment ; so I went up to my antagonist, who was standing
with the gloves on still, not quite knowing what to be at, and
held out my hand. ‘TI can shake hands with you at any rate,’
I said ; ‘you only did what you were paid for in the regular
way of business, and you did your best.’ He looked rather
sheepish, but held out his gloved hand, which I shook.
‘Now, I have the honour to wish you all a very good evening ;’
and so I left the place, and got home to my own rooms, and
sat down there with several new ideas in my head. On the
whole, the lesson was not a very bitter one, for I felt that I
had had the best of the game. The only thing I really was
sorry for was my own insolence to the man who had come
forward as a peacemaker. I had remarked his face before.
T don’t know how it is with you, but I can never help looking
at a tuft—the gold tassel draws one’s eyes somehow; and
then it’s an awful position, after all, for mere boys to be
placed in. So I knew his face before that day, though I had
only seen him two or three times in the strect. Now if was
much more clearly impressed on my mind; and I called it up
and looked it over, half hoping that I should detect some-
thing to justify me to myself, but without success. How-
ever, I got the whole affair pretty well out of my head by
bedtime.

“While I was at breakfast the next morning, my scout came
in with a face of the most ludicrous importance, and quite a
deferential manner. I declare I don’t think he has ever got
HARDY’S HISTORY. 83

back since that day to his original free-and-casy swagger. He
laid a card on my table, paused a moment, and then said,
‘ His ludship is houtside watin’, sir.’

“T had had enough of lords’ cards; and the scene of
yesterday rose painfully before me as I threw the card into
the fire without looking at it, and said, ‘Tell him I am
engaged.’

“ My scout, with something like a shudder at my audacity,
replied, ‘ His ludship told me to say, sir, as his bis’ness was
vety particular, so hif you was engaged he would call again in
’arf an hour.’

“¢Tell him to come in, then, if he won't take a civil hint.’
I felt s¥e who it would be, but hardly knew whether to be
pleased: or annoyed, when in another minute the door opened,
and in walked the peacemaker. I don’t know which of us
was mostfpmbarrassed ; he walked straight up to mo without
lifting his eyes, and held out his hand, saying, ‘I hope, Mr.
Hardy, you will shake hands with me now.’

“Certainly, my lord,’ I said, taking his hand; ‘I am

sorry for what I said to you yesterday, when my blood was
up.’
“¢ You said no more than we deserved,’ he answered, twirl-
ing his cap by the long gold tassel; ‘I could not be com-
fortable without coming to assure you again myself, that
neither I, nor, I believe, half the men in Philippine’s rooms
yesterday, knew anything of the bet. I really cannot tell you
how annoyed I have been about it.’

“T assured him that he might make himself quite easy, and
then remained standing, expecting him to go, and not know-
ing exactly what to say further. But he begged me to go on
with my breakfast, and sat down, and then asked me to give
him a cup of tea, as he had not breakfasted. So in a few
minutes we were sitting opposite one another over tea and
bread and butter, for he didn’t ask for, and I didn’t offer, any-
thing else. It was rather a trying meal, for each of us was
doing all he could to make out the other. I only hope I
was as pleasant as he was, After breakfast he went, and I
thought the acquaintance was probably at an end; he had
done all that a gentleman need have done, and had well-nigh
healed a raw place in my mental skin.

“But I was mistaken. Without intruding himself on me,
ho managed somohow or anothor to keop on building up tho
acquaintance little by little, For somo timo I looked out vory
jealously for any patronising airs, and even after I was con-
vinced that he had nothing of the sort in him, avoided him
as much as I could, though he was the most pleasant and

a 2
84. TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

best-informed man I knew. However, we became intimate,
and I saw a good deal of him, in a quiet way, at his own
rooms. Iwouldn’t go to his parties, and asked him not to
come to me here, for my horror of being thought a tuft-hunter
had become almost a diseaso, Io was not so old as I, but ho
was just leaving the University, for he had come up early,
and lords’ sons are allowed to go out in two years ;—I suppose
because the authorities think they will do less harm here in
two than three years ; but it is somewhat hard on poor men,
who have to earn their bread, to see such a privilege given to
those who want it least. When he left, he made me promise
to go and pay him a visit—which I did in the long vacation,
at a splendid place up in the North, and enjoygd myself
more than I care to own. His father, who is quite worthy
of his son, and all his family, were as kind as pes ple could
be.
“Well, amongst other folk I met there a — sprig of
nobility who was coming up here the next term. He had
been brought up abroad, and, I suppose, knew very few men
of his own age in England. Ile was not a bad style of boy,
but rather too demonstrative, and not strong-headed. He
took to me wonderfully, was delighted to hear that I was up
at Oxford, and talked constantly of how much we should see
of one another. As it happened, I was almost the first man
he met when ho got off the coach at the ‘ Angel,’ at the begin-
ning of his first torm. Io almost cmbraced mo, and nothing
would serve but I must dine with him at the inn, and we
spent the evening together, and parted dear friends. Two
days afterwards we met in the street; he was with two other
youngsters, and gave me a polished and disjant bow; in
another week ho passed me as if we had never met:

“T don’t blame him, poor boy. My only wonder is, that
any of them ever get through this place without being
thoroughly spoilt. From Vice-Chancellor down to scout’s
boy, the whole of Oxford seems to be in league to turn their
heads, even if they come up with them set on straight, which
toadying servants at home take care shall never happen if
they can hinder it. ‘Tho only men who would do them good
up here, both dons and undergraduates, keep out of their way,
very naturally. Gentlemen-commoners have a little better
chance, though not much, and seem to me to be worse than
the tufts, and to furnish most of their toadies.

“Well, are you tired of my railing? JI daresay I am
rabid about it. all. Only it does go to my heart to think
what this place might be, and what it is, I see I needn’t
give you any inore of my experienco,
“4 BROWN BAIT.” 85

“Yowll undorstand now some of the things that havo
puzzled you about mo. Oh! I know they did; you neodn’t
look apologetic. I don’t wonder, or blame you. I am avery
queer bird for the perch I have lit on; I know that as well
as anybody. The only wonder is that you ever took the
trouble to try to lime me. Now have another glass of toddy.
Why ! it is near twelve. I must have one pipe and turn in.
No Aristophanes to-night.”

CHAPTER IX.
\ “a BROWN BAIT.”

Tom’s little exaltation in his own eyes consequent on the
cupboard-smashing escapade of his friend was not to last long.
Not a week had elapsed before he himself arrived suddenly
in Hardy’s room in as furious a state of mind as the other
had so lately been in, allowing for the difference of the men.
Hardy looked up from his books and exclaimed :—

“What's the matter? Where have you beon to-night?
You look fierce enough to sit for a portrait of Sanguinoso
Volcanoni, the bandit.”

“Been!” said Tom, sitting down on the spare Windsor
chair, which he usually occupied, so hard as to make it crack
again ; “been! I’ve been to a wine party at Hendon’s. Do
you know any of that set?”

“No, except Grey, who came into residence in the same
term with me; we have been reading for degree together.
You must have seen him here sometimes in the evenings.”

“Yes, I remember; the fellow with a stiff neck, who won’t
look you in the face.”

“Ay, but he is a sterling man at the bottom, I can tell
you.”

“Well, he wasn’t there. You don’t know any of the
rest ?”

“ No.”

“ And never went to any of their parties?”

“ No.”

“You've had no loss, I can tell you,” said Tom, pleased
that the ground was clear for him. ‘I never was amongst
such a set of waspish, dogmatical, ovor-bearing fellows in
my life.”

“Why, what in the name of fortune have they been doing
to you? How did you fall among such Philistines 1”
86 TOM BROWN AT OXEURD,

“T’m such an, easy fool, you see,” said Tom, “I go off
directly with any fellow that asks me; fast or slow, it’s all
the same. I never think twice about the matter, and gene-
rally, I like all the follows I moot, and enjoy everything.
But just catch mo at another of their stuck-up wines, that’s.
all”

“ But you won't tell me what’s the matter.”

‘Well, I don’t know why Hendon should have asked me.
He can’t think me a likely card for a convert, I should think.
At any rate, he asked me to wine, and I wentas usual. Every-
thing was in capital style (it don’t seem to be any part of their
creed, mind you, to drink bad wine), and awfully gentlemanly
and decorous.”

“Yes, that’s aggravating, I admit. It would have been in
better taste, of course, if they had been a little blackguard
and indecorous. No doubt, too, one has a right to expect.
bad wine at Oxford. Well?”

Hardy spoke so gravely, that Tom had to look across at
him for half a minute to see whether he was in earnest. Then
he went on with a grin.

“There was a piano in one corner, and muslin curtains—
I givo you my word, muslin curtains, besides the stuff ones.”

“You don’t say so!” said Hardy; “put up, no doubt, to
insult you. No wonder you looked so furious when you came
in. Anything else?”

“Let me see—yes—I counted three sorts of scents on
the mantel-piece, besides Kau-de-Cologne. But I could have
stood it all well enough if it hadn’t been for their talk,
From one thing to another they got to cathedrals, and one of:
them called St. Paul’s ‘a, disgrace to a Christian city.’ I
couldn’t stand that, you know. I was always bred to respect.
St. Paul’s ; weren’t you?”

“My education in that line was neglected,” said Hardy,.
gravely. ‘And so you took up the cudgels for St. Paul’s?”

“ Yes, I plumped out that St. Paul’s was the finest cathedral
in England. You'd have thought I had said that lying was one
of the cardinal virtues—one or two just treated me to a sort of
pitying sneer, but my neighbours were down upon me with a
vengeance. I stuck to my text though, and they drove me
into saying I liked the Ratcliffe more than any building in
Oxford ; which I don’t believe I do, now I come to think of
it. So when they couldn’t get me to budge for their talk, they
took to telling me that everybody who knew anything about
church architecture was against me—of course meaning that
I know nothing about it—for the mattor of that, I don’t mean
to say that I do”—'Tom paused ; it had suddenly occurred to
“A BROWN BAIT.” 87

him that there might be some reason in the rough handling
he had got.

“But what did you say to the authorities?” said Hardy,
who was greatly amused.

“ Said I didn’t care a straw for them,” said Tom; “there
was no right or wrong in the matter, and I had as good a
right to my opinion as Pugin—or whatever his name is—and
the rest.”

“What heresy!” said Hardy, laughing; “you caught it
for that, I suppose ?”

“Didn't I! They made such a noise over it, that the men
at the other end of the table stopped talking (they were all
freshmen at our end); and when they found what was up, one
of the older ones took me in hand, and'I got a lecture about,
the middle ages, and the monks. I said I thought England:
was well rid of the monks; and then we got on to Pro-
testatitism, and fasting, and apostolic succession, and passive
obedience, and I don’t know what all! I only know I was
tired enough of it before coffee came ; but I couldn’t go, you
know, with all of them on me at once, could 1?”

“Of course not; you were like the 6,000 unconquerable
British infantry at Albuera. You held your position by sheer
fighting, suffering fearful loss.”

“Well,” said Tom, laughing, for he had talked himself into
good humour again, “TI dare say I talked a deal of nonsense ;
and, when I come to think it over, a. good deal of what some
of them said had something in it. I should like to hear it
again quietly; but there were others sneering and giving
themselves airs, and that puts a fellow’s back up.”

“Yes,” said Hardy, “a good many of the weakest and
vainest men who come up take to this sort of thing now.
They can do nothing themselves, and get a sort of platform
by going in for the High Church business from which to look
down on their neighbours.”

“That's just what I thought,” said Tom; “they tried to
push mother Church, mother Church, down my throat at
every turn. I’m as fond of the Church as any of them, but I
don’t want to be jumping up on her back every minute, like
a sickly chicken getting on the old hen’s back to warm its
feet whenever the ground is cold, and. fancying himself taller
than all the rest of the brood.”

“You were unlucky,” said Hardy ; “there are some very
fine fellows amongst them.”

“Well, I haven’t seon much of them,” said Tom, “and I
don't want to see any more; for it seems to me all a Gothic-
mouldings and man-millinery. business.”
88 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“ You won't think so when you've been up a little longer,”
said Hardy, getting up to make tea, which operation he had
hardly commenced, when a knock came at tho door, and in
answer to Hardy’s “Como in,” a slight, shy man appeared,
who hesitated, and seemed inclined to go when ho saw that
Hardy was not alone,

“Oh, come in, and have a cup of tea, Grey. You know
Brown, I think?” said Hardy, looking round from the fire,
where he was filling his teapot, to watch Tom’s reception of
the new comer,

Our hero took his feet down, drew himself up and made a
solemn bow, which Grey returned, and then slid nervously
into a chair and looked very uncomfortable. However, in
another minute Hardy came to the rescue and began pouring
out the tea. He was evidently tickled at the idea of con-
fronting Tom so soon with another of his enemies. Tom saw
this, and put on a cool and majestic manner in consequence,
which evidently increased the discomfort of Grey’s seat, and
kept Hardy on the edge of an abyss of laughter. In fact, he
had to ease himself by talking of indifferent matters and
laughing at nothing. Tom had never scon hin in this sort
of humour before, and couldn’t help enjoying it, though he
felt that it was partly at his own expense. But when Hardy
once just approached the subject of the wine party, Tom
bristled up so quickly, and Grey looked so meckly wretched,
though he knew nothing of what was coming, that Hardy
suddenly changed the subject, and turning to Grey, said—

“What have you been doing the last fortnight? You
haven’t been here once. I’ve been obliged to get on with my
Aristotle without you.”

“Tm very sorry indeed, but I haven't been able to come,”
said Grey, looking sideways at Hardy, and then at Tom, who
sat regarding the wall, supremely indifferent.

“Well I’ve finished my Ethics,” said Hardy ; “can’t you
come in to-morrow night to talk them over? I suppose you're
through them too?”

“No, really,” said Grey, “I haven’t been able to look at
them since the last time I was here.”

“You must take care,” said Hardy. “The new examiners
are all for science and history ; it won’t do for you to go in
trusting to your scholarship.”

“T hope to make it up in the Easter vacation,” said Grey.

“You'll have enough to do then,” said Hardy ; “ but how
is it you’ve dropped astern so}”

“Why, the fact is,” said Grey, hesitatingly, “that the
curate of St. Peter’s has sct up some night-schools, and wanted
“A BROWN BAIT.” 89

some help. So I have been doing what I could to help him ;
and really,” looking at his watch, “I must bo going. I only
wanted to tell you how it was I didn’t come now.”

Hardy looked at Tom, who was taken rather aback by this
announcement, and began to look less haughtily at the wall.
He even condescended to take a short glance at: his neighbour.

“Tt's unlucky,” said Hardy ; “but do you teach every
night?” ;

“Yes,” said Grey. ‘I used to do my science and history
at night, you know ; but I find that teaching takes so much
out of me, that I’m only fit for bed now, when I get back.
I’m so glad I’ve told you. I have wanted to do it for some
time. And if you would let me come in for an hour directly
after hall, instead of later, I think I could still manage that.”

“ Of course,” said Hardy, ‘‘come when you like. But it’s
rather hard to take you away every night, so near the
examinations.”

“Tt is my own wish,” said Grey. “TI should have been very
glad if it hadn’t happened just now ; but as it has, I must do
the best I can.”

“Well, but I should like to help you. Can’t I take a
night or two off your hands ?”

“No!” said Tom, fired with a sudden enthusiasm ; “it will
be as bad for you, Hardy. It can’t want much scholarship to
teach there. Let me go. I'll take two nights a week, if
you'll let me.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Groy ; “ but I don’t know how my
friond might like it. That is—I mean,” he said, getting very
red, ‘it’s very kind of you, only I’m used to it ; and—and
they rely on me. But I really must go—good night ;” and
Grey went off in confusion.

As soon as the door had fairly closed, Hardy could stand it
no longer, and lay back in his chair, laughing till the tears
ran down his cheeks. Tom, wholly unable to appreciate the
joke, sat looking at him with perfect gravity.

“What can there be in your look, Brown,” said Hardy,
when he could speak again, “to frighten Grey so? Did you
gee what a fright he was in at once, at the idea of turning
you into the night-schools? There must be some lurking
Protestantism in your face somewhere, which I hadn't
detected.’

“TI don’t believe ho was frightencd at me a bit. He
wouldn’t have you cither, remember,” said ‘Tom.

“Well, at any rate, that don’t look as if it were all mere
Gothic-mouldings and man-millinery, does it?” said Hardy.

Tom sipped his tea, and considered.
90 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“One can’t help admiring him, do you know, for it,” he
said. ‘Do you think he is really thrown back, now, in his
own reading by this teaching ?”

“T’'m snre of it. Tle is such a quiet fellow, that nothing
else is likely to-draw him off reading ; and I can seo that
he doesn’t get on as he used, day by day. Unless he makes
it up somehow, he won't get his first.”

“He don’t seem to like the teaching gua much,’ said
Tom.

“ Not at all, as fav as I can see.”

“Then it is a very fine thing of him,” said Tom.

« And you retract your man-millinery dictum, so far as he
is. concerned ?”

“Yes, that I do, heartily ; but not as to the set in general.”

“Well, they don’t suit me either; but, on the whole, they
are wanted—at any rate, in this college. Even the worst of them
is making some sort of protest for self-denial, and against
self-indulgence, which is nowhere more needed than here.”

“ A nice sort of protest—muslin curtains, a piano, and old
claret.”

“Oh, you’ve no right to count Hendon among them ; he
has only a little hankering after medievalism, and thinks
the whole thing gentlemanly.”

“JT only know the whole clamjamfery of them were
there, and didn’t seem to protest much.”

“ Brown, you're a bigot. I should never have thought you
would have been so furious against any set of fellows. T
begin to smell Arnold.”

“No you don’t. He never spoke to me against anybody.”

“Hallo! It was the Rugby atmosphere, then, I suppose.
But I tell you they are the only men. in this college who are
making that protest, whatever their motives may be.”

“What do-you say to yourself, old fellow?”

“Nonsense! I never deny myself any pleasure that I can
afford, if it isn’t wrong in itself, and doesn’t hinder any one
else. I can tell you I’m as fond of fino things and good
living as you.”

“Tf a thing isn’t wrong, and you can afford it, and it don’t
hurt anybody! Just so ; well, then, mustn’t it be right for
you to have? You wouldn’t have it put under your nose,
I suppose, just for you to smell at, and let it alone?”

“Yes ; I know all that. I’ve been over it all often enough,
and thero’s truth in it. But, mind you, it’s rather slippery
ground, especially for a freshman ; and there’s a great deal to
be said on the other side—I mean, for denying oneself just
for the sake of the self-denial.”
“A BROWN BAIT.” . 91

“ Well, they don’t deny themselves the pleasure of looking

at a fellow as if he were a Turk, because he likes St. Paul’s
better than Westminster Abbey.”
__“ How that snubbing you got at the Ecclesiological wine
party seems to rankle.—There now! don’t bristle up like
a hedgehog. I'll never mention that unfortunate wine again.
I saw the eight come in to-day. You are keeping much
better time ; but there is a weak place or two forward.”

“Yes,” said Tom, delighted to change the subject, “I
find it awfully hard to pull up to Jervis’s stroke. Do you
think I shall ever get to it?” :

“Of course you will. Why,.you havo only been pulling
behind him a dozen times or so, and his is the most
trying stroke on the river. You quicken a little on it;
but I didn’t mean you. Two and five are the blots in the
boat.”

“You think so?” said Tom, much relieved. “ So- does
Miller, I can see. It’s so provoking—Drysdale is to: pull
two in the races next term, and Blake seven, and then
Diogenes will go to five. He’s obliged to pull seven now,
because Blake won’t come down this term; no more will
Drysdale. They say there will be plenty of time after
Easter.”

“It’s a great pity,” said Hardy.

“Isn't it?” said Tom; “and it makes Miller so savage.
He walks into us all as if it were our faults. Do you think
he’s a good coxswain ?”

“ First-rate on most points, but rather too sharp-tongued.
You can’t get a man’s best out of him without a little
praise.”

“ Yes, that’s just it; he puts one’s back up,” said Tom.
“But the Captain is a splendid fellow, isn’t he ?”

“Yes; but a little too easy, at least with men like Blake
and Drysdale. He ought to make them train, or turn them
out.”

“But who could he get? There's nobody else. If you
would pull, now—why shouldn’t you? I’m sure it would
make us all right.”

“J don’t subscribe to the club,” said Hardy ; “I wish I
had, for I should like to have pulled with you, and behind
Jervis, this year.”

“Do Jot mo toll the Captain,” said Tom ;. “I’m auro ho'd
manngo it somohow.”

“I'm afraid it’s too lato,” said Hardy ; “I ent myself off
from everything of the sort two ycars.ago,.and I’m beginning
to think I was a fool for my pains.”
92 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

Nothing more was said on the subject at the time, but Tom
went away in great spirits at having drawn this confession
out of Hardy—the more so, perhaps, because he flattered
himself that he had had something to say to the change in
his friend.

CHAPTER X.
SUMMER TERM.

How many spots in life are there which will bear comparison
with the beginning of our second term at the University ?
So far as external circumstances are concerned, it seems hard
to know what a man could find to ask for at that period of
his life, if a fairy godmother were to alight in his rooms and
offer him the usual three wishes. The sailor who had asked
for “all the grog in the world,” and “all the baccy in the
world,” was indeed driven to “a little more baccy” as his
third requisition ; but, at any rate, his two first requisitions
were to some extent grounded on what he held to be sub-
stantial wants ; he felt himself actually limited in the matters
of grog and tobacco. The condition which Jack would have
been in as a wisher, if he had been started on his quest with
the assurance that his utmost desires in the direction of
alcohol and narcotics were already provided for, and must be
left out of the question, is the only one affording a pretty
exact parallel to the case we are considering. In our second
term we are no longer freshmen, and begin to feel ourselves
at home, while both “smalls” and “greats” are sufficiently
distant to be altogether ignored if we are that way inclined,
or to be looked forward to with confidence that the game is
in our own hands if we are reading men. Our financial
position—unless we have exercised rare ingenuity in in-
volving ourselves—is all that heart can desire; we have
ample allowances paid in quarterly to the University bankers
without thought or troublo of ours, and our crodit is at its
venith, Tt is a part of our recognised duty to repay the
hospitality we have received as freshmen; and all men will
be sure to come to our first parties, to see how we do the
thing ; it will be our own faults if we do not keep them in
future. We have not had time to injure our characters to
any material extent with the authorities of our own college,
or of the University. Our spirits are never likely to bo
higher, or our digestions better. These and many other
comforts and advantages environ the fortunate youth returning
ae

SUMMER TERM. 93

to Oxford after his first vacation ; thrice fortunate, however,
if, as happened in our hero’s case, it is Easter term to which
he is returning ; for that Easter term, with the four days’
vacation, and little Trinity term at the end of it, is surely the
cream of the Oxford year. Then, even in this our stern
northern climate, the sun is beginning to have power, the
days have lengthened out, great-coats are unnecessary at
morning chapel, and the miseries of numbed hands and
shivering skins no longer accompany evory pull on the river
and canter on Bullingdon. In Christ Church meadows and
tho college gardens tho birds aro making sweet music in tho
tall elms. You may almost hear the thick grass growing,
and the buds on tree and shrub aré changing from brown,
red, or purple, to emerald green under your eyes; the
glorious old city is putting on her best looks and bursting out
into laughter and song. In a few weeks the races begin, and
Cowley marsh will be alive with white tents and joyous
cricketers. A quick ear, on the towing-path by the Gut,
may feast at one time on those three sweet sounds, the thud
thud of the eight-oar, the crack of the rifles at the Weirs,
and the click of the bat on the Magdalen ground. And then
Commemoration rises in the background, with its clouds of'
fair visitors, and visions of excursions to Woodstock and
Nuneham in the summer days—of windows open on to the
old quadrangles in the long still evenings, through which
silver laughter and strains of sweet music, not made by man,
steal out and puzzle the old cclibate jackdaws, poering down
from the battlemonts with heads on one side. To crown all,
long vacation, beginning with the run to Henley regatta, or
up to town to see the match with Cambridge at Lord’s, and
taste some of the sweets of the season, before starting on
some pleasure tour or reading party, or dropping back into
the quiet pleasures of English country life! Surely, the lot
of young Englishmen who frequent our universities is cast in
pleasant places. The country has a right to expect some-
thing from those for whom she finds such a life as this in the
years when enjoyment is keenest.

Tom was certainly alive to the advantages of the situation,
and entered on his kingdom without any kind of scruple.
He was very glad to find things so pleasant, and quite
resolved to make the best he could of them. Then he was in
a particularly good humour with himsclf ; for, in doforence
to the advico of Hardy, ho had actually fixed on tho books
which he should sond in for his little-go oxamination before
going down for the Easter vacation, and had read them
through at home, devoting an hour or two almost daily to
94 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

this laudable occupation. So he felt himself entitled to take
things easily on his return. He had brought back with him
two large hampers of good sound wine, a gift from his father,
who had a horror of letting his son set before his friends
the firo-water which is generally sold to the undorgraduato.
‘Yom found that his father’s notions of the rate of consumption
prevalent in the university were wild in the extreme. “In
his time,” the squire said, “eleven men came to his first
wine party, and he had opened nineteen bottles of port for
them, He was very glad to hear that the habits of the
place had changed so much for the better; and as Tom
wouldn’t want nearly so much wine, he should have it out of
an older bin.” Accordingly the port which Tom employed
the first hour after his return in stacking carefully away in
his cellar, had been more than twelve years in bottle, and he
thought with unmixed satisfaction of the pleasing effect it
would have on Jervis and Miller, and the one or two other
men who knew good wine from bad, and guided public
opinion on the subject, and of the social importance which
he would soon attain from the reputation of giving good
wine,

The idea of entertaining, of being hospitable, is a pleasant
and fascinating one to most young men; but the act soon
gets to be a bore to all but a few curiously constituted
individuals. ‘With these hospitality becomes first a passion
and then a faith—a faith the practice of which, in the cases
of some of its professors, reminds one strongly of the hints
on such subjects scattered about the New Testament. Most
of us feel, when our friends leave us, a certain sort of
satisfaction, not unlike that of paying a bill; they have been
done for, and can’t expect anything more for a long time.
Such thoughts never occur to your really hospitable man.
Long years of narrow means cannot hinder him from keeping
open house for whoever wants to come to him, and setting
the best of everything before all comers, He has no notion
of giving you anything but the best he can command, if it be
only fresh porter from the nearest mews. He asks himself
not, “Ought I to invite A or B? do T owo him anything ?”
but, “Would A or B like to come here?” Give me these
men’s houses for real enjoyment, though you never get any-
thing very choice there,—(how can a man produce old wine
who gives his oldest every day ?)—seldow much elbow room \
or orderly arrangement. The high arts of gastronomy and
scientific drinking, so much valued in our highly civilized
community, are wholly unheeded by him, are altogether
above him, are cultivated in fact by quite another sct, who
SUMMER TERM. 95 ©

have very little of the genuine spirit of hospitality in them ;
from whose tables, should one by chance happen upon them,
one rises, certainly with a feeling of satisfaction and ex-
pansion, chiefly physica], but entirely without that expansion
of heart which one gets at: the scramble of the hospitable
man. So that we are driven to remark, even in such every-
day matters as these, that it is the invisible, the spiritual,
which after all gives value and reality even to dinners ; and, «
with Solomon, to prefer to the most touching diner Russe,
tho dinner of herbs whore lovo is, though I trust that noithor
wo nor Solomon should object to well-dressed cutlots with
our salad, if they happened to be going.

Readers will scarcely need to be told that one of the first
things Tom did, after depositing his luggage and unpacking
his wine, was to call at Hardy’s rooms, where he found his
friend deep as usual in his books, the hard-worked atlases and
dictionaries of all sorts taking up more space than ever.
After the first hearty greetings, Tom occupied his old place
with much satisfaction.

“How long have you been up, old fellow?” he began;
“you look quite settled.”

“T only went home for a week. Well, what have you
been doing in the vacation 1”

“Oh, there was nothing much going on; so, amongst
other things, I’ve nearly floored my little-go work.”

“Bravo! you'll find the comfort of it now. I hardly
thought you would take to the grind so casily.”

“ Tt’s pleasant enough for 2 spurt,” said ‘Tom ; “ but I shall
never manage a horrid perpetual grind like yours. But what
in the world have you been doing to your walls ?”

Tom wight well ask, for the corners of Hardy’s room were
covered with sheets of paper of different sizes, pasted against
the wall in groups. In the line of sight, from about the
hoight of four to six feet, there was scarcely an inch of tho
original paper visible, and round each centre group there were
outlying patches and streamers, stretching towards floor or
ceiling, or away nearly to the bookcases or fireplace.

“Well, don’t you think it a great improvement on the old
paper?” said Hardy. ‘I shall be out of rooms next term,
and it will be a hint to the College that the rooms want
papering. You're no judge of such matters, or I should
ask you whether you don’t see great artistic taste in the
arrangement.”

“Why, they’re nothing but maps, and lists of names and
dates,” said Tom, who had got up to examine the decorations.
“ And what in the world are all these queer pins for?” he
96 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

went on, pulling a strong pin with a large red sealing-wax
head out of the map nearest to him. '

“Hullo! take care there ; what are you about?” shouted
Hardy, getting up and hastening to the corner. “Why, you
irreverent beggar, those pins are the famous statesmen and
warriors of Greece and Rome.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon; I didn’t know I was in such
august company ;” saying which, Tom proceeded to stick the
red-headed pin back into the wall.

“ Now, just look at that,” said Hardy, taking the pin out
from the place where Tom had stuck it. ‘“ Pretty doings there
would be amongst them with your management. This pin is
Brasidas ; you've taken him away from Naupactus, where he
was watching the eleven Athenian galleys anchored under the
temple of Apollo, and stuck him down right in the middle
of the Pnyx, where he will be instantly torn in pieces by a
ruthless and reckless mob. You call yourself a Tory indeed !
However, ’twas always the same with you Tories ; calculating,
cruel, and jealous. Use your leaders up, and throw them
over—that’s the golden rule of aristocracies.”

:‘ Hang Brasidas,” said Tom, laughing ; “stick him back
at Naupactus again. Here, which is Cleon? The scoundrel !
give me hold of him, and I'll put him in a hot berth.”

“That's he, with the yellow head. Let him alone, I tell
you, or all will be hopeless confusion when Grey comes for
his lecture. We're only in tho third year of the war.”

“T like your chaff about Tories sacrificing their great men,”
said Tom, putting his hands in his pockets to avoid tempta-

tion. “How about your precious democracy, old fellow}.

Which is Socrates 4” ,

“Here, the dear old boy !—this pin with the great prey
head, in the middle of Athens, you see. I pride myself on
my Athens. Here’s the Pireus and the long walls, and the
hill of Mars. Isn’t it as good as a picture?”

“Well, it 2s better than most maps, I think,” said ‘Tom ;
“but you’re not going to slip out so easily. I want to
know whether your pet democracy did or did not murder
Socrates,”

“Tm not bound to defend democracies. But look at my
pins. It may be the natural fondness of a parent, but I
declare they seem to me to have a great deal of character, con-
sidering the material. You'll guess them at once, I’m sure,
if you mark the colour and shape of the wax. This one now,
for instance, who is he?”

“ Alcibiades,” answered Tom, doubtfully.

“ Alcibiades!” shouted Hardy ; “you fresh from Rugby,

Pd
SUMMER TERM. 97

and not know your Thucydides better than that? Thero’s
Alcibiades, that little purple-headed, foppish pin, by Socrates,
This rusty-coloured one is that respectable old stick-in-the-
mud, Nicias.”

“Well, but you've made Alcibiades nearly the smallest of
the whole lot,” said Tom.

“So he was, to my mind,” said Hardy ; “just the sort of
insolent young ruffian whom I should have liked to buy at
my price, and sell at his own. He must have been very liko
somo of our gentlemon-commoners, with tho addition of
brains.”

; I should rdlly think, though,” said Tom, “it must boa
capital plan for making you remember the history.”

“Tt is, I flatter myself. Ive long had the idea, but I
should never have worked it out and found the value of it
but for Grey. I invented it to coach him in his history.
You see we are in the Grecian corner. Over there is tho
Roman. You'll find Livy and Tacitus worked out there,
just as Herodotus and Thucydides are here; and the pins
are stuck for the Second Punic War, where we are just now.
I shouldn’t wonder if Grey got his first, after all, he’s pick-
ing up so quick in my corners; and says he never forgets
any set of events when he has pricked them out with the

ins.” ae
pee Is he working at that school still?” asked Tom. "

“Yes, as hard as ever. He didn’t go down for the vacation,
and I really believe it was because the curate told him tho
school would go wrong if he went away.”

“Tvs very plucky of him, but I do think he’s a great fool
not to knock it off now till he has passed, don’t you?”

“No,” said Hardy ; “he is getting more good there than
he can ever get in the schools, though I hope he'll do well in
them too.”

“ Well, I hope so; for he deserves it. And now, Hardy,
to change the subject, ’m going to givo my first wino next
Thursday ; and here’s the first card which has gone out for it.
You'll promise me to come, now, won't you?”

“What a hurry you're in,” said Hardy, taking the card,
which he put on his mantel-piece, after examining it.

« But you'll promise to come, now?”

“Tm very hard at work ; I can’t be sure.” __

“You needn’t stay above half an hour. I’ve brought
back some famous wine from the governor's cellar; and
I want so to get you and Jervis together. Ho is sure to
come.” ss 5

“Why, that’s the bell for chapel beginning already,’ said

H
98 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

Hardy ; “TI had no notion it was so late. I must be off, to
put the new servitor up to his work. “Will you come in after
hall 2”

“Yes, if you will come to me next Thursday.”

“We'll talk about it. But mind you come to-night: for
you'll find me working Grey in the Punic Wars, and you'll
see how the pins act. I’m very proud of my show.”

And so Hardy went off to chapel, and Tom to Drysdale’s
rooms, not at all satisfied that he had made Mardy safe. He
found Drysdale lolling on his sofa, as usual, and fondling
Jack. He had just arrived, and his servant and the scout
were unpacking his portmanteaus, He seemed pleased to
sec Tom, but looked languid and used up.

“Where have you been this vacation?” said Tom; “you
look seedy.”

“You may say that,” said Drysdale. “Here, Henry, get
out a bottle of Schiedam. Have a taste of bitters? there’s
nothing like it to set one’s digestion right.”

“No, thank’ee,” said Tom, rejecting the glass which Henry
proffered him ; “my appetite don’t want improving.”

“You're lucky, then,” said Drysdale. “Ah, that’s the
right stuff! I fecl better already.”

“ But where have you been ?”

“Oh, in the little village. It’s no use being in the country
at this time of year. I just went up to Limmer’s, and there
T stuck, with two or three more, till to-day.”

“T can’t stand London for more than a week,” said Tom.
“ What did you do all day ?”

“We hadu’t much to say to daylight,” said Drysdale.
“What with theatres, and sparring-cribs, and the Coal-hole
and Cider-cellars, and a little play in St. James’s Street now
and then, one wasn’t up to early rising. However, I was
better than the rest, for I had generally breakfasted by two
o'clock.”

“No wonder you look seedy. Youd much better have
been in the country.”

“T should have been more in pocket, at any rate,” said
Drysdale, “By Jove, how it runs away with the ready!
I’m fairly cleaned out; and if I haven’t luck at Van John,
Pll be hanged if I know how I’m to get through term. But,
look here, here’s a bundle of the newest songs—first-rate, some
of them.” And he threw some papers across to Tom, who
glanced at them without being at all edified.

“You're going to pull regularly, I hope, this term, Drysdale?”

“Yes, I think so; it’s a cheap amusement, and I want a
little training for a change.”
SUMMER TERM. 99°

“That's all right.” :

“Yve brought down some dresses for. our gipsy business,
by the way. I didn’t forget that. Is Blake back?”

“T don’t know,” said Tom; “but we shan’t have time
before the races.”

“Well, afterwards will do; though the days oughtn’t to
be too long. I’m all for a little darkness in masquerading.”

“There's five o'clock striking. Are you going to dine in
hall?”

“No; I shall go to the Mitre, and get a broil.”

“Then I’m off. Let’s see,—will you come and wine with
me next Thursday ?”

“Yes; only send us a card, ‘to remind.’”

“All right!” said Tom, and went off to hall, feeling dis-
satisfied and uncomfortable about his fast friend, for whom
he had a sincere regard.

After hall, Tom made a short round amongst his acquaint-
ance, and then, giving himself up to the strongest attraction,
returned to Hardy’s rooms, comforting himself with the
thought that it really must be an act of Christian charity to
take such a terrible reader off his books for once in a way,
when his conscience pricked him for intruding on Hardy
during his hours of work. He found Grey there, who was
getting up his Roman history, under Hardy’s guidance ; and
the two were working the pins on the maps and lists in the.
Roman corner when Tom arrived. He begged them not to
stop, and very soon was #8 much interested in what they were
doing as if he also were going into the schools in May; for
Hardy had a way of throwing life into what he was talking
about, and, like many men with strong opinions, and passion-
ate natures, either carried his hearers off their legs and away
with him altogether, or roused every spark of combativeness
in them. The latter was the effect which his lecture on the
Punic Wars had on Tom. He made several protests as Hardy
went on; but Grey’s anxious looks kept him from going fairly
into action, till Hardy stuck the black pin, which represented
Scipio, triumphantly in the middle of Carthage, and, turning
round said, “And now for some tea, Grey, before you have
to turn out.”

Tom opened fire while the tea was brewing.

“ You couldn’t say anything bad enough about aristocracies
this morning, Hardy, and now to-night you are crowing over
the success of the heaviest and cruelest oligarchy that ever
lived, and praising them up to the skies.”

“ Hullo! here’s a breeze!” said Hardy, smiling; “but I
rejoice, O Brown, in that they thrashed the Carthaginians ;

Ha
100 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

and not, as you seem to think, in that they, being aristocrats,
thrashed the Carthaginians ; for oligarchs they were not at
this time.” ;

“ At any rate they answer to the Spartans in the struggle,
and the Carthaginians to the Athenians ; and yet all your
sympathics are with the Romans to-night in the Punic Wars,
though they were with the Athenians. before dinner.”

“T deny your position. The Carthaginians were nothing
but a great trading aristocracy—with a glorious family or two
I grant you, like that of Hannibal; but, on the whole, a
dirty, bargain-driving, buy-cheap-and-sell-dear aristocracy—of
whom the world was well rid. They like the Athenians
indeed! Why, just look what the two peoples have left
behind them iy

“Yes,” interrupted Tom ; “but we only know the Cartha-
ginians through the reports of their destroyers. Your heroes
trampled them out with hoofs of iron.”

“Do you think the Roman hoof could have trampled out
their Homer if they ever had one?” said Hardy. “The
Romans conquered Greece too, remember.”

“ But Greece was never so near beating them:”

“True. But I hold to my point. Carthage was the mother
of all hucksters, compassing sea and land to sell her wares.”

“And no bad line of life fora nation. At least English-
men ought to think so.”

“No, they ought not; at least if ‘Punica fides’ is to be
the rule of trade. Selling any amount of Brummagem wares
never did nation or man much good, and never will. Eh,
Grey”

Grey winced at being appealed to, but remarked that he
hoped the Church would yet be able to save England from
the fate of Tyre and Carthage, the great trading nations of
the old world; and then, swallowing his tea, and looking as if
he had been caught robbing a henroost, he made a sudden
exit, and hurried away out of college to the night-school.

“What a pity he is so odd and shy,” said Tom ; “TI should
80 like to know more of him.”

“Tt is a pity. He is much better when ho is alone with
me. I think he has heard from some of the set that you are
a furious Protestant, and sees an immense amount of stiff-
neckedness in you.”

“But about England and Carthago,” said Tom, shirking
the subject of his own peculiarities ; “you don’t really think
us like them? It gave me a turn to hear you translating
‘ Punica fides’ into Brummagem wares just now.”

“T think that successful trade is our rock ahead. The

 
SUMMER TERM. 101

devil who holds new markets and twenty per cent. profits in
his gift is tho devil that England has most to fear from.
‘ Because of unrighteous dealings, and riches gotten by deceit,
the kingdom is translated from one people to another,’ said
the wise man. Think of that opium war the other day: I
don’t believe we can get over many more such businesses as
that. Grey falls back on the Church, you see, to save tho
nation ; but the Church he dreams of will never do it. Is
there any that can? There must be surely, or we have
believed a lie. But this work of making trado righteous,
of Christianizing trado, looks like the very hardest tho
Gospel has ever had to take in hand—in England at any
rate.”

Hardy spoke slowly and doubtfully, and paused as if asking
for Tom’s opinion.

«JT never heard it put in that way. I know very little of
politics or the state of Ingland. But come, now; the
putting down the slave-trade and compensating our planters,
that shows that we are not sold to the trade devil yet,
surely.”

“T don’t think we are. No, thank God, there are plenty
of signs that we are likely to make a good fight of it
yet.”

They talked together for another hour, drawing their
chairs round to the fire, and looking dreamily into the embers,
as is the wont of men who are throwing out suggestions, and
helping one another to think, rather than arguing. At the
end of that time, Tom left Hardy to his books, and went
away laden with several new ideas, one of the clearest of
which was that he was awfully ignorant of the contemporary
history of his own country, and that it was the thing of all
others which he ought to be best informed on, and thinking
most about. So, being of an impetuous turn of mind, he
went straight to his rooms to commence his new study,
where, after diligent hunting, the only food of the kind he
required which turned up was the last number of Bell's Life
from the pocket of his greatcoat. Upon this he fell to work,
in default of anything better, and was soon deep in the P.R.
column, which was full of interesting speculations as to the
chances of Bungaree in his forthcoming campaign against
the British middle-weights. By the time he had skimmed
through the well-known sheets, he was satisfied that the
columns of his old acquaintance were not the place, except in
the police reports, where much could be learnt about the
present state or future prospects of England. Then, the
first evening of term being a restless time, he wandered out
102 TOM BROWN: AT OXFORD.

again, and before long landed, as his custom was, at Drysdale’s
door.

On entering the room he found Drysdale and Blake alone
together, the former looking more serious than Tom had ever
seen him before. As for Blake, the restless, haggard ex-
pression sat more heavily than ever on his faco, sadly marring
its beauty. It was clear that they changed the subject of
their talk abruptly on his entrance ; so Tom looked anywhere
except straight before him as he was greeting Blake. He
really felt very sorry for him at the moment. However, in
another five minutes, he was in fits of laughter over Blake’s
description of the conversation between himself and the
coachman who had driven the Glo’ster day-mail by which he
had come up: in which conversation, nevertheless, when
Tom came to think it over, and try to repeat it afterwards,
the most facetious parts seemed to be the “sez he’s” and the
“sez I's” with which Jehu larded his stories ; so he gave up
the attempt, wondering what he could have found in it to
laugh at.

“By the way, Blake,” said Drysdale, “how about our
excursion into Berkshire masquerading this term? Are you
game?”

“Not exactly,” said Blake ; “TI really must make the most
of such time as I have left, if I’m to go into the schools this
term.” .

“Tf there’s one thing which spoils Oxford, it is those
schools,” said Drysdale ; “‘ they get in the way of everything,
I ought to be going up for smalls myself next term, and I
haven’t opened a book yet, and don’t mean. Follow a good
example, old fellow, you're cock-sure of your first, everybody
knows.”

“T wish everybody would back his opinion, and give me
a shade of odds. Why, I have scarcely thought of my
history.”

“Why the d—1 should they make such a fuss about
history? One knows perfectly well that those old black-
guard heathens were no better than they should be; and
what good it can do to lumber one’s head with who their grand-
mothers were, and what they ate, and when and where and
why they had their stupid brains knocked out, I can’t see for
the life of me.”

“Excellently well put. Where did you pick up such
sound views, Drysdale? But you’ré not examiner yet ; and,
on the whole, I must rub up my history somehow. I wish I
knew how to do it.”

“Can’t you put on a coach?” said Drysdale.
SUMMER TERM, ; 103

“T havo one on, but history is his weak point,” said Blake.

“J think I can help you,” said Tom. “I’ve just been
hearing a lecture in Roman history, and one that won’t be so
easy to forget as most ;” and he went on to explain Hardy’s
plans, to which Blake listened eagerly.

“ Capital 1” he said, when Tom had finished. ‘In whose
rooms did you say they are ?”

- “Jn .Hardy’s, and he works at them every night with
rey.”

“ That’s the queer big servitor, his particular pal,” put in
Drysdale ; “ there’s no accounting for tastes.”

“You don’t know him,” retorted Tom ; “and tho less you
say about him the better.”

“T know he wears highlows and short flannels, and—”

“Would you mind asking Hardy to let me come to his
lectures 7” interrupted Blake, averting tho strong language
which was rising to Tom’s lips. “I think they seem just
the things I want. I shouldn’t like to offer to pay him,
unless you think—”

“T’m quite sure,” interrupted Tom, “that he won't take
anything. I will ask him to-morrow whothor ho will Jet you
come, and ho is such a kind good follow that I’m almost sure
he will.”

“T should like to know your pal, too, Brown,’ said
Drysdale ; “ you must introduce me, with Blake.”

“ No, I'll be hanged if I do,” said Tom.

“Then I shall introduce myself,” said Drysdale ; “see if I
don’t sit next him, now, at your wine on Thursday.”

Here Drysdale’s scout entered, with two notes, and wished
to know if Mr. Drysdale would require anything more.
Nothing but hot water ; he could put the kettle on, Drysdale
said, and go; and while the scout was fulfilling his orders,
he got up carelessly, whistling, and walking to the fire, read
the notes by the light of one of the candles which were
burning on the mantel-piece. Blake was watching him
eagerly, and Tom saw this, and made some awkward. efforts
to go on talking about the advantages of Hardy’s plan for
learning history. But he was talking to deaf ears, and soon
came to a stand still. He saw Drysdale crumple up the notes
in his hand and shove them into his pocket. After standing
for a few seconds in the same position, with his back to them,
he turned round with a careless air, and sauntercd to the
table whore they woro sitting.

“ Let's seo, what were wo saying?” ho began. “Oh,
about your eccentric pal, Brown.”

“You've answers from both?” interrupted Blake. Drys-
104 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

dale nodded, and was beginning to speak again to Tom,
when Blake got up and said, with white lips, “I must see
them.”

“No, never mind, what does it matter?”

“Matter! by Heavon, T must and will see them now.”

‘Tom saw at once that he had better go, and so took up his
cap, wished them good night, and went off to his own rooms,

He might have been sitting there for about twenty minutes,
when Drysdale entered.

“T couldn’t help coming over, Brown,” he said, “I must
talk to some one, and Blake has gone off raging. I don’t
know what he'll do—I never was so bothered or savage in
my life.”

“T am very sorry,” said Tom ; “he looked very bad in
your rooms. Can I do anything?”

“No, but I must talk to some one. You know—no you
don’t, by the way—but, however, Blake got me out of a
tremendous scrape in my first term, and there’s nothing that
TI am not bound to do for him, and wouldn’t do if I could.
Yes, by George, whatever fellows say of me, they shall never
say I didn’t stand by a man who has stood by me. Well, he
owes a dirty 300/. or 4002. or something of the sort-—nothing
worth talking of, I know—to people in Oxford, and they’ve been
leading him a dog’s life this year and more. Now, he’s just
going up for his degree, and two or three of these creditors—
the most rascally of course—are sueing him in the Vice-Chan-
collor’s Court, thinking now’s the time to put the screw on.
He will be ruined if they are not stopped somehow. Just
after I saw you to-day, he came to me about it. You never
saw a fellow in such a state ; I could see it was tearing him
to pieces, telling it to me even. However, I soon set him
at ease as far as I was concerned ; but, as the devil will have
it, I can’t lend him the money, though 602. would get him
over the examination, and then he can make terms. My
guardian advanced me 2004. beyond my allowance just before
Easter, and I haven’t 20/. left, and the bank here has given
me notice not to overdraw any more. However, I thought to
settle it easily enough ; so I told him to meet me at the
Mitre in half-an-hour for dinner, and when he was gone I sat
down and wrote two notes—the first to St. Cloud. That fellow
was with us on and off in town, and one night he and I went
partners at roulette, I finding ready-money for the time, gains
and losses to be equally shared in the end. JI left the table
to go and eat some supper, and he lost 807, and paid it out
of my money. I didn’t much care, and he cursed the luck,
and acknowledged that he owed me 40J. at the time. ‘Well,
SUMMER TERM. 105

I just reminded him of this 407. and said I should be glad of
it (I know he has plenty of money just now), but added, that
it might stand if he would join me and Blake in borrowing
602. ; I was fool enough to add that Blake was in difficulties,
and I was most anxious to help him. As I thought that St.
Cloud would probably pay the 402. but do no more, J wrote
also to Chanter—heaven knows why, except that the beast
tolls in money, and has fawned on me till I've been nearly
sick this year past—and asked him to lend Blake 502. on our
joint note of hand. Poor Blake! when I told him what I
had done at the Mitre, I think I might as well havo stuck
’ the carving-knife into him. We had a wretched two hours ;
then you came in, and I got my two answers—here they
are.”
Tom took the proffered notes, and read :—

“Dear DrrspaLp,—Please explain the allusion in yours
to some mysterious 407. J remember perfectly the occurrence
to which you refer in another part of your note. You were
tired of sitting at the table, and went off to supper, leaving
me (not by my own desire) to play for you with your money.
I did so, and had abominable luck, as you will remember, for
I handed you back a sadly dwindled heap on your return to
the table. I hope you are in no row about that night? I
shall be quite ready to give evidence of what passed if it will
help you in any way: I am always yours very truly,

A. Sr. Croup.

“P.S. Imust decline the little joint operation for Blake's
benefit, which you propose.”

The second answer ran :—

“ Dear DryspaLe,—I am sorry that I cannot accommodate
Mr. Blake, as a friend of yours, but you see his acceptance
is mere waste paper, and you cannot give security until you
are of age, so if you were to die the money would be lost.
Mr. Blake has always carried his head as high as if he had
5,0002. ayear to spend ; perhaps now he will turn less haughty
to men who could buy him up easy enough. I remain yours

incerel
sac JaBbEz CHANTER.”

Tom looked up, and met Drysdale’s eyes, w hich hadmore
of purpose in thom than he had over seen before. “Fancy |
poor Blako reading thoso two notes,” ho said, “and ’twas I
brought them on him. However, he shall have the monoy
somehow to-morrow, if I pawn my watch. I'll be even with
those two some day.” The two remained in conference for
106 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

some time longer; it is hardly worth while to do more than
relate the result.

At three o’clock the next day, Blake, Drysdale, and Tom
were in the back-parlour of a second-rate inn, in the Corn-
markot, On tho table wore pons and ink, somo cases of
Eau-de-Cologne and jewellery, and behind it a fat man of for-
bidding aspect who spent a day or two in each term at Oxford.
He held in his thick red damp hand, ornamented as to the
fore-finger with a huge ring, a piece of paper.

“Then I shall draw for a hundred-and-five ?”

“If you do, we won't sign,” said Drysdale; ‘now, be
quick, Ben” (the fat man’s name was Benjamin), “ you
infernal shark, we've been wrangling long enough over it,
Draw for a 1002. at three months, or we are off.”

“Then, Mr, Drysdale, you gents will take part in goods.
I wish to do all I can for gents as comes well introduced, but
money is very scarce just now.”

“Not a stuffed bird, bottle of Eau-de-Cologne, ring, or
cigar, will we have. So now, no more nonsense, put down
‘75. on the table.”

The money-londer, after another equally useless attempt
to move Drysdale, who was the only one of the party who
spoke, produced a roll of notes, and counted out 75/., think-
ing to himself that he would make this young spark sing a
different tune before very long. He then filled up the piece
of paper, muttering that the interest was nothing considering
the risk, and he hoped they would help him to something
better with some of their friends. Drysdale reminded him,
in terms not too carefully chosen, that he was getting cent.
per cent. The document was signed,—Drysdale took the
notes, and they went out.

“Well, that’s well over,” said Drysdale, as they walked
towards High Street. “I’m proud of my tactics, I must say ;
one never does so well for oneself as for any one else. If I
had been on my own hook that fellow would have let me in
for 202. worth of stuffed birds and bad jewellery. Let’s see,
what do you want, Blake 1”

“Sixty will do,” said Blake,

“You had better take 65/. ; there’ll be some law costs to
pay,” and Drysdale handed him the notes.

‘“‘Now, Brown, shall we divide the balance,—a fiver
a-piece }”

“No, thank you,” said Tom, “I don’t want it ; and,as you
two are to hold me harmless, you must do what you like with
the money.” So Drysdale pocketed the 102. after which they
walked in silence to the gates of St. Ambrose. The most
MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY. 107

rockless youngster doesn’t begin this sort of thing without
teflections which are apt to keep him silent: At the gates
Blake wrung both their hands. “I don’'t'say much, but I
sha’n’t forget it.” He got out the words with some difficulty,
and went off to his rooms.

 

CHAPTER Xi.
MUSOULAR OMRISTIANITY.

Wiruin the next week or two several important events had
happened to one and another of our St. Ambrose friends. Tom
had introduced Blake to Hardy, after some demur on the part
of the latter. Blake was his senior by a term; might have
called on him any time these three years; why should he
want to make his acquaintance now? But when Tom ex-
plained to hint that it would be a kind thing to let Blake
come and coach up history with him, for that unless he took
a high degree in the coming examination, he would have to
leave the college, and probably be ruined for life, Hardy at
once consented.

Tom did not venture to inquire for a day or two how the
two hit it off together. When he began cautiously to approach
the subject, he was glad to find that Hardy liked Blake.
“ He is a gentleman, and very able,” he said ; “it is curious
to see how quickly he is overhauling Grey, and yot how ow
takes to him. He has never looked scared at him (as he sti
does at you, by the way) since the first night they met.
Blake has the talent of setting people at their ease without
saying anything. I shouldn’t wonder if Grey thinks he has
sound Church notions. It’s a dangerous talent, and may
make a man very false if he doesn’t take care.” Tom asked
if Blake would be up in his history in time. Hardy thought
he might perhaps, but he had great lee-way to make up.
If capacity for taking in cram would do it, he would be
all right. He had been well crammed in his science, and
had put him (Hardy) up to many dodges which might be
useful in the schools, and which ‘you couldn’t get without a
private tutor.

Then Tom’s first wine had gone off most successfully. Jervis
and Millor had come carly and stayed Jato, and said all that
was handsome of the port, so that he was already a social horo
with the boating set. Drysdale, of course, had been there,
rattling away to everybody in his reckless fashion, and setting
& good example to the two or three fast men whom fom knew
108 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

well enough to ask, and who consequently behaved pretty
well, and gave themselves no airs, though as they went away
together they grumbled slightly that Brown didn’t give claret.
The rest of the men had shaken together well, and seemed
to enjoy themsolves. Tho only drawback to Tom had been
that neither Hardy or Grey had appeared. They excused
themselves afterwards on the score of reading, but Tom felt
aggrieved in Hardy’s case ; he knew that it was only an excuse.

Then the training had begun seriously. Miller had come
up specially for the first fortnight, to get them well in hand,
as he said, After they were once fairly started, he would
have to go down till just before the races ; but he thought he
might rely on the Captain to keep them up to their work in
the interval.

So Miller, the coxswain, took to drawing the bow up to the
ear at once. At the very beginning of the term, five or six
weeks before the races, the St. Ambrose boat was to be seen
every other day at Abingdon ; and early dinners, limitation
of liquids and tobacco, and abstinence from late supper
parties, pastry, ice, and all manner of trash, likely in Miller’s
opinion to injure nerve or wind, were hanging over the crow,
and already, in fact, to some extent enforced. The Captain
shrugged his shoulders, submitted to it all himself, and worked
away with imperturbable temper; merely hinting to Miller,
in private, that he was going too fast, and that it would be
impossible to keep it up. Diogenes highly approved; he
would have become the willing slave of any tyranny which
should insist that every adult male subject should pull twenty
miles, and never imbibe more than a quart of liquid, in the
twenty-four hours. Tom was inclined to like it, as it helped
him to realize the proud fact that he was actually in the
boat. The rest of the crew were in all stages of mutiny,
and were only kept from breaking out by their fondness
for the Captain and the knowledge that Miller was going
in a few days. As it was, Blake was the only one who
openly rebelled. Once or twice he stayed away. Millor
swore and grumbled, the Captain shook his head, and the
crow in general rojoiced.

It is to one of these occasions to which wo must now turn.
If the usual casual voyager of novels had been standing on
Sandford lock at about four, on the afternoon of April —th,
184 , he might have beheld the St. Ambrose eight-oar coming
with a steady swing up the last reach. If such voyager were
in the least conversant with the glorious mystery of rowing, he
would have felt his heart warm at the magnificent sweep and
life of the stroke, and would, on the whole, have been pleased
MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY. 109

with the performance of the crew generally, considered as a
college crew in the early stages of training. They came “hard
all” up to the pool below the lock, the coxswain standing
in the stern with a tiller-rope in each hand, and then chipped
oars; the lock-gates opened, and the boat entered, and in
another minute or two was moored to the bank above the
lock, and the crew strolled into the little inn which stands by
the lock, and, after stopping in the bar to lay hands on several
pewters full of porter, passed through the house into the
quoit and skittle-grounds behind. These were already well
. filled with mon of othor crows, playing in groups or looking

on at the players. One of these groups, as they passed, seized
’ on the Captain, and Miller stopped with him ; the rest of the
St. Ambrose men, in no humour for skittles, quoits, or any
relaxation except rest and grumbling, took possession of the
first table and seats which offered, and came to anchor.

Then followed a moment of intense enjoyment, of a sort
only appreciable by those who have had a twelve miles’
training pull with a coxswain as sharp as a needle, and in an
awful temper.

“ Ah,” said Drysdale, taking the pewter down from his
lips, with a sigh, and handing it to Tom, who sat noxt him,
“by Jove, I feel better.”

“Tt’s almost worth while pulling ‘hard all’ from Abingdon
to get such a thirst,” said another of the crew.

“Tl tell you what, though,” said Drysdale, “to-day’s the
last day yow Jl catch me in this blessed boat.”

Tom had just finished his draught, but did not reply ; it
was by no means the first time that Drysdale had announced.
this resolve. The rest were silent also.

“It’s bad enough to have to pull your heart out, without
getting abused all the way into the bargain. There Miller
stands in the stern—and a devilish easy thing it is to stand
there and walk into us—I can see him chuckle as he comes
to you and me, Brown—‘ Now, 2, well forward ;’ ‘3, don’t
jerk ;’ ‘Now, 2; throw your weight on the oar; come, now,
you can get another pound on.’ I hang on like grim Death,—
then its ‘Time, 2; now, 3—’”

“Well, its a great compliment,” broke in Tom, with a
laugh: “ ‘he thinks he can make something of us.”

‘He'll make nothing of us first, I think,” said Drysdale.
“Tve lost cight pounds in a fortnight. ” ‘The Captain ought
to put mo in every place in tho boat, in turn, to malo it wator-
tight. I’ve larded tho bottom boards under my seat so that
not a drop of water will ever come through again.”

“A very good thing for you, old fellow,” said Diogenes ;
110 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“you look ten times better than you did at the beginning of
term.”

“T don’t know what you call a good thing, you old fluter.
I’m obliged to sit on my hip-bones—I can’t go to a lecture—
all the tutors think I’m poking fun at them, and put me
on directly. I haven’t been able to go to lecture these ten
days.”

v So fond of lecture as he is, too, poor fellow,” put in
Tom.

“But they’ve discommonsed me for staying away,” said
Drysdale ; “not that I care much for that, though.”

“Well, Miller goes down to-morrow morning—I heard
him say so,” said another.

‘Then we'll memorialize the Captain and get out of these
Abington pulls. Life isn’t worth having at this rate.”

“No other boat has been below Sandford yet.”

And so they sat on and plotted, and soon most of the other
crews started. And then they took their turn at skittles,
and almost forgot their grievances, which must be explained
to those who don’t know the river at Oxford.

The river runs along the south of the city, getting into the
university quarter after it passes under the bridge connecting
Berks and Oxfordshire, over which is the road to Abingdon.
Just below this bridge are the boat-builders’ establishments
on both sides of the river, and then on the Oxfordshire
side is Christchurch meadow, opposite which is moored the
university barge. Here is the goal of all university races ;
and the racecourse stretches away down the river for a mile
and a half, and a little below the starting-place of the races
is Iffley Lock. The next lock below Iffley is the Sandford
Lock (where we left our boat's crew playing at skittles),
which is about a mile and a half below Iffley. Below
Sandford there is no lock till you get to Abingdon, a distance
of six miles and more by the river. Now, inasmuch as the
longest distance to be rowed in the races is only the upper
mile and a half from Iffley to the university barge, of course
all the crews think themselves very hardly treated if they aro
takon farthor than. to Sandford, Pulling “hard all” from
Sandford to Tfiley, and then again from Iffley over the regular
course, ought to be enough in all conscience. So chorus the
crews ; and most captains and coxswains give in. But here
and there some enemy of his kind—some uncomfortable,
worriting, energizing mortal, like Miller—gets command of
a boat, and then the unfortunate crew are dragged, bemoaning
their fate, down below Sandford, where no friendly lock
intervenes to break the long, steady swing of the training pull
MUSOULAR OHRISTIANITY. rit: ee

every two miles, and the result for the time is blisters and
mutiny. I am bound to add that it generally tells, and that
the crew which has been undergoing that peine forte et dure
is very apt to get the change out of it on the nights of hard
races.

So the St. Ambrose crew played out their skittles, and
settled to appeal to the Captain in a body the next day, after
Miller’s departure ; and then, being summoned to the boat,
they took to the water again, and paddled steadily up home,
arriving just in time for hall for those who liked to hurry.
Drysdalo nover liked hurrying himsolf ; besides, ho could not
dine in hall, as he was discommonsed for persistent absence
from lectures, and neglect to go to the Dean when sent for to
explain his absence.

“T say, Brown, hang hall,” he said to Tom, who was
throwing on his things ; “come and dine with me at the
Mitre. I'll give you a bottle of hock ; it’s very good there.”

“ Hock’s about the worst thing you can drink in training,”
said Miller. “ Isn’t it Jervis ?”

“It’s no good, certainly,” said the Captain, as he put on his
cap and gown ; “come along, Miller.”

“There, you hear?” said Miller. ‘You can drink a glass
of sound sherry, if you want wine;” and he followed the
Captain.

Drysdale performed a defiant pantomime after the retiring
coxswain, and then easily carried his point with Tom, except
as to the hock. So they walked up to the Mitre together,
where Drysdale ordered dinner and a bottle of hock im the
coffee-room.

“Don’t order hock, Drysdale ; I shan’t drink any.”

“ Then I shall have it all to my own cheek. If you begin
making a slave of yourself to that Miller, he’ll very soon cut
you down to a glass of water a day, with a pinch of rhubarb
in it, and make you drink that standing on your head.”

“Gammon ; but I don’t think it’s fair on the rest of the
crew not to train as well as one can.”

“You don’t suppose drinking a pint of hock to-night will
make you pull any the worse this day six weeks, when the
races begin, do you ?”

“No; but—”

“ Hullo! look here,” said Drysdale, who was inspecting
a printed bill pinned up on the wall of the coffeo-room ;
“ Wombwoll’s monagorie is in tho town, somowhoro down by
Worcester. What fun! We'll go there after dinner.”

. The food arrived, with Drysdale’s hock, which he seemed
to enjoy all the more from the assurance which every glass

a
 

TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

gave him that he was defying the coxswain, and doing just

‘the thing he would most dislike. So he drank away, and

facetiously speculated how he could be such an idiot as to go
on pulling. Every day of his life he made good resolutions
in the reach above the Gut that it should be his last per-
formance, and always broke them next day. He supposed
the habit he had of breaking all good resolutions was the way
to account for it.

After dinner they set off to find the wild-beast show ; and,
as they will be at least a quarter of an hour reaching it, for
the pitch is in a part of the suburbs little known to gowns-
men, the opportunity may be seized of making a few remarks
to the patient reader, which impatient readers are begged to
skip.

Our hero on his first appearance in public some years
since, was without his own consent at once patted on the
back ‘by the good-natured critics, and enrolled for better or
worse in the brotherhood of muscular Christians, who at that
time were beginning to be recognised as an actual and lusty
portion of general British life. As his biographer, I am not
about to take exceptions to his enrolment; for, after con-
sidering the persons up and down her Majesty’s dominions to
whom the new nick-name has been applied, the principles
which they are supposed to hold, and the sort of lives they
are supposed to lead, I cannot see where he could in these
times have fallen upon a nobler brotherhood. I am speaking
of course under correction, and with only a slight acquain-
tance with the faith of muscular Christianity, gathered almost
entirely from the witty expositions and comments of persons
of a somewhat dyspeptic habit, who are not amongst the
faithful themselves. Indeed, I am not aware that any
authorized articles of belief have been sanctioned or published.
by the sect, Church, or whatever they may be. Moreover,
at the age at which our hero has arrived, and having regard
to his character, I should say that he has in all likelihood
thought very little on the subject of belief, and would scarcely
be ablo to give any formal account of his own, beyond that
contained in the Church Catechism, which I for one think
may vory woll satisfy him for tho presont. Nevortholess,
had he been suddenly caught at the gate of St. Ambrose’s
College, by one of the gentlemen who do the classifying for
the British public, and accosted with, “Sir, you belong to a
body whose creed is to fear God, and wall4 1000 miles in 1000
hours ;” I believe he would have replied, “Do I, sir? I’m
very glad to hear it. They must be a very good set of fellows,
How many weeks’ training, do they allow ?”
MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY. 113

But in the course of my inquiries on the subject of muscular
Christians, their works and ways, a fact has forced itself on
my attention, which, for the sake of ingenious youth, like my
hero, ought not to be passed over. I find, then, that, side by
side with these muscular Christians, and apparently claiming
some sort of connexion with them (the same concern, as the
pirates of trade-marks say), have risen up another set of
persons, against whom I desire to caution my readers and my
hero, and to warn the latter that I do not mean on any
pretence whatever to allow him to connect himsolf with them,
however much he may be taken with their off-hand, “ hail-
brother well-met” manner and dress, which may easily lead
careless observers to take the counterfeit for the true article.
I must call the persons in question “ musclemen,” as dis-
tinguished from muscular Christians; the only point in
common between the two being, that both hold it to be a
good thing to have strong and well-exercised bodies, ready to
bo put at the shortest notice to any work of which bodies are
capable, and to do it well. Here all likeness ends ; for the
“ muscleman” seems to have no belief whatever as to the
purposes for which his body has been given him, except some
hazy idea that it is to go up and down the world with him,
belabouring men and captivating women for his benefit or
pleasure, at once the servant and fomenter of those fierce and
brutal passions which he seems to think it a necessity, and
rather a fine thing than otherwise, to indulge and obey.
Whereas, so far as I know, the least of the muscular Christians
has hold of the old chivalrous and Christian belief, that a
man’s body is given him to be trained and brought into sub-
jection, and then used for the protection of the weak, the
advancement of all righteous causes, and the subduing of the
earth which God has given to the children of men. He does
not hold that mere strength or activity are in themselves
worthy of any respect or worship, or that one man is a bit
better than another because he can knock him down, or carry
a bigger sack of potatoes than he. For mere power, whether
of body or intellect, he has (I hope and believe) no reverence
whatever, though, ceteris paribus, he would probably himself,
asa matter of taste, prefer the man who can lift a hundred-
weight round his head with his little finger to the man who
can construct a string of perfect Sorites, or expound the
doctrine of “ contradictory inconceivables.”

Tho above remarks occur as our hero is marching inno-
cently down towards his first “town and gown” row, and I
should scarcely like to see him in the middle of it, without
protesting that it is a mistake. I know that he, and other

I
114 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

youngsters of his kidney, will have fits of fighting, or de-
siring to fight with their poorer brethren, just as children
have the measles. But the shorter the fit the bettor for
the patient, for like the measles it is a great mistake, and a
most unsatisfactory complaint. If thoy can escape it alto-
gether so much the better. But instead of treating the fit as
a disease, “ musclemen” professors are wont to represent it
as a state of health, and to let tleir disciples run about in
middle age with the measles on them as strong as ever. Now
-although our hero had the measles on him at this particular
time, and the passage of arms which I am about shortly to
describe led to results of some importance in his history, and
cannot, therefore be passed over, yet I wish at the same time
to disclaim, both in my sponsorial and ‘individual character,
all sympathy with town and gown rows; and with all other
class rows and quarrels of every sort and kind, whether waged
with sword, pen, tongue, fist,'or otherwise. Also to say that
in all such rows, so far as I have seen or read, from the time
when the Roman plebs marched out to Mons Sacer, down to
1848, when the English chartists met on Kennington Com-
mon, the upper classes are most to blame. It may be that
they are not the aggressors on any given occasion : very pos-
sibly they may carry on the actual fighting with more fairness
(though this is by no means true as a rule) ; nevertheless the
state of feeling which makes such things possible, especially
in England, where men in general are only too ready to be
led and taught by their superiors in rank, may be fairly laid
at their door. Even in the case of strikes, which just now will
of course be at once thrown in my teeth, I say fearlessly, Let
any man take the trouble to study the question honestly, and
he will come to the conviction that all combinations ‘of the
men for the purpose of influencing the labour market, whether
in the much and unjustly abused Trades’ Societies, or in other
forms, have been defensive organizations, and that the masters
might, as a body, over and over again have taken the sting
out of them if they would have acted fairly, as many indi-
viduals amongst them have done. Whether it may not be
too late now, is a tremendous question for England, but one
which time only can decide.

When Drysdale and Tom at last found the caravans, it was
just getting dark. Something of a crowd had collected out-
side, and there was some hissing as they ascended the short
flight of steps which led to the platform in front of the
show ; but they took no notice of it, paid their money, and
entered.

Inside they found an exciting scene, The place was pretty
MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY. 115

well lighted, and the birds and beasts wero all alive in their
several dens and cages, walking up and down, and each utter-
ing remonstrances after its own manner, the shrill notes of
birds mingling with the moan of the beasts of prey and
chattering of the monkeys. Feeding time had been put off
till night to suit the undergraduates, and the undergraduates
wore proving their appreciation of the attention by playing
off all manner of practical jokes on birds and beasts, their
keepers, and such of the public as had heen rash enough to
venturo in. At tho farthor ond was tho kceper, who did tho
showman, vainly endeavouring to go through his usual jogtrot
description. His monotone was drowned every minute by
the chorus of voices, each shouting out some new fact in
natural history touching the biped. or quadruped whom the
keeper was attempting to describe. At that day a great deal
of this sort of chaff was current, so that the most dunder-
headed boy had plenty on the tip of his tongue. A small
and indignant kzot of townspeople, headed by a stout and
severe middle-aged woman, with two big boys, her sons, fol-
lowed the keeper,’ endeavouring by caustic remarks and
withering glances to stop the flood of chaff, and rostoro
the legitimate authority and the reign of keeper and natural
history.

At another point was a long Irishman in cap and gown,
who had clearly had as much wine as he could carry, close to
the bars of the panther’s den, through which he was earnestly
endeavouring, with the help of a crooked stick, to draw the
tail of whichever of the beasts stopped for a moment in its
uneasy walk. On the other side were a set of men bent on
burning the wretched monkeys’ fingers with the lighted ends
of their cigars, in which they seemed successful enough, to
judge by the angry chatterings and shriekings of their victims.

The two new comers paused for a moment on the platform
inside the curtain ; and then Drysdale, rubbing his hands,
and in high glee at the sight of so much misrulo in so small
a place, led the way down on to the floor der) in sawdust,
exclaiming, ‘“ Well, this 7s a lark! We're just in for all the
fun of the fair.”

Tom followed his friend, who made straight for the show-
man, and planted himself at his side, just as that worthy,
pointing with his pole, was proceeding—

“This is the jackal, from—”

“Tho Caribee Hielands, of which I’m a native mysel’,”
shouted a gownsman.

“This is the jackal, or lion’s provider,’ began again the
much-enduring keeper.

ie
t

12
116 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“Who always goes before the lion to purwide his pur-
wisions, purwiding there’s anything to purwide,” put in
Drysdale.

“TTom—really I do think it’s scandalous not to let the
keeper tell about tho beasteses,” said the unfortunate matron,
with o half turn towards the persecutors, and grasping her
bag.

“ My dear madam,” said Drysdale, in his softest voice, “TI
assure you he knows nothing about the beasteses. We are
Doctor Buckland’s favourite pupils, are also well known to
the great Panjandrum, and have eaten more beasteses than the
keeper has ever seen.”

“'T don’t know who you are, young man, but you don’t
know how to behave yourselves,” rejoined the outraged
temale ; and the keeper, giving up the jackal as a bad job,
pointing with his pole, proceeded—

“The little hanimal in the upper cage is the hopossum, of
North America—”

“The misguided offspring of the racoon and the gum-tree,”
put in one of his tormentors.

Hero a frightful roaring and struggling at a little distance,
mingled with shouts of laughter, and “ Hold on, Pat!” “Go
it, panther!” interrupted the lecture, and caused a rush to
the other side, where the long Irishman, Donovan, by name,
with one foot against the bars, was holding on to the tail of
ono of the panthers, which he had at length managed to
eatch hold of. Tho next moment ho was flat on his back in
the sawdust, and his victim was bounding wildly about the
cage. ‘The keeper hurried away to look after the outraged
panther ; and Drysdale, at once installing himself as show-
man, began at the next cage—

“This is the wild man of the woods, or whangee-tangee,
the most untameable—good heavens, ma’am, take care!” and
he seized hold of the unfortunate woman and pulled her
away from the bars.

“Oh, goodness!” she screamed, “ it’s got my tippet ; oh,
Bill, Peter, catch hold!” Bill and Peter proved unequal to
the owasion, but a gownsman seized the vanishing tippet,
and after a moment’s struggle with the great ape, restored a
meagre half to the proper owner, while Jacko sat grinning over
the other half, picking it to pieces. The poor woman had
now had enough of it, and she hurried off with her two boys,
followed by the few townspeople who were still in the show,
to lay her case directly before the mayor, as she informed
the delinquents from the platform before disappearing. Her
wrongs were likely to be more specdily avenged, to judge by
MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY. 117

the angry murmurs which arose outside immediately after
her exit.

But still the high jinks went on, Donovan leading all mis-
chief, until the master of the menagerie appeared inside, and
remonstrated with the men. “He must send for the police,”
he said, “if they would not leave the beasts alone. He had
put off the feeding in order to suit them ; would they let his
keepers feed the beasts quietly?” The threat of the police
was received with shouts of defiance by some of the men,
though the greater part seemed of the opinion that matters
were getting serious.

The proposal for feeding, however, was welcomed by all,
and comparative quiet ensued for some ten minutes, while the
baskets of joints, bread, stale fish, and potatoes were brought
in, and the contents distributed to the famishing occupants of
the cages. In the interval of peace the showman-keeper, on
a hint from his master, again began his round. But the spirit
of mischief was abroad, and it only needed this to make it
break out again. In another two minutes the beasts, from
the lion to the smallest monkey, were struggling for their
suppers with one or more undergraduates ; the clophant had
torn the gown off Donovan’s back, having only just missed
his arm ; the manager in a confusion worthy of the tower
of Babel, sent off a keeper for the city police, and turned
the gas out.

The audience, after the first moment of surprise and indig-
nation, groped their way towards the steps and mounted the
platform, where they held 4% council of war. Should they
stay where they were, or make a sally at once, break through
the crowd and get back to their colleges. It was curious to
see how in that short minute individual character came out,
and the coward, the cautious man, the resolute, prompt
Englishman, each was there, and more than one species
of each.

Donovan was one of the last up the steps, and as he
stumbled up caught something of the question beforo the
house. He shouted loudly at once for descending, and offer-
ing battle. “But, boys,” he added, “first wait till I adthress
the meeting,” and he made for the opening in the canvas
through which the outside platform was reached. Stump
oratory and a free fight were just the two temptations which
Donovan was wholly unable to resist ; and it was with a face
radiant with devil-may-caro delight that ho burat through tho
opening, followed by all tho rest (who folé that tho matter
was out of their hands, and must go its own way after the
Irishman), and rolling to the front of the outside platform,
118 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

rested one hand on the rail, and waved the other gracefully
towards the crowd. This was the signal for a burst of defiant
shouts and hissing. Donovan stood blandly waving his
hand for silence. Drysdale, running his eye over the mob,
turned to the rest and said, “There’s nothing to stop us,
not twenty grown men in the whole lot.” Then one of the
men lighting upon the drumsticks, which the usual man in
corduroys had hidden away, began beating the big drum
furiously. One of the unaccountable whims which infiuence
crowds seized on the mob, and there was almost perfect
silence. -This seemed to take Donovan by surprise; the
open air was having the common effect on him; he was
getting unsteady on his legs, and his brains were wan-
dering. ‘“Now’s your time, Donovan, my boy—begin:”

“ Ah, yes, to be sure, what'll I say ? let’s see,” said Donovan,
putting his head on one side—

“Friends, Romans, countrymen,” suggested some wag.

“To be sure,” cried Donovan ; “ Friends, Romans, country-
men, lend me your ears.”

“Bravo Pat, well begun ; pull their ears well when you’ve
got ’em.”

“Bad luck to it! where was I? you divels—I mean ladies
and gentlemen of Oxford city as I was saying, the poets—”

Then the storm of shouting and hissing arose again, and
Donovan, after an ineffectual attempt or two to go on, leaned
forward, and shook his fist generally at the mob. Luckily
for him, there were no stones about ; but one of the crowd,
catching the first missile at hand,, which happened to be a
eabbage-stalk, sent it with true aim at the enraged orator. He
jerked his head on one side to avoid it ; the motion unsteadied
his cap ; he threw up his hand, which, instead of catching
the falling cap, as it was meant to do, sent it spinning among
the crowd below. The owner, without a moment’s hesitation,
clapped both hands on the bar before him and followed his
property, vaulting over on to the heads of those nearest the
platform, amongst whom he fell, scattering them right and
left. 4

“Come on, gown, or he’ll be murdered,” sang out one of
Donovan’s friends. ‘Lom was one of the first down tho stops ;
they rushed to the spot in another moment, and the Irishman
rose, plastered with dirt, but otherwise none the worse for his
feat ; his cap, covered with mud, was proudly stuck on, hind
part before. He was of course thirsting for battle, but not
quite so much master of his strength as usual; so his two
friends, who were luckily strong and big men, seized him, one
to each arm,
MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY. 119

“Come along, keep together,” was the word ; “there’s no
time to lose. Push for the corn-market.”

The cry of “Town! town!” now rose on all sides. The
gownsmen in ® compact body, with Donovan in the middle,
pushed rapidly across the open space in which the caravans
were set up and gained the street. Here they were compara-
tively safe: they were followed close, but could not be sur-
rounded by the mob. And now again a bystander might
havo amused himself by noting the men’s characters, Three
or four pushod rapidly on, and wero out of sight ahoad in no
time. ‘The greater part, without showing any actual signs of
fear, kept steadily on, at a good pace. Close behind these,
Donovan struggled violently with his two conductors, and
shouted defiance to the town ; while a small and silent rear-
guard, amongst whom were Tom and Drysdale, walked slowly
and, to all appearance, carelessly behind, within a few yards
of the crowd of shouting boys who headed the advancing
town. Tom himself felt his heart beating quick, and I don’t
think had any particular desire for the fighting to begin, with
such long odds on the town side ; but he was resolved to be
in it-as soon as any one if there was to be any. Thus they
marched through one or two streots without anything more
serious than an occasional stone passing their ears. Another
turn would have brought them into the open parts of the
town, within hearing of the colleges, when suddenly Donovan
broke loose from his supporters, and rushing with a shout on
the advanced guard of the town, drove them back in confusion
for some yards. The only thing to do was to back him up ;
so the rear-guard, shouting “Gown! gown!” charged after
him. The effect of the onset was like that of Blount at
Flodden, when he saw Marmion’s banner go down,—a wide
space was cleared for a moment, the town driven back on to
the pavements, and up the middle of the street, and the
rescucd Donovan caught, set on his legs, and dragged away
again some paces towards college. But the charging body
was too few in number to improve the first success, or even to
insure its own retreat. “ Darkly closed the war around.”
The town lapped on them from the pavements, and poured on
them down the middle of the street, before they had time to
rally and stand together again. What happened to the rest-—
who was down, who up, who fought, who fled,—Tom had no
time to inquire ; for he found himsclf suddenly the centre of
a yolling circlo of onomies. So he sot his tooth and buckled
to his work ; and the thought of splendid single combat, and
glory such as he had read of in college stories, and tradition
handing him down as the hero of that great night, flashed

{

'
Wa
120 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

into his head as he cast his eye round for foemen worthy of
his steel. None such appeared ; so, selecting the one most
of his own size, he squared and advanced on him. But the
challenged one declined the combat, and kept retreating ;
while from behind, and tho sides, ono after another of the
“town” rushing out dealt Tom a blow and vanished again
into the crowd. For a moment or two he kept his head and
temper ; the assailants individually were too insignificant to
put out his strength upon ; but head and temper were rapidly
going ;—he was like a bull in the arena with the picadores
sticking their little javelins in him. A smart blow on the
nose, which set a myriad of stars dancing before his eyes,
finished the business, and he rushed after the last assailant,
dealing blows to right and left, on small and great. The mob
closed in on him, still avoiding attacks in front, but on flank
and rear they hung on him, and battered at him. He had to
turn sharply round after every step to shake himself clear,
and at each turn the press thickened, the shouts waxed louder
and fiercer ; he began to get unsteady ; tottered, swayed, and,
stumbling over a prostrate youth, at last went down full
length on to the pavement, carrying a couple of his assailants
with him. And now it would have fared hardly with him,
and he would scarcely have reached college with sound bones,
—for I am sorry to say an Oxford town mob is a cruel and
brutal one, and a man who is down has no chance with it,
—but that for one moment he and his prostrate foes were so
jumbled together that the town could not get at him, and the
next the cry of “Gown! gown!” rose high above the din ;
the town were swept back again by the rush of a reinforce-
ment of gownsmen, the leader of whom seized him by the
shoulders and put him on his legs again; while his late
antagonists crawled away to the side of the road.

“ Why, Brown !” said his rescuer,—Jervis, the Captain,—
“this you? Not hurt, eh?” ;

“Not a bit,” said Tom.

“Good ; come on, then ; stick to me.” In three steps they
joined the rest of the gown, now numboriug somo twenty
mon. ‘The mob was close before thom, gathering for anothor
rush, ‘Lom felt o crucl, wild devil boginning to rise in him :
he had never felt the like before. This timo he longed for
the next crash, which happily for him, was fated never to
come off.

“Your names and colleges, gentlemen,” said a voice ¢lose
behind them at this critical moment. The “town” set up a
derisive shout, and, turning round, the gownsmen found! the
velvet sleeves of one of the proctors at thoir elbow, and: his
MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY. 121

satellites, vulgarly called bull-dogs, taking notes of them.
They were completely caught, and so quietly gave the required
information.

“You will go to your colleges at once,” said the proctor,
“and remain within gates. You will see these gentlemen
to the High-street,” he added to his marshal; and then
strode on after the crowd, which was vanishing down the
street.

The men turned and strolled towards tho High-stroct, tho
marshal kooping, in a deferontial but wido-nwako mainor,
protty closo to thom, bub without making auy show of watch
ing them. When they reached the High-street ho touched
his hat and said civilly, “I hope you will go home now,
gentlemen, the senior proctor is very strict.”

“ All right, marshal ; good night,” said the good-natured
ones.

“ D— his impudence,” growled one or two of the rest, and
the marshal bustled away after his master. The men looked
at one another for a moment or two. They were of different
colleges, and strangers. ‘The High-street was quict; so,
without the exchange of a word, after the manner of British
youth, they broke up ) into twos and threes, and parted. Jervis,
Tom, and Drysdale, who turned up quite undamaged, saun-
tered together towards St. Ambrose’s.

“T say, where are we going ?” said Drysdale.

“ Not to college, I vote,” said Tom.

“No, there may be some more fun.”

“ Mighty poor fun, I should say, you'll find it,” said Jervis ;
“however, if you will stay, I suppose I must. I can’t leave
you two boys by yourselves.”

“Come along then, down here.” So they turned down
one of the courts leading out of the High-street, and so by
back streets bore up again for the disturbed districts.

“Mind and koep a sharp look out for the proctors,” said
Jervis ; “as much row as you please, but we musn’t be caught
again.”

“Well, only let’s keep together if we have to bolt.”

They promenaded in lonely dignity for some five minutes,
keeping eyes and ears on full strain.

“TI tell you what,” said Drysdale, at last, “it isn’t fair,
these enemies in the camp ; what with the ‘town’ and their
stones and fists, and the proctors with their ‘name and college,’
we've got the wrong end of the stick.”

“Both wrong ends, I can tell you,” said Jervis. “ Holloe,
Brown, your nose is bleeding.”

“Tsit?” said, Tom, drawing his hand across his face : “’twas
122 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

that confounded little fellow then who ran up to my side
while I was squaring at the long party. I felt a sharp crack,
and the little rascal bolted into the crowd before I could turn
at him.”

“Cut and come again,” said Drysdale, laughing.

“Ay, that’s the regular thing in these blackguard street
squabbles. Here they come then,” said Jervis. “Steady,
all.”

They turned round to face the town, which come shouting
down the street behind them in pursuit of one gownsman, a
little, harmless, quiet fellow, who had fallen in with them on
his way back to his college from a tea with his tutor, and,
like a wise man, was giving them leg-bail as hard as he could
foot it. But the little man was of a courageous, though
prudent soul, and turned panting and gasping on his foes
the moment he found himself amongst friends again,

“Now, then, stick together ; don’t let them get round us,”
said Jervis.

They walked steadily down the street, which was luckily
a narrow one, so that three of them could keep the whole
of it, halting and showing front evory fow yards, when tho
crowd prossod too much. “Down with thom! Town, town |
That’s two as was in the show.” Mark the velvet-capped
chap. Town, town!” shouted the hinder part of the
mob ; but it was a rabble of ‘boys as before, and the front
rank took very good care of itself, and forbore from close
quarters.

The small gownsman had now got his wind again; and
smarting under the ignominy of his recent flight, was always
a pace or two nearer the crowd than the other three, ruffling
up like a little bantam, and shouting defiance between the
catchings of his breath.

“You vagabonds! you cowards! Come on now, I say!
Gown, gown!” And at last, emboldened by the repeated
halts of the mob, and thirsting for revenge, he made a dash
at one of the nearest of the enemy. The suddenness of the
attack took both sides by surprise, then came a rush by two
or threo of the town to tho rescue.

“No, no! stand back—one at a time,” shouted the Captain,
throwing himself between the combatants and the mob. “Go
it, little un; serve him out. Keep the rest back, boys:
steady!” Tom and Drysdale faced towards the crowd, while
the little gownsman and his antagonist—who defended himself
vigorously enough now—came to close quarters, in the rear of
the gown line ; too close to hurt one another, but what with
hugging and cuffing, the townsman in another half-minute
MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY. 123

was sitting quietly on the pavement with his back against the’
wall, his enemy squaring in front of him, and daring him to
renew the combat. “Get up, you coward; get up, I say,
you coward! He won't get up,” said the little man, eagerly
turning to the Captain. “Shall I give him a kick 3”

“No, let the cur alone,” replied Jervis. “Now, do any
more of you want to fight? Come on, like men, one at a
time. Tl fight any man in the crowd.”

Whether the challenge would have been answered must
rest uncertain ; for now the crowd began to look back, and
a cry aroso, “ Iforo they aro, proctora! now they'll run.”

“So we must, by Jove, Brown,” said the Captain. “ What’s
your college ?” to the little hero.

“ Pembroke.”

“Cut away, then ; your close at home ;”

“Very well, if I must: good night,” and away went the
small man as fast as he had come; and it has never been
heard that he came to further grief or performed other feats
that night.

“ Hang it, don’t let’s run,” said Drysdale.

“Ts it the proctors?” said Tom. “TI can’t see them.”

“Mark the bloody-faced one; kick him over,” sang out a
voice in the crowd.

“ Thank’ee,” said Tom, savagely. ‘‘ Let’s have one rush at
them.”

“Look ! there’s the proctor’s cap just through them ; come
along, boys—well, stay if you like, and be rusticated, I'm
off ;” and away went Jervis, and the next moment Tom and
Drysdale followed the good example, and, as they had to run,
made the best use of their legs, and in two minutes were well
ahead of their pursuers) They turned a corner; “ Here,
Brown! alight in this public, cut in, and it’s all right.”
Next moment they were in the dark passage of a quiet little
inn, and heard with a chuckle part of the crowd scurry by
the door in pursuit, while they themsclves suddenly appeared
in the neat little bar, to the no small astonishment of its
occupants. These were a stout elderly woman in spectacles,
who was stitching away at plain work in an arm-chair on one
side of the fire ; the foreman of one of the great boat-builders,
who sat opposite her, smoking his pipe, with a long glass of
clear ale at his elbow ; and a bright-eyed, neat-handed barmaid,
who was leaning against the table, and talking to the others as
they entered.
124 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

CHAPTER XII.
THE OAPTAIN’S NOTIONS,

Tur old lady dropped her work, the barmaid turned round
with a start and little ejaculation, and the foreman stared
with all his eyes for a moment, and then, jumping up, ex-
claimed—

“ Bless us, if it isn’t Muster Drysdale and Muster Brown,
of Ambrose’s, Why what's the matter, sir? Muster Brown,
you be all covered wi’ blood, sir.”

“Oh dear me! poor young gentleman !” cried the hostess :
—“ Here, Patty, run and tell Dick to go for the doctor, and
get the best room ”—

“No, please don’t ; it’s nothing at all,” interrupted Tom,
laughing ;—“a basin of cold water and a towel, if you please,
Miss Patty, and I shall be quite presentable ina minute. I’m
very sorry to have frightened you all.”

Drysdale joined in assurances that it was nothing but a
little of his friend’s “claret,” which he would be all the
better for losing, and watched with an envious eye the in-
terest depicted in Patty’s pretty face, as she hurried in with
a basin of fresh pumped water, and held the towel. Tom
bathed his face, and very soon was as respectable a member
of society as usual, save for a slight swelling on one side of
his nose.

Drysdale meantime—seated on the table—had been ex-
plaining the circumstances to the landlady and the foreman.
“And now, ma’am,” said he, as Tom joined them and seated
himself on a vacant chair, “I’m sure you must draw famous
ale.”

“Indeed, sir, I think Dick—that’s my ostler, sir—is as
good a brewer as is in the town. ‘We always brews at home,
sir, and I hope always shall.”

“ Quite right, ma’am, quite right,” said Drysdale ; “and I
don’t think we can do better than follow Jem here. Let us
have a jug of the same ale as he is drinking. And you'll
take a glass with us, Jem? or will you have spirits 9”

Jem was for another glass of ale, and bore witness to its
being the best in Oxford, and Patty drew the ale, and sup-
plied two more long glasses. Drysdale, with apologies, produced
his cigar-case ; and Jem, under the influence of the ale and
a first-rate Havannah (for which he deserted his pipe, though
he did not enjoy it half as much), volunteered to go and
rouse the yard and conduct them safely back to college. This
offer was of course politely declined, and then, Jem’s hour
THE CAPTAIN'S NOTIONS. 125

for bed having come, he, being a methodical man, as became
his position, departed, and left our two young friends in sole
possession of the bar. Nothing could have suited the two
young gentlemen better, and they set to work to make them.
selves agreeable. They listened with lively interest to the
landlady’s statement of the difficulties of a widow woman in
a house like hers, and to her praises of her factotum Dick
and her niece Patty. They applauded her resolution of not
bringing up her two boys in tho publican lino, though they
could offer no very available answer to her appeals for
advice as to what trade they should be put to; all trades were
so full, and things were not as they used to be. The one
thing, apparently, which was wanting to the happiness of
Drysdale at Oxford, was the discovery of such beer as he had
at last found at “The Choughs.” Dick was to come up to
St. Ambrose’s the first thing in the morning and carry off his
barrel, which would never contain in future any other liquid.
At last that worthy appeared in the bar to know when he
was to shut up, and was sent out by his mistress to see that
the street was clear, for which service he received a shilling,
though his offer of escort was declined. And so, after paying
in a splendid manner for their entertainment, they found
themselves in the street, and set off for college, agreeing on
the way that “The Choughs” was a great find, the old lady
the best old soul in the world, and Patty the prettiest girl in
Oxford. They found the streets quiet, and walking quickly
along them, knocked at the college gates at half-past eleven.
The stout porter received them with a long face.

“Senior proctor’s sent down here an hour back, gentlemen,
to find whether you was in college.”

“You don’t mean that, porter? How kind of him! What
did you say ?”

“Said I didn’t know, sir; but the marshal said, if you
come in after, that you was to go to the senior proctor’s at
half-past nine to-morrow.”

“Send my compliments to the senior proctor,” said Drysdale,
“and say I have a very particular engagement to-morrow
morning, which will prevent my having the pleasure of calling
on him.”

“Very good, sir,” said the porter, giving a little dry chuckle,
and tapping the keys against his leg; ‘‘only perhaps you
wouldn’t mind writing him a note, sir, as he is rather a parti-
cular gentleman.”

“Didn’t he send after any one else?” said Tom.

“Ves, sir, Mr. Jervis, sir.”

“Well, and what about him?”
126 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“Oh, sir, Mr. Jervis! an old hand, sir. He'd been in gates
a long time, sir, when the marshal came.”

“The sly old beggar !” said Drysdale, “good night, porter ,
mind you send my message to tho proctor. If he is set on
seeing me to-morrow, you can say that he will find a broiled
chicken and a hand at picquet in my rooms, if he likes to
drop in to lunch.”

The porter looked after them for a moment, and then retired
to his deep old chair in the lodge, pulled his night-cap over his
ears, put up his feet before the fire on a high stool, and folded
his hands on his lap. “The most impidentest thing on the
face of the earth is a gen’?man-commoner in his first year,”
soliloquized the little man. “’Twould ha’ done that one a
sight of good, now, if he’d got a good hiding in the street
to-night. But he’s better than most on ’em, too,” he went
on; “uncommon free with his tongue, but just as free with
his arf-sovereigns. Well, I’m not going to peach if the proctor
don’t send again in the morning. That sort’s good for the
college ; makes things brisk ; has his win from town, and
don’t keep no keys. I wonder, now, if my Peter's been out
a fighting? He's pretty nigh as hard to manage, is that boy,
as if he was at college hisself.”

And so, muttering over his domestic and professional
grievances, the small janitor composed himself to a nap. I
may add, parenthetically, that his hopeful Peter, a precocious
youth of seventeen, scout’s boy on No. 3 Staircase of St.
Ambroso’s College, was represented in the boot cleaning and
errand line by a substitute for some days; and when he
returned to duty was minus a front tooth.

“What fools we were not to stick to the Captain. I wonder
what we shall get,” said Tom, who was troubled in his mind
at the proctor’s message, and not gifted naturally with the
recklessness and contempt of authority which in Drysdale’s
case approached the sublime.

“‘Who cares? T’ll be bound, now, the old fox came straight
home to earth. Let's go and knock him up.”

Tom assented, for he was anxious to consult Jervis as to
his proceedings in the morning ; so they soon found them-
selves drumming at his oak, which was opened shortly by
‘the stroke” in an old boating-jacket. They followed him in.
At one end of his table stood his tea-service and the remains
of his commons, which the scout had not cleared away ; at
the other, open books, note-books, and maps showed that the
Captain read, as he rowed, “ hard all.”

“Well, ave you two only just in ?”

“Only just, my Captain,” answered Drysdale,
THE CAPTAIN'S NOTIONS. 127

“Have you been well thrashed, then? You don’t look
much damaged.”

“We are innocent of fight since your sudden departure—
flight, shall I call it —my Captain.”

“Where have you been ?”

“Where! why in the paragon of all pothouses ; snug little
bar with red curtains ; stout old benevolent female in spec-
tacles ; barmaid a houri; and for malt, the most touching
tap in Oxford—home-brewed, too, wasn’t it, Brown 1”

“Yos, the beor was undoniahlo,” said ‘Tom.

“Well, and you dawdled there till now?” said Jervis.

“Even so. What with mobs that wouldn’t fight fair, and
and captains who would run away, and proctors and marshals
who would interfere, we were ‘ perfectly disgusted with the
whole proceedings,’ as the Scotchman said when he was sen-
tenced to be hanged.”

“Well! Heaven, they say, protects children, sailors, and
drunken men; and whatever answers to Heaven in the
academical system protects freshmen,” remarked Jervis.

“Not us, at any rate,” said Tom, “for we are to go to the
proctor to-morrow morning.”

“What, did he catch you in your famous public?”

“No; the marshal came round to the porter’s lodge, asked
if we were in, and left word ‘that, if we were not, we were to
go to him in the morning. The porter told us just now as
we came in.”

“Pshaw,” said the Captain, with disgust; “now you'll
both be gated probably, and the whole crew will be thrown
out of gear. Why couldn’t you have come home when I
did ?”

“We do not propose to attend the levee of that excellent
person in office to-morrow morning,” said Drysdale. “He
will forget all about it. Old Copas won’t say a word—catch
him. He gets too much out of me for that.”

“ Well, you'll see ; I'll back the proctor’s memory.”

“But, Captain, what are you going to stand?”

“Stand! nothing, unless you like a cup of cold tea. You'll
get no wine or spirits here at this time of night, and the
buttery is shut. Besides, you’ve had quite as much beer as
is good for you at your paragon public.”

“Come, now, Captain, just two glasses of sherry, and Pll
promise to go to bed.” -

“ Not a thimbleful.”

“You old tyrant!” said Drysdale, hopping off his perch
on the elbow of the sofa. “Come along, Brown, let’s go and
draw for some supper, and a hand at Van John. There’s sure
128 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

to be some going up my staircase; or, at any rate, there’s a
cool bottle of claret in my rooms.”

“Stop and have a talk, Brown,” said the Captain, and
prevailed against Drysdale, who, after another attempt to
draw Tom off, departed on his quest for drink and cards.

“ He'll never do for the boat, I’m afraid,” said the Captain ;
“with his rascally late hours, and drinking, and eating all sorts
of trash. It’s a pity, too, for he’s a pretty oar for his weight.”

“ He is such uncommon good company, too,” said Tom.

“Yes ; but Pll tell you what. He’s just a leetle too good
company for you and me, or any fellows who mean to take a
degree. Let’s see, this is only his third term? I'll give him,
perhaps, two more to make the place too hot to hold him.
Take my word for it, he’ll never get to his little-go.”

“Tt will be a great pity, then,” said Tom.

“So it will But after all, you see, what does it matter to
him? He gets rusticated ; takes his name off with a flourish
of trumpets—what then? He falls back on 5,0002. a year
in land, and a good accumulation in consols; runs abroad,
or lives in town for a year. Takes the hounds when he comes
of age, or is singled out by some discerning constituency, and
sent to make laws for his country, having spent the whole of
his life hitherto in breaking all the laws he ever came under.
You and I, perhaps, go fooling about with him, and get rusti-
cated. We make our friends miserable. "We can’t take our
names off, but have to come cringing back at the end of our
year, marked men. Keep our tails between our legs for the
rest of our time. Lose a year at our professions, and most
likely have the slip casting up against us in one way or another
for the next twenty years. It’s like the old story of the giant
and the dwarf, or like fighting a sweep, or any other one-
sided business.”

“But I'd sooner have to fight my own way in the world
after all ; wouldn’t you?” said Tom.

“H—m—m !” said the Captain, throwing himself back in
the chair, and smiling ; “can’t answer off hand. I’m a third-
year man, and begin to see the other side rather ‘clearer than
I did when I was a freshman like you. Three yoars at Oxford,
my boy, will teach you something of what rank ond monoy
count for, if they teach-you nothing else.”

“Why here’s the Captain singing the same song as Hardy,”
thought Tom.

“So you two have to go to the proctor to-morrow ?”

‘© Yes,”
“Shall you go? Drysdale won't.”
“Of course I shall. It seems to me childish not to go; as
THE OAPTAIN’S NOTIONS. 129

if I were back in the lower school again. To tell you the
truth, the being sent for isn’t pleasant; but the other I
couldn’t stand.”

“Well, I don’t feel anything of that sort. But I think
you're right on the whole. The chances are that he'll re-
member your name, and send for you again if you don’t go;
and then you'll be worse off.”

“You don’t think he’ll rusticate us, or anything of that sort?”
said Tom, who had felt horrible twinges at the Captain’s
picture of the effects of rustication on ordinary mortals,

“No; not unless he’s in a very bad humour. I was caught
three times in one night in my freshman’s term, and only got
an imposition.”

“Then I don’t care,” said Tom. “ But it’s a bore to have
been caught in so seedy an affair; if it had been a real good
row, one wouldn’t have minded so much.”

“Why, what did you expect? It was neither better nor
worse than the common run of such things.”

“Well, but three parts of the crowd were boys.”

«So they are always—or nine times out of ten at any rate.”

“But there was no real fighting: at least, I only know I
got none.”

“There isn’t any real fighting, as you call it, nine times out
of ten.”

« What is there, then?”

“ Why, something of this sort. Five shopboys, or scouts’
boys, full of sauciness, loitering at an out-of-the-way street
corner. Enter two freshmen, full of dignity and bad wine.
Explosion of inflammable material. Freshmen ‘mobbed into
High-street or Broad-street, where the tables are turned by
the gathering of many more freshmen, and the mob of town
boys quietly subsides, puts its hands in its pockets, and ceases
to shout ‘Town, town!’ The triumphant freshmen march
up and down for perhaps half an hour, shouting ‘Gown,
gown!’ and looking furious, but not half sorry that the mob
vanishes like mist at their approach. Then come the proctors,
who hunt down, and break up the gown in some half-hour or
hour. The ‘town’ again marches about in the ascendant,
and mobs the scattered freshmen, wherever they can be caught
in very smal] numbers.”

“ But with all your chaff about freshmen, Captain, you were
in it yourself to-night ; come now.”

“ OF course, I had to look aftor you two Dboys.”

“ But you didn’t know we were in it when you camo up.”
“T was sure to find some of you. Besides, Pll admit one
don’t like to go in while there’s any chance of a real row as
K
130 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

you call it, and go gets proctorized in one’s old age for one’s
patriotism.”

“ Were you ever in a real row?” said Tom.

“Yes, once, about a year ago. The fighting numbers were
about equal, and the town all grown men, labourers and
mechanics, It was desperate hard work, none of your shout-
ing and promenading. That Hardy, one of our Biblo clerks,
fought like a Paladin ; I know I shifted a fellow in corduroys
on to him, whom I had found an uncommon tough customer,
and never felt better pleased in my life than when I saw the
light glance on his hobnails as he went over into the gutter
two minutes afterwards. It lasted, perhaps, ten minutes, and
both sides were very glad to draw olf.”

“But, of course, you licked them?”

“ We said we did.”

“Well, I believe that a gentleman will always lick in a fair
fight.”

“Of course you do, it’s the orthodox belief.”

“But don’t you?”

“Yes ; if he is as big and strong, and knows how to fight
as well as the other. The odds are that he cares a little more
for giving in, and that will pull him through.”

“That isn’t saying much, though.”

“No, but it’s quite as much as is true. I'll tell you what
it is, I think just this, that we are generally better in the
fighting way than shopkeepers, clerks, flunkies, and all fellows
who don’t work hard with their bodies all day. But the
moment you come to the real hard-fisted fellow, used to nine
or ten hours’ work a day, he’s a cruel hard customer. Take
seventy or eighty of them at haphazard, the first you meet,
and turn them into St. Ambrose any morning—by night I
take it they would be lords of this venerable establishment
if we had to fight for the possession ; except, perhaps, for
that Hardy—he’s one of a thousand, and was born for a
fighting man ; perhaps he might pull us through.”

“ Why don’t you try him in the boat?”

“ Millor manages all that. I spoke to him about it aftor
that row, but ho said that Tardy had refused to subseribo to
tho club, said ho couldu’t afford it, or something of the sort,
T don’t seo why that necd matter, myself, but I suppose, as
we have rules, we ought to stick to them.”

“It's a great pity though. I know Hardy well, and you
can’t think what a fine fellow he is.”

“T’m sure of that. I tried to know him, and we don’t get

on, badly as speaking acquaintance. But he seems a qucer,
solitary bird.”
, THE CAPTAIN’S NOT.ONS. 131

Twolve o'clock struck ; so Tom wished tho Captain good
night and departed, meditating much on what he had heard
and seen. The vision of terrific single combats, in which the
descendant of a hundred earls polishes off the huge repre-
sentative of the masses in the most finished style, without a
scratch on his own aristocratic features, had faded from his
mind.

He went to bed that night, fairly sickened with his ex-
perience of a town and gown row, and with ao nasty taste in
his mouth. But ho felt much plonsed at having drawn out
the Captain so completely. Vor “the stroke” was in gonoral a
man of marvellous few words, having many better uses than
talking to put his breath to.

Next morning he attended at the proctor’s rooms at the
appointed time, not without some feeling of shame at having
to do so; which, however, wore off when he found some dozen
men of other colleges waiting about on the same errand as
himself. In his turn he was ushered in, and, as he stood by
the door, had time to look the great man over as he sat making
a note of the case he had just disposed of. Tho inspection
was reassuring. Tho proctor was a gontlomanly, : straight-
forward-looking man of about thirty, not at all donnish, and
his address answered to his appearance.

“ Mr. Brown, of St. Ambrose’s, I think,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“T sent you to your college yesterday evening : did you go
straight home ?”

“No, sir.”

“ How was that, Mr. Brown?”

Tom made no answer, arid the proctor looked at him steadily
for a few seconds, and then repeated,

“ How was that?”

“ Well, sir,” said Tom, “I don’t mean to say I was going
straight to college, but I should have been in long before you
sent, only I fell in with the mob again, and then there was a
cry that you were coming. And so—” He paused.

“Well,” said the proctor, with a grim sort of curl about
the corners of his mouth.

“ Why, I ran away, and turned into the first place which
was open, and stopped till the streets were quiet.”

“ A public house, I suppose.”

“Yes, sir; ‘The Choughs:”

Tho proctor considerod a minuto, and again scrutinized
Tom’s look and manner, which certainly were straightforward,
and without any tinge of cringing or insolence.

“ How long have you been a ” '

K
132 TOM LROWN AT OXFOKD.

“This is my second term, sir.”

“ You have never been sent to me before, I think ?”

‘ Never, sir.”

“Well, I can’t overlook this, as you yourself confess to a
direct act of disobedience. You must write me out 200 lines
of Virgil. And now, Mr. Brown, let me advise you to keep out
of these disreputable street quarrels in future. Good morning.”

Tom hurried away, wondering what it would feel like to
be writing out Virgil again as a punishment at his time of
life, but.glad above measure that the proctor had asked him
no questions about his companion. That hero was, of course,
mightily tickled at the result, and seized the occasion to
lecture Tom on his future conduct, holding himself up as a
living example of the benefits which were sure to accrue to
a man who never did anything he was told to do. The sound-
ness of his reasoning, however, was somewhat shaken by the
dean, who, on that same afternoon, managed to catch him in
quad ; and, carrying him off, discoursed with him concerning
his various and systematic breaches of discipline, pointed out
to him that he had already made such good use of his time
that if he were to be discommonsed for threo more days he
would lose his term; and then took off his cross, gave him a
book of Virgil to write out, and gated him for a fortnight
after hall Drysdale sent out his scout to order his punish-
ment as he might have ordered a waistcoat, presented old
Copas with a half-sovereign, and then dismissed punishment
and gating from his mind. He cultivated with great success
the science of mental gymnastics, or throwing everything
the least unpleasant off his mind at once. And no doubt
it is a science worthy of all cultivation, if one desires to lead
a comfortable life. It gets harder, however, as the years
roll over us, to attain to any satisfactory proficiency ir it ; so
that it should be mastered as early in life as may be.

The town and gown row was the talk of the college for the
next week. Tom, of course, talked much about it, like his
neighbours, and confided to one and another the Captain’s
heresies. They were all incredulous; for no ono had ever
heard him tk as much in a term as ‘Tom roported him to
have done on this one evening.

So it was resolved that he should be taken to task on the
subject on the first opportunity ; and, as nobody was afraid of
him, there waa no difficulty in finding a man to bell the cat.
Accordingly, at the next wine of the boating set, the Captain
had scarcely entered when he was assailed by the host with—

“Jervis, Brown says you don’t believe a gentleman can lick
a cad, unless he is the biggest and strongest of the two.”
THE CAPTAIN'S NOTIONS. 133

The Captain, who hated coming out with his beliefs, shrugged
his shoulders, sipped his wine, and tried to turn the subject.
But, seeing that they were all bent on drawing him out, he
was not the man to run from his guns ; and so said quietly,

“ No more I do.”

Notwithstanding the reverence in which he was held, this
saying could not be allowed to pass, and a dozen voices were
instantly raised, and a dozen authent.c storiés told to confute
him. Ho listened pationtly, and thon, sceing ho was in for
il, said,

“Never mind fighting. Try something else; cricket, for
instance. The players generally beat the gentlemen, don’t
they ?”

Yes ; but they are professionals.”

“ Well, and we don’t often get a university crew which
can beat the watermen ” u

“ Professionals again.”

“TI believe the markers are the best tennis-players, ain’t
they?” persevered the Captain; “and I generally find keepers
and huntsmen shooting and riding better than their masters,
don’t you?”

“ But that’s not fair. All the cases you put are those of
men who have nothing else to do, who live by the things
which gentlemen only take up for pleasure.”

“T only say that the cads, as you call them, manage, some-
how or another, to do them best,” said the Captain.

“ How about the army and navy? The officers always lead.”

“ Well, there they’re all professionals, at any rate,” said the
Captain. “Iadmit that the officers lead ; but the men follow
pretty close. And in a forlorn hope there are fifty men to
one officer, after all.”

“But they must be led. The men will never go without
an officer to lead.”

“It’s the officers’ business to lead, I know; and they do
it. But you won’t find the best judges talking as if the men
wanted much leading. Read Napier: the finest story in his
book is of the sergeant who gave his life for his boy officer's
—your namesake, Brown—at the Coa.” ®*

¢ ‘Well, I never thought to hear you crying down gentle-
men.’

“Tm not crying down gentlemen,” said the Captain. “TI
ouly say that a gontloman’s flesh and blood, and brains, aro
just tho samo, and no better than anothor man’s. Lec has all

“the chances on his sido in the way of training, and pretty
uear all the prizes ; so it would be hard if he didn’t do most
things better than poor men. But give them the chance of
134 | TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

training, and they will tread on his heels soon enough. That’s
all I say.”

That was all, certainly, that the Captain said, and then
relapsed into his usual good-tempered monosyllabic state ;
from which all the eager talk of the men, who took up the
cudgels naturally enough for their own class, and talked them-
selyes before the wine broke up into a renewed consciousness
of their natural superiority, failed again to rouse him.

This was, in fact, the Captain’s weak point, if he had one.
He had strong beliefs himself; one of tle storngest of which
was, that nobody could be taught anything except by his own
expericnce ; so he never, or very rarely, exercised his own
personal influence, but just quictly went his own way, and
let other mon go theirs. Another of his belicfs was, that
there was no man or thing in the world too bad to bo tolerated ;
faithfully acting up to which belicf, the Captain himself
tolerated persons and things intolerable,

Bearing which facts in mind, the reader will easily guess
the result of the application which the crew duly made to
him the day after Miller’s back was turned. Ho simply said
that tho training they proposed would not be enough, and
that he himself should take all who chose to go down, to
Abingdon twice a week. From that time there were many
dafaulters ; and the spirit of Diogenes groaned within him,
as day after day the crew had to be filled up from the torpid
or by watermen. Drysdale would ride down to Sandford,
meeting the boat on its way up, and then take his place for
the pull up to Oxford, while his groom rode his horse up to
Folly bridge to meet him. There he would mount again and
ride off to Bullingdon, or to the Isis, or Quentin, or other
social meeting equally inimical to good training. Blake often
absented himself three days in a week, and other men once
or twice.

From considering which facts, Tom came to understand
the difference between his two heroes; their strong likeness
in many points ho had scen from the first, They were alike
in truthfulness, bravery, bodily strength, and in most of their
opinions. But Jorvis worriod himself about nothing, and
lot ull mon and things alone, in tho belicf that tho world was
not going so vory wrong, or would right itself somehow
without him. Hardy, on the other hand, was consuming
his heart over everything that seemed to him to be going
wrong in himself and round about him—in the college, in
Oxford, in England, in the ends of the earth, and never letting
slip a chance of trying to set right, here a thread, and there
a thread. A self-questioning, much-enduring man; a slayer
THE CAPTAIN'S NOTIONS. 185

of dragons himself, and one with whom you could not live
much without getting uncomfortably aware of the dragons
which you also had to slay.

What wonder that, apart altogether from the difference in
their social position, the one man was ever becoming more and
more popular, while the other was left more and more to
himself. There are few of us at Oxford, or elsewhere, who
do not like to see a man living a brave and righteous life, so
long as he keops clear of us ; and still fewer who do like to
ho in constant contact with ono who, not contont with so
living himself, is always coming across them, and laying bare
to them their own faint-heartedness, and sloth, and meanness.
The latter, no doubt, inspires the deeper feeling, and lays hold
with a firmer grip of the men he does lay hold of, but they are
few. For men can’t kecp always up to high pressure till
they have found firm ground to build upon, altogether outside
of themselves ; and it is hard to be thankful and fair to those
who are showing us time after time that our foothold is
nothing but shifting sand.

The contrast between Jervis and Hardy now began to force
itself daily more and more on our hero’s attention. From the
night of the town and gown row, “The Choughs,” became a
Tegular haunt of the St. Ambrose crew, who were taken there
under the guidance of Tom and Drysdale the next day. Not
content with calling there on his way from the boats, there
was seldom an evening now that Tom did not manage to drop
in and spend an hour there.

When one is very much bent on doing a thing, it is generally
easy enough to find very good reasons, or excuses at any rate,
for it; and whenever any doubts crossed Tom’s mind, he
silenced them by the reflection that the time he spent at
“The Choughs ” would otherwise have been devoted to wine
parties or billiards ; and it was not difficult to persuade him-
self that his present occupation was the more wholesome of the
two. Ile could not, however, fool satisfied till ho had montioned
his change in life to Hardy. This he found a much more
embarrassing matter than he had fancied it would be. But,
after one or two false starts, he managed to get out, that
he had found the best glass of ale in Ox!yrd, at a quiet little
public on the way to the boats, kept by the most perfect of
widows, with a factotum of an ostler, who was a regular
character, and that he went there most evenings for an hour
or so. Wouldn't Iardy come somo night 1

No, Hardy couldn’t spare the time.

Tom felt rather relieved at this answer ; but, nevertheless,
went on to urge the excellenceof the ale as a further inducement.
136 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“T don’t believe it’s half so good as our college beer, and
Tl be bound it’s half as dear again.”

“Only a penny a pint dearer,” said Tom, “that won’t ruin
you,—all the crew go there.”

“Tf I were the Captain,” said Hardy, “TI wouldn’t let you
run about drinking ale at night after wine parties. Does he
know about it +”

“Yes, and goes there himself often on the way from the
boats,” said Tom.

“ And at night, too?” said Hardy.

“No,” said Tom, “but I don’t go there after drinking
wine ; I haven’t been to a wine these ten days, at least not for
more than five minutes.”

“Well, sound ale is better than Oxford wine,” said Hardy,
“if you must drink something ;” and so the subject dropped.

And Tom went away satisfied that Hardy had not dis-
approved of his new habit. It certainly occurred to him
that he had omitted all mention of the pretty barmaid in his
enumeration of the attractions of “The Choughs,” but this
he set down to mere accident ; it was a slip which he would
set right in their next talk. But that talk never came, and
the subject was not again mentioned betwoon them. In fact,
to tell the truth, Tom’s visits to his friend’s room in the
evenings became shorter and less frequent as “The Choughs”
absorbed more and more of his time. He made excuses to
himself, that Hardy must be glad of more time, and would be
only bored if he kept dropping in every night, now that the
examination for degree was so near; that he was sure he
drove Grey away, who would be of much more use to Hardy
just now. These, and many other equally plausible reasons,
suggested themselves whenever his conscience smote him for
his neglect, as it did not seldom. But he always managed to
satisfy himself somehow, without admitting the real fact, that
these visits were no longer what they had been to him; that
a gulf had sprung up, and was widening day by day between
him and the only friend who would have had the courage
and honesty to tell him the truth about his new pursuit,
Meantime Hardy was inuch pained at the change in his friend,
which he saw quickly enough, and often thought over it with
a sigh as he sat at his solitary tea. He set it down to his
own dulness, to the number of new friends such a sociable
fellow as Tom was sure to make, and who, of course, would
take up more and more of his time; and, if he felt a little
jealousy every now and then, put it resolutely back, struggling
to think no evil, or if there were any, to lay it on his own
shoulders,
THE OAPTAIN’S NOTIONS. 137

Cribbage is a most virtuous and respectable game, and yet
scarcely, one would think, possessing in itself sufficient attrac-
tions to keep a young gentleman in his twentieth year tied to
the board, and going through the quaint calculation night after
night of “fifteen two, fifteen four, two for his nob, and one
for his heels.” The old landlady of “The Chouglis” liked
nothing so much as her game of cribbage in the evenings,
and the board lay ready on the little table by her elbow in
the cozy bar, a sure stepping-stone to hor good graccs. Tom
somohow bocamo an enthusiast in cribbage, and would always
loiter behind his companions for his quiet game ; chatting
pleasantly while the old lady cut and shuffled the dirty pack,
striving keenly for the nightly stake of sixpence, which he
seldom failed to lose, and laughingly wrangling with her over
the last points in the game which decided the transfer of the
two sixpences (duly posted in the snuffer-tray beside the
cribbage-board) into his waistcoat pocket or her bag, until
she would take off her spectacles to wipe them, and sink back
in her chair exhausted with the pleasing excitement.

Such an odd taste as it seemed, too, a bystander might
reasonably have thought, when he might have been employing
his time so much more pleasantly in the very room. For,
flitting in and out of the bar during the game, and every now
and then stooping over the old lady’s shoulder to examine her
hand, and exchange knowing looks with her, was the lithe
little figure of Miss Patty, with her oval face, and merry eyes,
and bright brown hair, and jaunty little cap, with fresh blue
ribbons of the shade of the St. Ambrose colours. However,
there is no accounting for tastes, and it is fortunate that some
like apples and some onions. It may possibly be, too, that
Miss Patty did not feel herself neglected, or did not care
about attention. Perhaps she may not have been altogether
unconscious that every least motion and word of hers was
noticed, even when tho gamo was at its keonost. At any rate,
it was cloar onough that she and Tom wore on the best terms,
though she always took her aunt’s part vehemently in any
little dispute which arose, and sometimes even came to the
rescue at the end, and recaptured the vanished sixpences out
of the wrongful grasp which he generally laid on them the
moment the old lady held out her hand and pronounced the
word “game.” One knows that size has little to do with
strength, or one might have wondered that her little hands
should have been able to open his fingers so surely one by
gne, though he seemed to do all he could to keep them shut.
But, after all, if he really thought he had a right to the
money, he had always time to put it in his pocket at once,
138 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

instead of keeping his clenched hand on the table, and
arguing about it till she had time to get up to the succour
of her aunt.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE FIRST BUMP.

“Waar’s the time, Smith?”

“ Half-past three, old fellow,” answered Diogenes, looking
at his watch.

“T never knew a day go so slowly,” said Tom; “isn’t it
time to go down to the boats?”

“Not by two hours and more, old fellow—can’t you take
a book, or something to keep you quiet? You won't be fit
for anything by six o'clock, if you go on worrying like
this.” And so Diogenes turned himself to his flute, and
blew away to all appearances as composedly as if it had
been the first week of term, though, if the truth must be
told, it was all he could do not to get up and wander about
in a feverish and distracted state, for Tom’s restlessness in-
fected him.

Diogenes’ whole heart was in the college boat: and so,
though he had pulled dozens of races in his time, he was
almost as nervous as a freshman on this the first day of the
races. Toi, all unconscious of the secret discomposure of the
other, threw himself into a chair and looked at him with
wonder and envy. The flute went “toot, toot, toot,” till he
could stand it no longer. So he got up and went to the
window, and, leaning out, looked up and down the street for
some minutes in a purposeless sort of fashion, staring hard at
everybody and everything, but unconscious all the time that
he was doing so. He would not have been able, in fact, to
answer Diogenes a word, had that worthy inquired of him
what he had seen, when he presently drew in his head and
returned to his fidgety ramblings about the room.

“ How hot the sun is! but there’s a stiff breeze from the
south-east. I hope it will go down before the evening, don’t
you?”

“Yes, this wind will make it very rough below the Gut.
Mind you feather high now at starting.”

“T hope to goodness I sha’n’t catch a crab,” said Tom.

“Don’t think about it, old fellow; that’s your best

lan.”

“But I can’t think of anything else,” said Tom. “ What
THE FIRST BUMP. 139

oy deuce is the good of telling ‘a fellow not to think about
it ”

Diogenes apparently had nothing particular to reply, for he
put his flute to his mouth again; and at the sound of the
“toot, toot,” Tom caught up his gown, and fled away into
the quadrangle. ,

The crew had had their early dinner of steaks and chops,
stale bread, and a glass and a half of old beer a picco at two
o'clock, in tho Captain’s rooms, ‘Tho curront thoory of train-
ing at that time was—as much ment as you could cat, tho
more underdone the better, and the smallest amount of drink
upon which you could manage to live. Two pints in the
twenty-four hours was all that most boats’ crews that pre-
tended to train at all were allowed, and for the last fortnight
it had been the nominal allowance of the St. Ambrose crew.
The discomfort of such a diet in the hot summer months,
when you were at the same time taking regular and violent
exercise, was something very serious. Outraged human
nature rebelled against it ; and though they did not admit it
in public, there were very few men who did not rush to their
water-bottles for relief, more or less often, according to the
development of their bumps of conscientiousness and ob-
stinacy. To keep to the diet at all strictly, involved a very
respectable amount of physical endurance. Our successors
have found out the unwisdom of this, as of other old super-
stitions ; and that in order to get a man into training for a
boat-race now-a-days, it is not of the first importance to keep
him in a constant state of consuming thirst, and the restless-
ness of body and sharpness of temper which thirst generally
induces.

Tom appreciated the honour of being in the boat in his
first year so keenly, that he had almost managed to keep to
his training allowance, and consequently, now that the eventful
day had arrived, was in a most uncomfortable frame of body
and disagreeable frame of mind.

He fied away from Diogenes’ flute, but found no rest. He
tried Drysdale. That hero was lying on his back on his sofa
playing with Jack, and only increased Tom’s thirst and soured
his temper by the viciousness of his remarks on boating, and
everything and person connected therewith ; above all, on
Miller, who had just come up, had steered them the day
before, and pronounced the crew generally, and Drysdale in
particular, “not half trained.”

Blake’s oak was sported, as usual. Tom looked in at the
Captain’s door, but found him hard at work reading, and so
carried himself off; and, after a vain hunt after others of the
140 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

crew, and even trying to sit down and read, first a novel, then
a play of Shakespeare, with no success whatever, wandered
away out of the college, and found himself in five minutes,
by a natural and irresistible attraction, on the university barge.

There wore half-a-dozen men or so reading the papers, and
a group or two discussing the coming races. Amongst other
things, the chances of St. Ambrose’s making a bump the first
night were weighed. Every one joined in praising the stroke,
but there were great doubts whether the crew could live up
to it. Tom carried himself on to the top of the barge to get
out of hearing, for listening made his heart beat and his
throat drier than ever. He stood on the top and looked right
away down to the Gut, the strong wind blowing his gown
about. Not even a pair oar was to be seen ; the great event
of the evening made the river a solitude at this time of day.
Only one or two skiffs were coming home, impelled by reading
men, who took their constitutionals on the water, and were
coming in to be in time for afternoon chapel. The fastest
and best of these soon came near enough for Tom to recognise
Hardy’s stroke ; so he left the barge and went down to meet
the servitor at his landing, and accompanied him to the St.
Ambrose dressing-room.

“Well, how do you feel for the race to-night ?” said Hardy,
as he dried his neck and face, which he had been sluicing
with cold water, looking as hard and bright as a racer on
Derby day.

“ Oh, wretched! I’m afraid I shall break down,” said ‘om,
and poured out some of his doubts and miseries. Hardy soon
comforted him greatly ; and by the time they were half across
Christchurch meadow he was quite in heait again. For he
knew how well Hardy understood rowing, and what a sound
judge he was ; and it was therefore cheering to hear that he
thought they were certainly the second best, if not the best
boat on the river ; and that they would be sure to make some
bumps unless they had accidents.

“ But that’s just what I fear so,” said Tom. “I’m afraid I
shall make some awful blunder.”

“Not you!” said Hardy; “only remember. Don't you
fancy you can pull the boat by yourself, and go trying to do
it. That's where young oars fail. If you keep thorough
good time you'll be pretty sure to bo doing your share of
work. ‘Time is everything, almost.” 5

“Tl be sure to think of that,” said Tom ; and they entered
St. Ambrose just as the chapel bell was going down ; and he
went to chapel and then to hall, sitting by and talking for
companionship while the rest dined.
THE FIRST BUMP. 141

And s0 at last the time slipped away, and the Captain and
Miller mustered them at the gates and walked off to the
boats. A dozen other crews were making their way in the
same direction; and half the undergraduates of Oxford streamed
along with them. The banks of the river were crowded ; and
the punts plied rapidly backwards and forwards, carrying loads
of men over to the Berkshire side. The university barge, and all
the other barges, were decked with flags, and the band was
playing lively airs as tho St. Ambrose crew reached tho scone
of action.

No time was lost in the dressing-room, and in two minutes
they were all standing in flannel trousers and silk jerseys at
the landing-place.

“You had better keep your jackets on,” said the Captain ;
“ we sha’n’t be off yet.”

“There goes Brazen-nose.”

“ They look like work, don’t they?”

“The black and yellow seems to slip along so fast. They're
no end of good colours. I wish our new boat was black.”

“Hang her colours, if she’s only stiff in the back, and
don’t dip.”

“Well, she didn’t dip yesterday ; at least, the men on the
bank said so.”

“There go Baliol, and Oriel, and University.”

“ By Jove, we shall be late! Where’s Miller?”

“In the shed, getting the boat out. Look, here’s
Exeter.” '

The talk of the crew was silenced for the moment as every
man looked eagerly at the Exeter boat. The Captain nodded
to Jervis with a grim smile as they paddled gently by.

Then the talk began again.

“ How do you think she goes ?”

“Not so badly. They’re very strong in the middle of the
boat.” ;

“ Not a bit of it: it’s all lumber.”

“You'll see, They’re better trained than we are. They
look as fine as stars.”

“So they ought. They’ve pulled seven miles to our five
for the last month, I’m sure.”

“ Then we sha’n’t bump them.”

“ Why not?”

“Don't you know that the value of products consists in
tho quantity of labour which goes to produce them? Product
pace over course from Iffley up. Labour expended, Exeter, 7 ;
St. Ambrose, 5. You see it is not in the nature of things
that we should bump them—Q.E.D.”
142 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

“What moonshine! as if ten miles behind their stroke
are worth two behind Jervis!”

“ My dear fellow, it isn’t my moonshine ; you must settle
the matter with the philosophers. I only apply a universal
law to.a particular case.”

‘Tom, unconscious of tho pearls of economic lore which
were being poured out for the benefit of the crew, was watching
.the Exeter eight as it glided away towards the Cherwell. He
thought they seemed to keep horribly good time.

‘“Halloa, Drysdale ! look, there’s Jack going across in one
of the punts.”

“ Of course he is. You don’t suppose he wouldn’t go down
to sce the race.”

“Why won’t Miller let us start? Almost all the boats
are off.”

“There’s plenty of time. We may just as well be up here
as dawdling about the bank at Iffley.”’

“We sha’n’t go down till the last ; Miller never lets us get
out down below.”

“Well, come ; here’s the boat, at last.”

The new boat now emerged from its shed, guided steadily
to where they were standing by Miller and a waterman. Then
the coxswain got out and called for bow, who stepped forward.

“Mind how you step now, there are no bottom boards,
remember,” said Miller.

“Shall I take my jacket?”

“Yes ; you had botter all go down in jackets in this wind.
T’vo sent a man down to bring thom back. Now, two.”

“ Aye, aye!” said Drysdale, stopping forward. Then came
Tom’s turn, and soon the boat was manned.

“Now,” said Miller, taking his place, “are all your
stretchers right ?”

“T should like a little more grease for my rollocks.”

“T’m taking some down ; we'll put it on down below. Are
you all right ?”

“ Yes,”

“Then push her off—gently.”

The St. Ambroso boat was almost the last, so there were no
punts in the way, or other obstructions; and they swung
steadily down past the university barge, the top of which
was already covered with spectators. Every man in the boat
felt as if the eyes of Murope were on him, and pulled in his
very best form. Small groups of gownsmen were scattered
along the bank in Christchurch meadow, chiefly dons, who
were really interested in the races, but, at that time of day,
seldom liked to display enthusiasm enough to cross the water
THE FIRST BUMP. 143

and go down to the starting-place. These sombre groups were
lighted up hore and there by the dresses of a few ladics, who
were walking up and down, and watching the boats. At the
mouth of the Cherwell were moored two punts, in which
reclined at their ease some dozen young gentlemen, smoking ;
several of these were friends of Drysdale’s, and hailed him as
the boat passed them.

“What a fool I am to be here!” he grumbled, in an
under tone, casting an envious glance at the punts in their
comfortable berth, up under the banks, and out of the wind.
“T say, Brown, don’t you wish we were well past this on the
way up?”

“ Silence in the bows !’’ shouted Miller.

“You devil, how I hate you!” growled Drysdale, half in
jest and half in earnest, as they sped along under the willows.

Tom got more comfortable at every stroke, and by the time
they reached the Gut began to hope that he should not have
a fit, or lose all his strength just at the start, or cut a crab,
or come to some other unutterable grief, the fear of which
had been haunting him all day.

“ Hero they are at last !—come along now—keop up with
them,” said Hardy to Grey, as the boat neared the Gut; and
the two trotted along downwards, Hardy watching the crew,
and Grey watching him.

“ Hardy, how eager you look!”

“Td give twenty pounds to be going to pull in the race.”

Grey shambled on in silence by the side of his big friend,
and wished he could understand what it was that moved
him so.

As the boat shot into the Gut from under the cover of the
Oxfordshire bank, the wind caught the bows.

“ Feather high, now,” shouted Miller; and then added in
a low voice to the Captain, “ It will be ticklish work, starting
in this wind.”

“Just as bad for all tho other boats,” answered the Captain.

“Well said, old philosopher !” said Miller. “It’s a comfort
to steer you; you never make a fellow nervous. I wonder
if you ever felt nervous yourself, now ?”

“Can't say,” said the Captain. “ Here's our post ; we may
as well turn.”

“ Tasy, bow side—now two and four, pull her roud—back
water, seven and five!” shouted tho coxswain ; and the boat's
head swung round, and two or thro strokes took hor into tho
bank.

Jack instantly made @ convulsive attempt to board, but was
sternly repulsed, and tumbled backwards into the water.
144 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

Hark !—the first gun. The report sent Tom’s heart into
his mouth again. Several of the boats pushed off at ouce into
the stroam ; and the crowds of men on the bank began to be
agitated, as it were, by the shadow of the coming excitement.
The St. Ambrose crow fingored their oars, put a last dash of
greaso on their rollocks, and settled their fect against tho
atretchers.

“ Shall we push her off?” asked “ bow.”

“No, I can give you another minute,” said Miller, who was
sitting, watch in hand, in the stern, “only be smart when I
give the word.”

The Captain turned on his seat, and looked up the boat.
His face was quiet, but full of confidence, which seemed to
pass from him into the crew. Tom felt calmer and stronger,
as he met his eye. “Now mind, boys, don’t quicken,” he
said, cheerily ; “four short strokes, to get way on her, and
then steady. Here, pass up the lemon.”

And he took a sliced lemon out of his pocket, put a small
piece into his own mouth, and then handed it to Blake, who
followed his example, and passed it on. Each man took a
Piece ; and just as “bow” had secured the end, Miller called
out—

“ Now, jackets off, and get her head out steadily.”

The jackets were thrown on shore, and gathered up by the
boatmen in attendance. The crew poised their oars, No. 2
pushing out hor head, and the Captain doing the saine for the
stern. Miller took the starting-ropo in his hand.

“ Tow the wind catches her storn,” he said; “here, pay
out the rope one of you. No, not you—some fellow with a
strong hand. Yes, you'll do,” he went on, as Hardy stepped
down the bank and took hold of the rope; “let me have it
foot by foot as I want it. . Not too quick ; make the most of
it—that’ll do. Two and three just dip your oars in to give
her way.”

The rope paid out steadily, and the boat settled to her
place. But now the wind rose again, and the stern drifted
towards the bank.

“You must back her a bit, Miller, and keep her a little
further out, or our oars on stroke side will catch tho bank.”

“So I see; curse the wind. Back her, one stroke all.
Back her, I say !” shouted Miller.

Ti is no easy matter to get a crew to back her an inch just
now, particularly as there are in her two men who have never
rowed a race before, except in the torpids, and one who has
never rowed a race in his life,

However, back she comes; the starting rope slackens in
 

 

P. 145.

The Start for ‘The Eights” at Ifiey. Hardy to the Rescue.
THE FIRST BUMP. 145

Miller’s left hand, and the stroke, unshipping his oar, pushes
the stern gently out again.

There goes the second gun ! one short minute more, and we
are off. Short minute, indeed! you: wouldn’t say so if you
were in the boat, with your heart in your mouth, and trem-
bling all over like a man with the palsy. Those sixty seconds
before the starting gun in your first race—why, they are a
little life-time.

“ By Jove, we are drifting i in again,” said Millor, in horror.
Tho Captain looked grim, bub snid nothing ; it was too late
now for him to be unshipping again. “ Here, catch hold of
the long boat-hook, and fend her off.”

Hardy, to whom this was addressed, seized the boat-hook,
and, standing with one foot in the water, pressed the end of
the boat-hook against the gunwale, at the full stretch of his
arm, and so, by main force, kept the stern out. There was
just room for stroke oars to dip, and that was all. The
starting rope was as taut as a harp-string ; will Miller’s left
hand hold out?

It is an awful moment. But the coxswain, though almost
dragged backwards off his seat, is equal to the occasion. He
holds his watch in his right hand with the tiller rope.

“Hight seconds more only. Look out for the flash. Re-
member, all eyes in the boat.” /

There it comes, at last—the flash of the starting gun.
Long before the sound of the report can roll up the river, the
whole pent-up life and energy which has beon held in leash,
as it were, for the last six minutes, is let loose, and breaks
away with a bound and a dash which he who has felt it will
remember for his life, but the like of which, will he ever feel
again? The starting ropes drop from the coxswains’ hands,
the oars flash into the water, and gleam on the feather, the
spray flies from them, and the boats leap forward.

The crowds ov. the bank scatter, and rush along, each keep-
ing as near as it may bo to its own boat. Somo of the men on
the towing path, some on the very edge of, often in, the
water—some slightly in advance, as if they could help to drag
their boat forward—some behind, where they can see the
pulling better—but all at full speed, in wild excitement, and
shouting at the top of their voices to those on whom the
honour of the college is laid. ‘

“Well pulled, all!” “Pick hor up  thero, five!”
“You're gaining, every stroke!” “Time in the bows!”
“ Bravo, St. Ambrose ! ”

On they rushed by the side of. the boats, jostling one
another, stumbling, struggling, and panting along. .

Lb
146 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

‘For a quarter of a mile along the bank the glorious mad-
dening hurly-burly extends, aid rolls up tl.csido of the stream.

For the first ten strokes Tom was in too great fear of
making a mistake to feel or liear or see. His whole soul was
glued to the back of the mon before him, his one thought to
keep time, and get his strength into the etroke. But as the
crew settled down into tho well-known long sweep, what
we may call consciousness returned ; and while every muscle
in his body was straining, aiid his chest heaved, and his heart
leapt, every nerve scemed io be gathering new life, and his
senses to wake into unwonted acutencss, He caught the
scent of the wild thyme in the air, and found room in his
brain to wonder how it cou}: have got there, as he had never
seen the plant near the river, or smelt it before. Though his
eye never wandered from the back of Diogenes, he seemed to
see all things at once. The boat behind, which seemed to be
gaining—it was all he could do to provent himself from
quickening on the stroke as he fancied that—the eager face of
Miller, with his compressed lips, and eyes fixed so earnestly
ahead that Tom could almost feel the glance passing over
his right shoulder ; the flying banks and the shouting crowd ;
soo thom with his bodily eyes le could uot, but be knew
nevertheless that Grey had been upset and nearly rolled dowu
the bank into the water in the first hundred yards, that Jack
was bounding and scrambling and barking along by the very
’ edge of the stream ; above all, he was just as well aware as
if he had been looking at it, of a stalwart form in cap
and gown, bounding along, brandishing the long boat-hook,
and always keeping just opposite the boat; and amid all the
Babel of voices, and the dash and pulse of the stroke, and
the labouring of his own breathing, he heard Hardy’s voice
coming to him again and again, and clear as if there had been
no other sound in the air, “Steady, two! steady! well
pulled! steady, steady!” The voice seemed to give him
strength and keep him to his work. And what work it was !
he had had many a hard pull in the last six weeks, but
“never aught like this.”

But it can’t last for ever; men’s muscles are not stcel,
or their lings buil’s hide, and hearts can’t go on pumping
a hundred miles an hour long without bursting. ‘The
St. Ambrose’s boat is well away from the boat behind, there is
a great gap between the accompanying crowds; and now, as
they near the Gut, she hangs for a moment or two in hand,
though the roar from the bank grows louder and louder, and
Tom is already aware that the St. Ambrose crowd is melting
into the one ahead of them.
THE FIRST BUMP. 147

“We must be close to Exeter!” The thought flashes into
him, and it would seem into the rest of the crow at the same
moment. For, all at once, the strain seems taken off their
arms again ; there is no more drag ; she springs to the stroke
as she did at the start ; and Miller's face, which had darkened
for a few seconds, lightens up again.

Miller’s face and attitude are a study. Coiled up into the
smallest possible space, his chin almost resting on his knees,
his hands closo to his sidos, firmly but lightly feoling the
rudder, as a good horseman handles tho mouth of a froe-
going huntor,—if a coxswain could make a bump by his own
oxertions, surely he will do it. No suddon jerks of tho St.
Ambrose rudder will you sce, watch as you will from the
bank ; the boat never hangs through fault of his, but easily
and gracefully rounds every point. “You're gaining ! you're
gaining!” he now and then mutters to the Captain, who
responds with a wink, keeping his breath for other matters.
Isn't he grand, the Captain, as he comes forward like light-
ning, stroke after stroke, his back flat, his teeth set, his
whole frame working from the hips with the regularity of a
machine? As the space still narrows, ‘tho oyes of tho fiory
little coxswain flash with excitement, but he is far too good a
judge to hurry the final effort before the victory is safe in his
grasp.

The two crowds are mingled now, and no mistake; and
the shouts come all in a heap over the water. “Now, St.
Ambrose, six strokes more.” “Now, Exeter, yow’ro gaining ;
pick her up.” “Mind the Gut, Exeter.” “Bravo, St. Am-
brose.” The water rushes by, still edying from the strokes
of the boat ahead. Tom fancies now he can hear their oars
and the workings of their rudder, and the voice of their cox-
swain. In another moment both boats are in the Gut, and a
perfect storm of shouts reaches them from the crowd, as it
rushes madly off to the left to the foot-bridgo, amidst which
“Oh, well steered, well steered, St. Ambroso!” is tho pre-
vailing cry. Then Miller, motionless as a statuo till now,
lifts his right hand and whirls the tassel round his head :
“Give it her now, boys; six strokes and we are into them.”
Old Jervis lays down that great broad back, and lashes his
oar through the water with the might of a giant, the crew
catch him up in another stroke, the tight new boat answers
to the spurt, and Tom feels a little shock ‘behind him and
then a grating sound, as Millor shouts, “ Unship oars bow
and three,” and the nose of the St. Ambrose boat glides
quietly up the side of the Exeter, till it touches their
stroke oar.

rr
148 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“Take care where you're coming to.” It is the coxswain
of the bumped boat who speaks.

Tom, looking round, finds himself within a foot or two of
him ; and, being utterly unable to contain his joy, and yet
unwilling to exhibit it before the eyes of a gallant rival,
turns away towards the shore, and begins telegraphing to
Hardy.

“ Now then, what are you at there in the bows? Cast her
off quick. Come, look alive! Push across at once out of the
way of the other boats.”

“T congratulate you, Jervis,” says the Exeter stroke, as the
St. Ambrose boat shoots past him. “ Do it again next race
and I sha’n’t care.” :

“We were within three lengths of Brazen-nose when we
bumped,” says the all-observant Miller in a low voice.

“ All right,” answers the Captain ; “ Brazen-nose isn’t so
strong as usual. We sha’n’t have much trouble there, but a
tough job up above, I take it.”

“ Brazen-nose was better steered than Exeter.”

“They muffed it in the Gut, eh?” said the Captain. “I
thought so by the shouts.”

“Yes, we were pressing them a little down below, and their
coxswain kept looking over his shoulder. He was in the Gut
before he knew it, and had to pull his left hand hard or they
would have fouled the Oxfordshire corner. That stopped
their way, and in we went.”

“Bravo ; and how well wo started too.”

“Yes, thanks to that’ Hardy. It was touch and go
though ; I couldn’t have held the rope two seconds more.”

“How did our fellows work ; she dragged a good deal
below the Gut.”

Miller looks somewhat serious, but even he cannot be find-
ing fault just now. For the first step is gained, the first
victory won; and, as Homer sometimes nods, so Miller re-
laxes the sternness of his rule. The crew, as soon as they
have found their voices again, laugh and talk, and answer the
congratulations of their friends, as the boat slips along close
to the towing-path on the Berks side, “easy all,” almost keop-
ing pace nevertheless with the lower boats, which are racing
up under the willows on the Oxfordshire side. Jack, after
one or two feints, makes a frantic bound into the water, and
is hauled dripping into the boat by Drysdale, unchid by
Miller, but to the intense disgust of Diogenes, whose panta-
loons and principles are alike outraged by the proceeding.
He—the Cato of the oar—scorns to relax the strictness of his
code even after victory won. Neither word nor look does he
THE FIRST BUMP, 149

cast to the exulting St. Ambrosians on the bank; a twinkle
in his eye, and a subdued chuckle or two, alone betray that
though an oarsman he is mortal. Already he revolves in his
mind the project of an early walk under a few pea-coats, not
being quite satisfied (conscientious old boy ! ) that he tried his
stretcher enough in that final spurt, and thinking that there
must be an extra pound of flesh on him somewhere or other
which did the mischicf.

“T say, Brown,” said Drysdalo, “how do you fool ?”

“ All right,” said Tom ; “1 nover folt jo)lior in my life.”

“ By Jove, though, it was an awful grind ; didn’t you wish
yourself well out of it below the Gut?”

“No, nor you either.”

“Didn’t I? Iwas awfully baked, my throat is like a lime-
kiln yet. What did you think about?”

Well, about keeping time, I think,” said Tom, laughing,
“but I can’t remember much.”

“T only kept on by thinking how I hated those devils in
the Exeter boat, and how done up they must be, and hoping
their No. 2 felt like having a fit.”

At this moment they came opposite the Cherwell. The
leading boat was just passing the winning-post, off the
university barge, and the band struck up the “ Conquering
Hero,” with a crash. And while a mighty sound of shouts,
murmurs, and music went up into the evening sky, Miller
shook the tiller-ropes again, the Captain shouted, “ Now then,
pick her up,” and the St. Ambrose boat shot up between the
swarming banks at racing pace to her landing-place, the lion
of the evening.

Dear readers of the gentler sex! you, I know, will pardon
the enthusiasm which stirs our pulses, now in sober middle
age, as we call up again the memories of this the most exciting
sport of our boyhood (for we were but boys then, aftor all).
You will pardon, though I foar hopelessly unablo to under-
stand, the above sketch ; your sons and brothers will toll you
it could not have been made less technical.

For you, male readers, who have never handled an oar,—
what shall I say to you? You at least, I hope, in some way—
in other contests of one kind or another—have felt as we felt,
and have striven as we strove. You ought to understand and
sympathize with us in all our boating memories. Oh, how
fresh and sweet they are! Above all, that one of the gay
little Henley town, the carriage-crowded bridge, the noble
river reach, the giant poplars, which mark the critical point
of the course—the roaring column of “undergrads,” light
blue and dark purple, Cantab and Oxonian, alike and yet how
150 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

different,—hurling along together, and hiding the towing-
path—the clang of Henley church-bells—the cheering, the
waving of embroidered handkerchiefs, and glancing of bright
eyes, the ill-concealed pride of fathers, the open delight and
exultation of mothers and sisters—the levée in the town-hall
when the race was rowed, the great cup full of champagne (inn-
champagne, but we were not critjcal)—the chops, the steaks,
the bitter beer—but we run into anti-climax—remember,
we were boys then, and bear with us if you cannot sympathize.

And you, old companions, @pavira:, benchers (of the gallant
eight-oar), now seldom met, but never-forgotten, lairds, squires,
soldiers, merchants, lawyers, grave J.P.’s, graver clergymen,
gravest bishops (for of two bishops at least does our brother-
hood boast), I ‘turn for a moment, from iny task, to reach to
you the right hand of fellowship from these pages, and empty
the solemn pewter—trophy of hard-won victory—to your
health and happiness.

Surely none the worse Christians and citizens are ye for
your involuntary failing of muscularity !

 

CHAPTER XTV.
A OHANGE IN THE OREW, AND WHAT OAME OF IT,

Tr was on a Saturday that the St. Ambrose boat made the first
bump, described in our last chapter. On the next Saturday,
the day-week after the first success, at nine o’clock in the
evening, our hero was at the door of Hardy’s rooms. He
just stopped for one moment outside, with his hand on the
lock, looking a little puzzled, but withal pleased, and then
opened the door and entered. The little estrangement which
there had been between them for some weeks, had passed
away since the races had begun. Hardy had thrown himself
into the spirit of them so thoroughly, that he had not only
regained all his hold on Tom, but had warmed up the whole
crew in his favour, and had mollified the martinet Miller
himself. It was he who had managed the starting-rope in
every race, and his voice from the towing-path had come to
be looked upon as a safe guide for clapping on or rowing
steady. Even Miller, autocrat as he was, had come to listen
for it, in confirmation of his own judgment, before calling on
the crew for the final effort.

So Tom had recovered his old footing in the servitor’s
rooms ; and when he entered on the night in question did so
with the bearing of an intimate friend. Hardy's tea commons
A OHANGE IN THE CREW. 151

were on one ond of tho table as usual, and he was sitting at
the other poring over a book. Tom marched straight up to
him, and leant over his shoulder.

“What, here you are at the perpetual grind,’ he said.
“Come, shut up, and give me some tea; I want to talk to
you.”

Hardy looked up with a grim smile.

“Aro you up to a cup of tea?” he said; “look here,
1 was just rominded of you follows. Shall I construe for
you?”

Hoe pointed with his finger to the open page of the book he
was reading. It was the Knights of Aristophanes, and Tom,
leaning over his shoulder, read,—

xara Kabifov padakds iva py tpiBys tHv év Sarapin, &e.

After meditating a moment, he burst out, “ You hard-hearted
old ruffian! I come here for sympathy, and the first thing
you do is to poke fun at me out of your wretched classics !
I’ve a good mind to clear out, and not do my errand.”

“What's a man to do?” said Hardy. “I hold that it’s
always better to laugh at fortune. What’s the use of re-
pining? You have done famously, and second is a capital
place on the river.”

“Second be hanged!” said Tom. “We mean to be
first.”

“Well, I hope we may!” said Hardy. “TI can tell you
nobody felt it more than I—not even old Diogenes—when
you didn’t make your bump to-night.”

“Now you talk like a man, and a Saint Ambrosian,” said
Tom. “But what do you think? Shall we ever catch
them?” and, so saying, ho retired to a chair opposite the
tea-things.

“No,” said Hardy; ‘I don’t think we ever shall. I’m
very sorry to say it, but they are an uncommonly strong lot,
and we have a weak placo or two in our crew. I don’t think
we can do more than we did to-night—at least with the
present crew.”

“But if we could get a little more strength we might?”

“Yes, I think so. Jervis’s stroke is worth two of theirs.
A very little more powder would do it.”

' “Then we must have a little more powder.”

“ Ay, but how are we to get it? Who can you put
in?”

“You!” said Tom, sitting up. “There, now, that’s just
what I am come about. Drysdale is to go out. Will you
pull next race? They all want you to row.”
152 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“Do they?” said Hardy, quietly (but Tom could seo that
his eye sparkled at the notion, though he was too proud to
show how much he was pleased); “then they had better
come and ask me themselves.”

“Well, you cantankerous old party, they’re coming, T can
tell you!” said ‘Tom, in great delight. “The Captain just
sent me on to break ground, and will be here directly
himself. I say now, Hardy,” he went on, “don’t you say no.
I’ve set my heart upon it. I’m sure we shall bump them if
you pull.”

“T don’t know that,” said Hardy, getting up, and beginning
to make tea, to conceal thu excitement he was in at the idea
of rowing ; “ you see I’m not in training.”

“Gammon,” said Tom, “you're always in training, and you
know it.”

“ Well,” said Hardy, “I can’t be in worse than Drysdale.
He has been of no use above the Gut this last three nights.”

“That’s just what Miller says,’’ said Tom, “and here comes
the Captain.” There was a knock at the door while he spoke,
and Jervis and Miller entered.

Tom was in a dreadful fidget for the next twenty minutes,
and may best be compared to an enthusiastic envoy negotiating
a treaty, and suddenly finding his action impeded by the
arrival of his principals. Miller was very civil, but not
pressing ; he seemed to have come more with a view of talking
over the present state of things, and consulting upon them,
than of enlisting a recruit. Wardy met him more than half-
way, and speculated on all sorts of possible issues, without a
hint of voluntecring himself. But presently Jervis, who did
not understand finessing, broke in, and asked Hardy, point
blank, to pull in the next race; and when he pleaded want
of training, overruled him at once by saying that there was
no better training than sculling. So in half an hour all was
settled. Hardy was to pull five in the next race, Diogenes
was to take Blake’s place, at No. 7, and Blake to take
Drysdale’s oar at No. 2. The whole crew were to go for a
long training walk the next day, Sunday, in the afternoon ;
to go duwn to Abingdon on Monday, just to get into swing
in their new places, and then on ‘Tuesday to abide the fate of:
war. They had half an hour's pleasant talk over Hardy’s tea,
and then separated.

“T always told you he was our man,” said the Captain to
Miller, as they walked together to the gates; “woe want
strength, and he is as strong as a horse. You must have
seen him sculling yourself. There isn’t his match on the
river to my mind.”
A CHANGE IN THE OREW. 153

“Yes, I think he'll do,” ropliod Miller ; “at any rate he
can’t be worse than Drysdale.”

As for Tom and Hardy, it may safely be said that no two
men in Oxford went to bed in better spirits that Saturday
night than they two.

And now to explain how it came about that Hardy was
wanted. Fortune had smiled upon the St. Ambrosians in
the two races which succeeded the one in which they had
bumped Exeter. They had risen two more places without any
very great trouble. Of course, the constituencies on the bank
magnified their powers and doings. There never was such a
crew, they were quite safe to be head of the river, nothing
could live against their pace. So the young oars in the boat
swallowed all they heard, thought themselves the finest
fellows going, took less and less pains to keep up their
condition, and when they got out of ear-shot of Jervis and
Diogenes, were ready to bet two to one that they would bump
Oriel the next night, and keep easily head of the river for
the rest of the races.

Saturday night came, and brought with it a most usoful
though unpalatable lesson to the St. Ambrosians. ‘The Oriel
boat was manned chiefly by old oars, seasoned in many w
race, and not liable to panic when hard pressed. They had
a fair though not a first-rate stroke, and a good coxswain ;
experts remarked that they were rather too heavy for their
boat, and that she dipped a little when they put on anything
like a severe spurt ; but on the whole they were by no means
the sort of crew you could just run into hand over hand. So
Miller and Diogenes preached, and so the Ambrosians found
out to their cost.

They had the pace of the other boat, and gained as usual
a boat’s length before the Gut; but, first those two fatal
corners were passed, and then other well-remembered spots
where former bumps had been made, and still Miller made
no sign; on the contrary, he looked gloomy and savage.
The St. Ambrosian shouts from the shore too changed from
the usual exultant peals into something like a quaver of
consternation, while the air was rent with the name and
laudations of “little Oriel.”

Long before the Cherwell Drysdale was completely baked
(he had played truant the day before and dined at the Weirs,
where he had imbibed much dubious hock), but he from old
habit managed to keep time. Tom and the other young oars
got flurried, and quickened ; the boat dragged, there was no
life left in her, and, though they managed just to hold their
first advantage, could not put her a foot nearer the stern
154 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

of the Oriel boat, which glided past the winning-post a clear
boat’s length ahead of her pursuers, and with a crew much
less distressed.

Such races must toll on strokes ; and even Jervis, who had
pulled magnificently throughout, was very much dono at the
close, and leant over his oar with a swimming in his lead,
and an approach to faintness, and was scarcely able to see for
a minute or so. Miller’s indignation knew no bounds, but
he bottled it up till he had manceuvred the crew into their
dressing-room by themselves, Jervis having stopped below.
Then he let out, and did not spare them. “They would kill
their captain, whose little finger was worth the whole of
them; they were disgracing the college; three or four of
them had neither heart, head, nor pluck.” They all felt that
this was unjust, for after all had they not brought the boat
up to the second place? ‘Poor Diogenes sat in a corner and
groaned ; he forgot to prefix “old fellow” to the few obser-
vations he made. Blake had great difficulty in adjusting his
necktie before the glass ; he merely remarked in a pause of
the objurgation, “In faith, coxswain, these be very bitter
words.” Tom and most of the others were too much out of
heart to resist ; but at last Drysdale fired up—

“You've no right to be so savage that I can see,” he said,
suddenly stopping the low whistle in which he was indulging,
2s he sat on the corner of the table; “you seem to think
No. 2 the weakest out of several weak places in the boat.”

“ Yos, I do,” said Miller,

“Thon this honourable member,” said Drysdale, gotting off
the table, “seeing that his humble efforts are unappreciated,
thinks it best for the public service to place his resignation
in the hands of your coxswainship.”

“Which my coxswainship is graciously pleased to accept,”
replied Miller.

“ Hurrah for a roomy punt and a soft cushion next racing
night—it’s almost worth while to have been rowing all this
time, to realize the sensations I shall feel when I seo you
fellows passing the Cherwell on Tuesday.”

“ Suave est, il’s what I’m partial to, mari magno, in the last
reach, a terrd, from the towing path, alterius magnum spectare
laborem, to witness the tortures of you wretched beggars in
the boat. Tm obliged to translate for Drysdale, who never
learned Latin,” said Blake, finishing his tie before the glass.
There was an awkward silence, Miller was chafing inwardly
and running over in his mind what was to be done; and no-
body else seemed quite to know what ought to happen next,
when the door opened and Jervis came in.
A CHANGE IN THE CREW. 155

“ Congratulate me, my Captain,” said Drysdale: “ J’m- well
out of it at last.”

Jervis “pished and pshaw’d” a little at hearing what had
happened, but his presence acted like oil on the waters. The
moment that the resignation was named, Tom’s thoughts had
turned to Hardy. Now was the time—he had such confidence
in the man, that the idea of getting him in for next race
entirely changed the aspect of affairs to him, and made him
feel as “ bumptious” again as ho had dono in the morning.
So with this idea in his head, he hung about till the Captain
had made his toilet, and joined himself to him and Miller as
they walked up.

“ Well, what are we to do now?” said the Captain.

“That's just what you have to settle,” said Miller; ‘you
have been up all the term, and know the men’s pulling better
than I.”

“‘T suppose we must press somebody from the torpid—let
me see, there’s Burton.”

“ He rolls like a porpoise,” interrupted Miller, positively ;
“ impossible.”

“Stewart might do, thon.”

“Never kept time for three strokes in his life,” said
Miller.

“Well, there are no better men,” said the Captain.

“Then we may lay our account to stopping where we are,
if wo don’t ovon lose a place,” said Miller.

** Dust unto dust, what must be, must ;
If you can’t get crumb, you’d best eat crust,”
said the Captain.

“Tt’s all very well talking coolly now,” said Miller, “ but
yow’ll kill yourself trying to bump, and there are three more
nights.”

fe Hardy would row if you asked him, I’m sure,” said Tom.

The Captain looked at Miller, who shook his head. “TI
don’t think it,” he said; I take him to be a shy bird that
won't come to everybody’s whistle. We might have had him
two years ago, I believe—I wish we had.”

“J always told you so,” said Jervis ; “at any rate let’s try
him. He can but say no, and I don’t "think he will, for you
see he has been at the starting-place every night, and as keen
as a freshman all the time.”

“T’m sure he won't,” said Tom; “I know ho would give
anything to pull.”

“You had better go to his rooms and sound him,” said thee
Captain ; “ Miller and I will follow in half an hour.” We
have already heard how Tom’s mission prospered.
156 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

The next day, at a few minutes before two o'clock, the
St. Ambrose crew, including Hardy, with Miller (who was a
desperate and indefatigable pedestrian) for leader, crossed
Magdalen Bridgo. At five they returned to college, having
done a little over fiftoon miles, fair hecl and toe walking in
the interval. The aftornoon hud been very hot, and Miller
chuckled to the Captain, “I don’t think there will be much
trash left in any one of them after that. That fellow Hardy
is as fine as a race-horse, and, did you see, he never turned a
hair all the way.”

The crew dispersed to their rooms,. delighted with the per-
formance now that it was over, and feeling that they were
much the better for it, though they all declared it had been
harder work than any race they had yet pulled. It would
have done a trainer’s heart good to have seen them, some
twenty minutes afterwards, dropping into hall (where they
were allowed to dine on Sundays on the joint), fresh from
cold baths, and looking ruddy and clear, and hard enough for
anything.

Again on Monday, not a chance was lost. The St. Ambrose
boat started soon after one o’clock for Abingdon. They swung
steadily down the whole way, and back again to Sandford
without a single spurt ; Miller generally standing in the stern,
and preaching above all things steadiness and time. From
Sandford up, they were accompanied by half a dozen men or
so, who ran up the bank watching them. The struggle for
the first placo on tho river was creating groat excitumont in
the rowing world, and these were some of the most keen con-
noisscurs, who, having heard that St. Ambrose had changed
a man, were on the look-out to satisfy themselves as to how
it would work, ‘The general opinion was veering round in
favour of Oriel; changes so late in the races, and at such a
critical moment, were looked upon as very damaging.

Foremost amongst the runners on the bank was a wiry dark
man, with sanguine complexion, who went with a peculiar
long, low stride, keeping his keen eye well on the boat. Just
above Kennington Island, Jervis, noticing this particular
spectator for the first time, called on tho crew, and, quickening
his stroke, took them up the reach at racing pace. As they
lay in Iffley Lock the dark man appeared above them, and
exchanged a few words, and a good deal of dumb show, with
the Captain and Miller, and then disappeared.

From Iffley up they went steadily again. On the whole
Miller seemed to be in very good spirits in the dressing-room ;
he thought the boat trimmed better, and went better than
she had ever done before, and complimented Blake particu-
A CHANGE IN THE CREW. 157

larly for tho onso with which ho had changed sides. They
all wont up in high spirits, calling on thoir way ab “Tho
Choughs” for one glass of old ale round, which Miller was
graciously pleased to allow. Tom never remembercd till after
they were out again that Hardy had never been there before,
and felt embarrassed for a moment, but it soon passed off. A
moderate dinner and early to bed finished the day, and Miller
was justified in his parting remark to the Captain, “ Well,
if wo don’t win, we can comfort ourselves that we hav’n’t
dropped a stitch this last two days, at any rate.”

Then the eventful day arose which Tom, and many another
man, felt was to make or mar St. Ambrose. It was a glorious
early-summer day, without a cloud, scarcely a breath of air
stirring. ‘‘ We shall have a fair start at any rate,” was the
general feeling. We have already seen what a throat-drying,
nervous business, the morning of a race-day is, and must not
go over the same ground more than we can help; so we will
imagine the St. Ambrose boat down at the starting-place, lying
close to the towing-path, just before the first gun.

There is a much greater crowd than usual opposite the
two first boats. By this time most of tho other boats havo
found their places, for there is not much chance of anything
very exciting down below ; so, besides the men of Oriel and
St. Ambrose (who muster to-night of all sorts, the fastest of
the fast and the slowest of the slow having been by this
time shamed into something Jiko enthusiasm), many of other
colleges, whose boats have no chance of bumping or boing
bumped, flock to the point of attraction.

“ Do you make out what the change is?” says a backer of
Oriel to his friend in the like predicament.

“Yes, they've got a new No. 5, don’t you see, and, by
George, I don’t like his looks,” answered his friend ; “awfully
long and strong in the arm, and well-ribbed up. A devilish
awkward customer. I shall go and try to get a hedge.”

“ Pooh,” says the other, “did you ever know one man win
a race ?”

“ Ay, that I have,” says his friend, and walks off towards
the Oriel crowd to take five to four on Oriel in half-sovereigns,
if he can get it.

Now their dark friend of yesterday comes up at a trot, and
pulls up close to the Captain, with whom he is evidently dear
friends. He is worth looking at, boing coxswain of tho O. U. B.
tho best stcerer, runner, and swimmer, in Oxford ; amphibious
himself and sprung from an amphibious raco. Lis own bont
is in no danger, so ho has left her to take care of horsolf.
He is on the look-out for recruits for the University crew,
158 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

and no recruiting sergeant has a sharper eye for the sort of
stuff he requires.

“ What's his name?” he says in a low tone to Jervis, giving
a jerk with his head towards Hardy. “Where did you get
him ?”

“ Hardy,” answers the Captain, in tho same tone ; “it’s his
first night in the boat.”

“T know that,” replies the coxswain ; “TI never saw him
row before yesterday. He’s the fellow who sculls in that
brown skiff, isn’t he ?”

“Yes, and I think he’ll do; keep your eye on him.”

The coxswain nods as if he were somewhat of the Zame
mind, and examines Hardy with the eye of a connoisseur,
pretty much as the judge at an agricultural show looks at the
prize bull. Hardy is tightening the strap of his stretcher,
and all-unconscious of the compliments which are being paid
him. The great authority seems satisfied with his inspection,
grins, rubs his hands, and trots off to the Oriel boat to make
comparisons.

Just as the first gun is heard, Grey sidles nervously to the
front of the crowd as if he were doing something very
audacious, and draws Hardy’s attention, exchanging sympa-
thizing nods with him, but saying nothing, for he knows not
what to say, and then disappearing again in the crowd.

“ Hallo, Drysdale, is that you?” says Blake, as they push
off from the shore. “TI thought you were going to take it
easy in a punt.”

“So I thought,” said Drysdale, “but I couldn’t keep away,
and here I am. I shall run up; and mind, if I see you
within ten feet, and cocksure to win, I'll give a view holloa.
Tl be bound you shall hear it.”

“ May it come speedily,” said Blake, and then settled him-
self in his seat.

“ Byes in the boat—mind now, steady all, watch the stroke
and don’t quicken.”

These are Miller's last words ; every faculty of himself and
the crew being now devoted-to getting a good start. This is
no difficult matter, as the water is like glass, and the boat lies
lightly on it, obeying the slightest dip of the oars of bow
and two, who just feol the water twice or thrice in the last
minute. Then, after a few moments of breathless hush on
the bank, the last gun is fired, and they aro off.

The same scene of mad excitement ensues, only tenfold
more intense, as almost the whole interest of the races is to-
night concentrated on the two head boats and their fate. At
every gate there is a jam, and the weaker vessels are shoved
A OHANGE IN THE CREW 159

into the ditches, upset, and left unnoticed. The most active
men, including the O. U. B. coxswain, shun the gates alto-
gether, and take the big ditches in their stride, making for
‘the long bridges, that ‘they may get quietly over these and be
safe for the best part of the race. They know that the critical
point of the struggle will be near the finish.

Both boats made a beautiful start, and again as before in
the first dash the St. Ambrose pace tclls, and they gain their
boat’s length before first winds fail ; then they scttle down
for a long stondy offort. Both crows aro rowing comparativoly
steady, reserving themselves for tho tug of war up above.
Thws they pass the Gut, and those two treacherous corners,
the scene of countless bumps, into the wider water beyond,
up under the willows.

Miller’s face is decidedly hopeful; he shows no sign,
indeed, but you can see that he is not the same man as he
was at this place in the last race. He feels that to-day the
boat is full of life, and that he can call on his crew with hopes
of an answer. His well-trained eye also detects that, while
both crews are at full stretch, his own, instead of losing, as it
did on the last night, is now gaining inch by inch on Oriol.
The gain is scarcely perceptible to him evon ; from the bank
it is quite imperceptible ; but there it is; he is surer and surer
of it, as one after another the willows are left behind.

And now comes the pinch. The Oriel captain is beginning
to be conscious of the fact which has been dawning on Miller,
but will not acknowledge it to himself, and as lus coxswain
turns the boat’s head gently across the stream, and makes for
the Berkshire side and the goal, now full in view, he smiles
grimly as he quickens his stroke ; he will shake off these
light-heeled gentry: yet, as he did before.

Miller sees the move in a moment, and signals his captain,
and the next stroke St. Ambrose has quickened also ; and
now there is no mistake a bout it, St. Ambrose is creeping up
slowly but surely. The boat’s length lessens to forty feet,
thirty feet ; surely and steadily lessens. But the race is not
lost yet ; thirty feet is a short space enough to look at on the
water, but a good bit to pick up foot by foot in the last two
or three hundred yards of a despera!o struggle. They are
over, under the Berkshire side now, «nd there stands up the
winning-post, close ahead, all but won. The distance lessens,
and lessens still, but the Oriel crew stick steadily and gallantly
to their work, and will fight every inch of distance to the
last, The Oriel men on the bank, who are rushing along
sometimes in the water, sometimes out, hoarse, furious, madly
alternating between hope and despair, have no reason to be.
160 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

ashamed of a man in the crew. Off the mouth of the
Cherwell there is still“twenty feet between them. Another
minute, and it will be over one way or another. Every man
in both crews is now doing his best, and no mistake ; tell me
which hoat holds the most men who can do better than their
best at a pinch, who will risk oa broken blood-vessel, and I
will tell you how it will end. “ Hard pounding, gentlemen ;
let’s see who will pound longest,” the Duke is reported to
have said at Waterloo, and won. “Now, Tummy, lad, ’tis
thou or I,” Big Ben said as he came up to the last round of
his hardest fight, and won. Is there a man of that temper
in either crew to-night? If so, now’s his time. For both
coxswains have called on their men for the last effort ; Miller
is whirling the tassel of his right-hand tiller rope round his
head, like a wiry little lunatic ; from the towing path, from
Christchurch meadow, from the row of punts, from the
clustered tops of the barges, comes a roar of encouragement
and applause, and the band, unable to resist the impulse,
breaks with a crash into the “Jolly Young Waterman,”

playing two bars to the second. A bump in the Gut is ©
nothing—a few partisans on the towing-path to cheer you,
already out of breath ; but up here at the very finish, with all
Oxford looking on, when the prize is the headship of the
river—once in a generation only do men get such a chance.

Who ever saw Jervis not up to his work? The St. Ambrose
stroke is glorious. Tom had an atom of go still left in the
very back of his head, and at this moment he heard Drysdale’s
view holloa above all the din; it seemed to give him a lift,
and other men besides in the boat, for in another six strokes
the gap is lessened and St. Ambrose has crept up to ten feet,
and now to five from the stern of Oriel. Weeks afterwards
Hardy confided to Tom that when he heard that view holloa
he seemed to feel the muscles of his arms and legs turn into
steel, and did more work in the last twenty strokes than in
any other forty in the earlier part of the race,

Another fifty yards and Oriel is safe, but the look on the
Captain’s face is so ominous that their coxswain glances over
his shoulder. The bow of St. Ambroso is within two fect of
their rudder. It is a moment for desperate expedients. He
pulls his left tiller rope suddenly, thereby carrying the stern
of his own boat out of the line of the St. Ambrose, and calls
on his crew once more; they respond gallantly yet, but the
rudder is against them for a moment, and the boat drags.
St. Ambrose overlaps. “A bump, a bump,” shout the St,
Ambrosians on shore. “Row on, row on,” screams Miller.
He has not yet felt the electric shock, and knows he will miss
A STORM BREWS AND BREAKS. 161

his bump if the young ones slacken foywa moment.’ A young
coxswain would have gone on making shots at the stern of
the Oriel boat, and so have lost.

A bump now and no mistake ; the bow of the St. Ambrose
boat jams the oar of the Oriel stroke, and the two boats pass
the winning-post with the way that was on them when the
bump was made. So near a shave was it.

Who can describe the scene on the bank? It was a hurly-
burly of delirious joy, in tho midst of which took place a
terrific combat between Jack and the Oriel dog—a noble
black bull terrier belonging to the college in general, and no
one in particular—who always attended the races and felt the
misfortune keenly. Luckily they were parted without worse
things happening ; for though the Oriel men were savage,
and not disinclined for a jostle, the milk of human kindness
was too strong for the moment in their adversaries. So Jack
was choked off with some trouble, and the Oriel men extricated
themselves from the crowd, carrying off Crib, their dog, and
looking straight before them into vacancy.

“ Well rowed, boys,” says Jervis, turning round to his crew
as they lay panting on their oars.

“ Well rowed, five,” says Miller, who even in the hour of
such a triumph is not inclined to be general in laudation.

“Well rowed, five,” is echoed from the bank ; it is that
cunning man, the recruiting-sergeant. “ Fatally well rowed,”
he adds to a comrade, with whom he gets into one of the
punts to cross to Christchurch meadow ; “we must have him
in the University crew.”

“T don’t think yowll get him to row, from what I hear,”
answers the other.

“ Then he must be handcuffed and carried into the boat by
force,” says the O. U. B. coxswain ; “ why is not the press-
gang an institution in this university 1”

 

CHAPTER XV.
4 STORM BREWS AND BREAKS.

Crrtaint7 Drysdale’s character came out well that night.
He did not seem the least jealous of the success which had
been achieved through his dismissal. On the contrary, there
was no man in the college who showed more interest in the
race, or joy at the result, than he. Perhaps the pleasure of
being out of it himself may have reckoned for something with
him. In any case, there he waa at the door with Jack, to
meet the crew as they landed after the race, with a large
M
162 TOM BROWN -AT OXFORD.

pewter, foaming with shandygaff, in each hand, for their
recreation. Draco himself could not have forbidden them to
drink at that moment; so, amidst shaking of hands and
clappings on the back, the pewters travelled round from stroke
to bow, and then the crew went off to their dressing-room,
accompanied by Drysdale and others, :

“Bravo | it was the finost race that has beon scon on tho
river this six years ; everybody says so. You fellows have
doserved well of your country. I’ve sent up to college to
have supper in my rooms, and you must all come. Hang
training! there are only two more nights, and you're safe to
keep your place. What do you say Captain? eh, Miller?
Now be good-natured for once.”

“ Miller, what do you say 1” said the Captain.

“ Well, we don’t get head of the river every night,” said
Miller. “TI don’t object if you'll all turn out and go to bed
at eleven.”

“That’s all right,” said Drysdale ; “and now let’s go to
the old ‘Choughs’ and have a glass of ale while supper is
getting ready. Eh, Brown?” and he hooked his arm into
Tom’s and led the way into the town.

“‘T’'m so sorry you were not in it for the finish,” said Tom,
who was quite touched by his friend’s good-humour.

“ Are you ?” said Drysdale ; “it’s more than I am, then, I
can tell you. If you could have seen yourself under the
willows, you wouldn’t have thought yourself much of an
object of onvy. Jack and I were quite satisfied with our
share of work and glory on the bank. ‘Weren't we, old
fellow ?” at which salutation Jack reared himself on his hind
legs and licked his master’s hand,

“Well, you're a real good fellow for taking it as yoyrdo. I
don’t think I could have come near the river if Ihad been you.”

“TI take everything as it comes,” said Drysdale. “The
next race is on Derby day, and.I couldn’t have gone if I
hadn’t been turned out of the boat; that’s a compensation,
you see. Tere we are. I wonder if Miss Patty has heard of
the victory ?”

They turned down the little passage entrance of “The
Choughs” as he spoke, followed by most of the crew, and
by a tail of younger St. Ambrosians, their admirers, and the
bar was crowded the next moment. Patty was there, of
course, and her services were in great requisition ; for though
each of the crew only took a small glass of the old ale, they
made as much fuss about it with the pretty barmaid as if they
were drinking hogsheads. In fact, it had become clearly the
correct thing with the St. Ambrosians to make much of Patty ;
A STORM BREWS AND BREAKS, 163 .

and, considering the circumstances, it was only a wonder that
sho was not moro spoilt than seemed to be the case. Indeed,
as Hardy stood up in the corner opposite to the landlady’s
chair, a silent on-looker at the scene, he couldn't help admitting
to himself that the girl held her own well, without doing or
saying anything unbecoming a modest woman. And it was a
hard thing. for him to be fair to her, for what he saw now in
a few minutes confirmed the impression which his former
visit had left on his mind—that his friend was safe in her
toils; how deeply, of course he could not judge, but that
there was more between them than he.could approve was now
clear enough to him, and he stood silent, leaning against the
wall in that farthest corner, in the shadow of a projecting
cupboard, much distressed in mind, and pondering over what
it behoved him to do under the circumstances. With the
exception of a civil sentence or two to the old landlady, who
sat opposite him knitting, and casting rather uneasy looks
from time to time towards the front of the bar, he spoke to
noone. In fact, nobody came near that end of the room,
and thoir existence seemed to have been forgotten by the
Test

Tom had been a little uncomfortable for tho first minute ;
but after secing Hardy take his glass of ale, and then missing
him, he forgot all about him, and was too busy with his own
affairs to trouble himself further. He had become a sort of
drawer, or barman, at “The Choughs,” and presided, under
Patty, over the distribution of the ale, giving an eye to his
chief to see that she was not put upon.

Drysdale and Jack left after a short stay, to see that the
supper was being properly prepared. Soon afterwards Patty
went off out of the bar in answer to some bell which called
her to another part of the house; and the St. Ambrosians
voted that it was time to go off to college to supper, and
cleared out into the street.

Tom went out with the last batch of them, but lingored a
moment in the passage outside. He knew the house and its
ways well enough by this time. The next moment Patty
appeared from a side door, which led to another part of the
house.

“So you're not going to stay and play a game with aunt,”
she said ; “ what makes you in such a hurry?”

“TI must go up to college ; there’s a supper to celebrate our
gotting head of the river.” Patty looked down and pouted a
little. Tom took her hand, and said, sentimentally, ‘Don’t
be cross, now ; you know that I would sooner stay here, don’t
you 9”

M2
164 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

She tossed her head, and pulled away her hand, and then
changing the subject, said,

‘Who's that ugly old fellow who was here again to-night?”

“There was no one older than Miller, and he is rather an
admirer of yours. I shall tell him you called him ugly.”

“Oh, Idon’t mean Mr, Miller; you know that well enough,”
she answered. “I mean hiin in the old rough coat, who don’t
talk to any one.”

“Ugly old fellow, Patty? Why you mean Hardy. He’s
a great friend of mine, and you must like him for my sake.”

“Tm sure I won't. .I don’t like him a bit; he looks so
cross at me.”

“Tt’s all your fancy. There now, good-night.”

“You sha’n’t go, however, till you’ve given me that hand-
kerchief. You promised it me if you got head of the
river.”

“Oh! you little story-teller. Why they are my college
colours. I wouldn’t part with them for worlds. Ill give
you a lock of my hair, and the prettiest handkerchief you can
find in Oxford ; but not this.”

“But I will have it, and you did promise me it,” she said,
and put up her hands suddenly, and untied the bow of ‘Tom’s
neck-handkerchief. He caught her wrists in his hands, and
looked down into her eyes, in which, if he saw a little pique
at his going, he saw other things which stirred in him strange
feelings of triumph and tenderness.

“Well, then, you shall pay for it, any how,” he said.—
Why need I tell what followed ?—Thoro was a little struggle ;
a “Go along, do, Mr. Brown ;” and the next minute ‘om,
minus his handkerchief, was hurrying after his companions ;
and Patty was watching him from the door, and setting her
cap to rights. Then she turned and went back into the bar,
and started, and turned red, as she saw Hardy there, still
standing in the further corner, opposite her aunt. He finished
his glass of ale as she came in, and then passed out, wishing
them “ Good-night.”

““Why, aunt,” she said, “I thought they were all gone.
Who was that sour-looking man ?”

“He scoms a nice quiet gentleman, my dear,” said tho old
lady, looking up. “I’m sure he’s much better than those ones
as makes so much racket in the bar. But where have you
been, Patty ?”

“Oh, to the commercial room, aunt. Won't you have a
game at cribbage?” and Patty took up the cards and set the
board out, the old lady looking at her doubtfully all the time
through her spectacles. She was beginning to wish that the
A STORM BREWS AND BREAKS. 165

college gentlemen wouldn’t come so much to the house, though
they wero very good customors.

‘Yom, minus his handkerchief, hurried after his comrades,
and caught them up before they got up to college. They
wero all there but Hardy, whose absence vexed our hero for
a moment; he had hoped that Hardy, now that he was in.
the boat, would have shaken off all his reserve towards the
other men, and blamed him because he had not done so at
once. There could be no reason for it but his own oddness,
he thought, for every one was full of his praises as they
strolled on talking of the race. Miller praised his style, and
time, and pluck. “Didn't you feel how the boat sprung
when I called on you at the Cherwell?” he said to the
Captain. ‘Drysdale was always dead beat at the Gut, and
just like a log in the boat, pretty much like some of the rest
of you.”

“ He’s in such good training, too,” said Diogenes ; “I shall
find out how he diets himself.”

“We've pretty well done with that, I should hope,” said
No. 6. ‘Thero aro only two more nights, and nothing can
touch us now.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” said Miller. ‘Mind now, all
of you, don’t let us have any nonsense till the races are over
and we are all safe.”

And so they talked on till they reached college, and then
dispersed to their rooms to wash and dress, and met again in
Drysdale’s rooms, where supper was awaiting them.

Again Hardy did not appear. Drysdale sent a scout to his
rooms, who brought back word that he could not find him ;
so Drysdale set to work to do the honours of his table, and
enjoyed the pleasure of tempting the crew with all sorts of
forbidden hot liquors, which he and the rest of the non-pro-
fessionals imbibed freely. But with Miller's eye on them,
and the example of Diogenes and the Captain before them,
the rest of the crew exercised an abstemiousness which would
have been admirable, had it not been in a great measure
compulsory.

It was a great success, this supper at Drysdale’s, although
knocked up at an hour's notice. The triumph of their boat
had, for the time, the effect of warming up and drawing out
the feeling of fellowship, which is the soul of college life.
Though only a fow men besides the crow sat down to supper,
long before it was cleared away men of overy sct in the
college came in, in the highest spirits, and the room was
crowded. For Drysdale sent round to every man in the
college with whom he had a speaking acquaintance, and
166 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

they flocked in and sat where they could, and men talked
and laughed with neighbours, with whom, perhaps, they had
never exchanged a word since the time when they were
freshmen together.

Of course there were speechus, cheered to the echo, and
songs, of which the choruses might have been heard in the
High-street. At a little before eleven, nevertheless, despite
the protestations of Drysdale, and the passive resistance of
several of their number, Miller carried off the crew, and
many of the other guests went at the same time, leaving their
host and a small circle to make a night of it.

Tom went to his rooms in high spirits, humming the air of
one of the songs he had just heard; but ho had scarcely
thrown his gown on a chair when a thought struck him, and
he ran down stairs again and across to Hardy’s rooms.

Hardy was sitting with some cold tea poured out, but un-
tasted, before him, and no books open—a very unusual thing
with him at night. But Tom either did not or would not
notice that there was anything unusual.

He seated himself and began gossiping away as fast as he
could, without looking much at the other. He began by
recounting all the complimentary things which had been said
by Miller and others of Hardy’s pulling. Then he went on
to the supper party ; what a jolly evening they had had ; he
did not remember anything so pleasant since he had been up,
and he retailed the speeches and named the best songs.
“You really ought to have been there. Why didn’t you como?
Drysdale sent over for you. I’m sure every one wished you
had been there. Didn’t you get his message?”

“T didn’t feel up to going,” said Hardy.

“There’s nothing the matter, eh?” said Tom, as the thought
crossed his mind that perhaps Hardy had hurt himself in the
race, as he had not been regularly training.

“No, nothing,” answered the other.

Tom tried to make play again, but soon came to an end of
his talk. It was impossible to make head against that cold
silence. At last he stopped, looked at Hardy for a minute,
who was staring abstractedly at the sword over his mgntel-
piece, and then said,—

“There is something the matter, though. Don't ait
glowering as if you had swallowed a furze bush. Why,
you haven't been smoking, old boy?” he added, getting up
and putting his hand on the other’s shoulder. “TI see that’s
it, Here, take one of my weeds, they're mild. Miller allows
two of these a day.”

“No, thank’ee,” said Hardy, rousing himself; “ Miller
A STORM BREWS AND BREAKS. 167

hasn’t interfered with my smoking, and I will have a pipe,
for I think I want it.”

“ Well, I don’t see that it does you any good,” said Tom,
after watching him fill and light, and smoke for some minutes
without saying a word. “Here, I’ve managed the one thing
I had at heart. You are in the crew, and we are head of the -
river, and everybody is praising your rowing up to the skies,
and saying that the bump was all your doing. And here
I come to tell you, and not a word can I get out of you.
Ain't you pleased? Do you think we shall keep our place 1”
He paused a moment.

“Hang it all, I say,” he added, losing all patience, ; “swear
a little if you can’t do anything else. Let’s hear your voice;
it isn’t such a tender one that you need keep it all shut
w if

“ Well,” said Hardy, making a great effort; “the real fact
is I have something, and something very serious to say to

ou.”
i: “Then I’m not going to listen to it,” broke in Tom} “I’m
not serious, and I won't bo serious, and no one shall make me
serious to-night. It’s no uso, so don’t look glum. “But isn’t
the ale at ‘The Choughs’ good; and isn’t it a dear little
place 1”

“Tt’s that place I want to talk to you about,” said Hardy,
turning his chair suddenly so as to front his visitor. ‘“ Now,
Brown, we haven’t known one another long, but I think I
understand you, and I know I like you, and I hope you like
me.”

“ Well, well, well,” broke in Tom, “of course I like you,
old fellow, or else I shouldn’t come poking after you, and
wasting so much of your time, and sitting on your cursed
hard chairs in the middle of the races. What has liking to
do with ‘The Choughs,’ or ‘The Choughs’ with long faces ?
You ought to have had another glass of ale there.”

“I wish you had never had a glass of ale there,” said
Hardy, bolting out his words as if they were red hot. “ Brown,
you have no right to go to that place.”

'« Why?” said Tom, sitting up in his chair, and beginning
to be nettled.

“You know why,” said Hardy, looking him full in the
face, and puffing out huge volumes of smoke. In apite of
the bluntness of thé attack, there was a yearning look which
spread over the rugged brow, and shone out of tho doep-set
vyes of the speaker, which almost conquered Tom. But firat
pride, and then the consciousness of what was coming next,
which bogan to dawn on him, rose in his heart. It was all he
168 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

could do to meet that look full, but he managed it, though
he flushed to the roots of his hair, as he simply repeated
through his set teeth, “ Why?”

“T say again,” said Hardy, “ you know why.”

“T see what you mean,” said Tom, slowly ; “as you say,
we have not known one another long; long enough, though,
1 should have thought, for you to have been more charitable.
Why am I not to go to ‘The Choughs?’ Because there happens
to be a pretty bar maid there? All our crew go, and twenty
other men besides.”

“Yes ; but do any of thom go in the sort of way you do?
Does she look at any one of them as she does at you ?”

“How do I know 9”

“That's not fair, or true, or like you, Brown,” said Hardy,
getting up, and beginning to walk up and down the room.
“You do know that that girl doesn’t care a straw for the
other men who go there. You do know that she is beginning
to care for you.”

“You seem to know a great deal about it,” said Tom; “I
don’t believe you were ever there before two days ago.”

* No, I never was.”

“Then I think you needn’t be quite so quick at finding
fault. If there were anything I didn’t wish you to see, do
you think I should have taken you there? I tell you she
is quite able to take care of herself.”

“So I believe,” said Hardy ; “if she were a mere giddy,
light girl, setting her cap at every man who came in, it
wouldn't matter so much—for her at any rate. She can take
care of herself well enough so far as the rest are concerned,
but you know it isn’t so with you. You know it now,
Brown ; tell the truth ; any one with half an eye can see it.”

“You seem to have made pretty good use of your eyes
in these two nights, anyhow,” said Tom.

“T don’t mind your sneers, Brown,” said Hardy, as he
tramped up and down with his arms locked behind him ;
“JT have taken on myself to speak to you about this; I should
be no true friend if I shirked it. I’m four years older than
you, and have scon more of the world and of this place than
you. You sha’n’t go on with this folly, this sin, for want of
warning.”

“So it seems,” said Tom, doggedly. “Now I think I’ve
had warning enough ; suppose we drop the subject.”

Hardy stopped in his walk, and turned on Tom with a look
of anger. ‘“ Not yet,” he said, firmly ; ‘ you know best how
and why you have done it, but you know that somehow or
other you have made that girl like you.”
A STORM BREWS AND BREAKS. 169

“Suppose I have, what then ; whose business is that but
mine and hers?”

“It’s the business of every one who won't stand by and see
the devil’s game played under his nose if he can hinder it,”

“What right have you to talk about the devil's game to
me?” said Tom. ‘“TI'll tell you what, if you and I are to
keep friends, we had better drop this subject.”

“Tf wo are to keep friends we must go to the bottom of it.
There aro only two ondings to this sort of businoss, and you
know it as well as I.”

“ A right and a wrong one, eh? and because you call me
your friend you assume that my end will be the wrong one.”

“I do call you my friend, and I say the end must be the
wrong one here. There’s no right end. Think of your
family. You don’t mean to say—you dare not tell me, that
you will marry her?”

“T dare not tell you!” said Tom, starting up in his turn ;
“T dare tell you or any man anything I please. But I won't
tell you or any man anything on compulsion.”

“T ropeat,’ went on Hardy, “ you dare not say you mean
to marry her. You don’t mean it—and, as you don’t, to kiss
her as you did to-night—”

“So you wero sneaking behind to watch me!” burst out
Tom, chafing with rage, and glad to find any handle for a
quarrel. The two men stood fronting one another, the younger
writhing with the sense of shame and outraged pride, and
longing for a fierce answer—a blow—anything to give vent
to the furies which were tearing him.

But at the end of a few seconds the elder answered, calmly
and slowly,—

“T will not take thoso words from any man; you had
better leave my rooms.”

“Tf I do, I shall not come back till you have altered your
opinions.”

“You need not come back till you have altered yours.”

The next moment Tom was in the passage; the next,
striding up and down the side of the inner quadrangle in the
pale mconlight.

Poor fellow! it was no pleasant walking ground for him.
Is it worth our while to follow him up and down in his
tramp? We have most of us walked the like marches at one
time or another of our lives. ‘Iho memory of them is by no
means one which we can dwell on with pleasure. Times they
were of blinding and driving storm, and howling winds, out
of which voices as of evil spirits spoke close in our ears—
tauntingly, temptingly, whispering to the mischievous wild
170 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

beast which lurks in the bottom of all our hearts, now,
“Rouse up! art thou a man and darest not do this thing ?”
now, “ Rise, kill and eat—it is thine, wilt thou not take it?
Shall the flimsy scruples of this teacher, or the sanctified cant
of that, bar thy way, and baulk thee of thine own? Thou
hast strength to brave them—to brave all things in earth, or
heaven, or hell; put out thy strength, and be a man !”

Then did not the wild beast within us shake itself, and
feel its power, sweeping away all the “Thou shelt nots”
which the Law wrote up before us in letters of fire, with the
“T will” of hardy, godless, self-assertion? And all the while
—which alone made the storm really dreadful to us—was
there not the still small yoice—never to be altogether silenced
by the roarings of the tempest of passion, by the evil voices,
by our own violent attempts to stifle it—the still small voice
appealing to the man, the true man, within us, which is made
in the image of God—calling on him to assert his dominion
over the wild beast—to obey, and conquer, and live? Ay!
and though we may have followed the other voices, have we
not, while following them, confessed in -our hearts, that all
true strength, and nobleness, and manliness, was to be found
in the other path? Do I say that most of us have had to
tread this path, and fight this battle? Surely I might have
said all of us ; all, at least, who have passed the bright days
of their boyhood. The clear and keen intellect no less than
the dull and heavy ; the weak, the cold, the nervous, no less
than the strong and passionate of body. The arms and the
field have been divers ; can have been the same, I suppose, to
no two men, but the battle must have been the same to all.
One here and there may have had a foretaste of it as a boy ;
but it is the young man’s battle, and not the boy’s, thank
God for it! That most hateful and fearful of all realities, call it
by what name we will—self, the natural man, the old Adam—
must have risen up before each of us in early manhood, if not
sooner, challenging the true man within us, to which the
Spirit of God is speaking, to a struggle for life or death.

Gird yourself, then, for the fight, my young brother, and
take up the pledge which was made for you when you were a
helpless child. ‘This world, and all others, timo and vternity,
for you hang upon the issue. This enemy must be met and
vanquished—not finally, for no man while on earth, I suppose,
can say that he is slain ; but, when once known and recognised,
met and vanquished he must be, by God’s help, in this and
that encounter, before you can be truly called a man ; before
you can really enjoy any one even of this world’s good things.

The strife was no light one for our hero on the night in his
A STORM BREWS AND BREAKS. 171

life at which we have arrived. The quiet sky overhead, the
quiet solemn old buildings, under the shadow of which he
stood, brought him no peace. He fled from them into his
own rooms ; he lighted his candles and tried to read, and
force the whole matter from his thoughts ; but it was useless :
back ‘it came again and again. The more impatient of its
presence he became, the less could he shake it off. Some
decision he must make ; what should it be? He could have
no pence till it was takon. Tho voil had beon drawn aside
thoroughly, and once for all. ‘I'wice ho was on the point of
roturning to Hardy’s rooms to thank him, confess, and con-
sult; but the tide rolled back again. As the truth of the
warning sank deeper and deeper into him, the irritation
against him who had uttered it grew also. He could not and
would not be fair yet. It is no easy thing for any one of us
to put the whole burden of any folly or sin on our own backs
all at once. ‘If he had done it in any other way,” thought
Tom, “I might have thanked him.”

Another effort to shake off the whole question. Down
into the quadrangle again ; lights in Drysdale’s rooms. He
goes up, and finds the remains of the supper, tankards full of
ege-flip and cardinal, and a party playing at vingt-un. He
drinks’ freely, careless of training or boat-racing, anxious
only todrown thought. He sitsdownto play. The boisterous
talk of some, the eager keen looks of others, jar on him
equally. One minute he is absent, the next boisterous, then
irritable, then moody. A college card-party is no place to-
night for him. He loses his money, is disgusted at last, and
gets to his own rooms by midnight; goes to bed feverish,
dissatisfied with himself, with all the world. The inexorable’
question pursues him even into the strange helpless land of
dreams, demanding a decision, when he has no longer power
of will to choose either good or evil.

But how fared it all this time with the physician? Alas!
little better than with his patient. His was the deeper and
more sensitive nature. Keenly conscious of his own position,
he had always avoided any but the most formal intercourse
with the men in his college whom he would have liked most
to live with. This was the first friendship he had made
amongst them, and he valued it accordingly; and now it
seemed to lie at his feet in hopeless fragments, and cast down
too by his own hand. Bitterly ho blamod himself ovor and
over again, as he recalled every word that had passed—not
for having spoken—that he felt had been a sacred duty—but
for the harshness and suddenness with which he seemed to
himself to have done it.
172 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“ One touch of gentleness or sympathy, and I might have
won him. As it was, how could he have met me otherwise
than he did—hard word for hard word, hasty answer for
proud reproof? Can TI go to him and recall it all? No! 1
can’t trust myself; I shall only make matters worse. Be-
sides, he may think that the servitor—Ah! am I there
again? The old sore, self, self, self | I nurse my own pride ;
{ value it more than my friond ; and yet—no, no! I cannot
vo, though I think I could die for him. The sin, if sin there
must be, be on my head. Would to God I could bear the
sting of it! But there will be none—how can I fear? he is
too true, too manly. Rough and brutal as my words have
been, they have shown him the gulf. He will, he must
escape it. But will he ever come back tome? I care not,
su he escape.” ‘

Tlow can my poor words follow the strong loving man in
the wrestlings of his spirit, till far on in the quiet night
he laid the whole before the Lord and slept! Yes, my
brother, even so: the old, cld story; but start not at the
phrase, though you may nover have found its meaning.—He
laid the whole before the Lord, in prayer, for his friend, for
himself, for the whole world.

AnG you, too, if ever you are tried as he was—as every
man must be in one way or another—must learn to do the
like with every burthen on your soul, if you would not have
it hanging round you heavily, and ever more heavily, and
dragging you down lower and lower till your dying day.

 

CHAPTER XVI.
THE STORM RAGES.

Ilarpy was early in the chapel the next morning. It was
his week for pricking in. very man who entered—from
the early men who strolled in quiotly while the bell was still’
ringing, to the hurrying, half-dressed loiterers who crushed in
as the porter was closing tho doors, and disturbed the con-
gregation in the middle of the confession—gave him a turn
_(as the expressive phrase is), and every turn only ended in
disappointment.- Ho put by his list at last, when the doors
were fairly shut, with a sigh. Ho had half expected to see
Tom come into morning chapel with a face from which he
might have gathered hope that his friend had taken the right

pat, But Tom did not come at all, and Hardy fel’ it was a
bad sign,
THE STORM RAGES, 173

They did not meet till the evening, at the river, when the
boat went down for a steady pull, and then Hardy saw at
once that all was going wrong. Neither spoke to or looked
at the other. Hardy expected some one to remark it, but
nobody did. After the pull they walked up, and Tom as
usual led the way, as if nothing had happened, into “ The
Choughs.” Tardy paused for a moment, and then went in
too, and stayed till the rest of the crew left. Tom delibe-
ratoly stayed after them all. Tardy turnod for s momont
as he was leaving the bar, and saw him settling himself down
in his chair with an air of defiance, meant evidently for him,
which would have made most men angry. He was irritated
for a moment, and then was filled with ruth for the poor
-wrong-headed youngster who was heaping up coals of fire
for his own head. In his momentary anger Hardy said to
himself, “ Well, I have done what I can; now he must go
his own way ;” but such a thought wag soon kicked in dis-
grace from his noble and well-disciplined mind. IIc resolved,
that, let it cost what it might in the shape of loss of time and
trial of temper, be would leave no stone unturned, and spare
no pains, to deliver his friend of yesterday from the slough
into which he was plunging. How he might best work
for this end occupied his thoughts as he walked towards
college.

Tom sat on at “The Choughs,” glorifying himself in the
thought that now, at any rate, he had shown Hardy that he
wasn’t to be dragooned into doing or not doing anything.
He had had a bad time of it all day, and his good angel had
fought hard for victory ; but self-will was too strong for the
time. When he stayed behind the rest, it was more out of
bravado than from any defined purpose of pursuing what he
tried to persuade himself was an innocent flirtation. When
he left the house some hours afterwards he was deeper in the
toils than ever, and dark clouds were gathering over his
heart. From that time he was an altered maif, and altering
as rapidly for the worse in body as in mind. Hardy saw tho
change in both, and groaned over it in secret. Miller’s quick
eye detected the bodily change. After the next race he drew
Tom aside, and said,—

“Why, Brown, what’s the matter? What have you been
about? You're breaking down. Hold on, man ; there’s only
one more night.”

“ Nover fear,” said Tom, proudly, “I shall last it out.”

And in the last race he did his work again, though it cost
him more than all the preceding ones put together, and when
he got out of the boat he could scarcely walk or see. He

&
174 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

felt a fierce kind of joy in his own distress, and wished that
there were more races to come. But Miller, as he walked up
arm-in-arm with the Captain, took a different view of the
subject.

“Well, its all right, you see,” said the Captain ; “ but we're
not a boat’s length better than Oriel over the course after all.
How was it we bumped them? If anything, they drew a
little on us to-night.”

“ Ay, half a boat’s length, I should say,” answered Miller.
“Tm uncommonly glad it’s over; Brown is going all to
pieces ; he wouldn’t stand another race, and we haven’t a man
to put in his place.”

“Tt’s odd, too,” said the Captain; “I put him down as a
laster, and he has traincd well. Perhaps he has overdone it
a little. However, it don’t matter now.”

So the races were over ; and that night a great supper was
held in St. Ambrose Hall, to which were bidden, and came,
the crews of all the boats from Exeter upwards. The Dean,
with many misgivings “and cautions, had allowed the hall to
be used, on pressure from Miller and Jervis. Miller was a
bachelor and had taken a good degree, and Jervis bore a high
character and was expected to do well in the schools. So the
poor Dean gave in to them, extracting many promises in
exchange for his permission: and flitted uneasily about all
the evening in his cap and gown, instead of working on at
his edition of the Fathers, which occupied every minute of
his leisure, and was making an old man of him before his
time.

From eight to eleven the fine old pointed windows of St.
Ambrose Hall blazed with light, and the choruses of songs,
and the cheers which followed the short intervals of silence
which the speeches made, rang out over the quadrangles, and
made the poor Dean amble about in a state of nervous be-
wilderment. Inside there was hearty feasting, such as had
not been seen ‘there, for I aught I know, since the day when
the king came back to “enjoy his own again.” The one old
cup, relic of the Middle Ages, which had survived the civil
wars,—St. Ambroso’s had been a right loyal colloge, and tho
plate had gone without a murmur into Charles the Virat’s
war-chest,—went round and round ; and rival crews pledged
one another out of it, and the massive tankards of a later day,
in all good faith and good fellowship. Mailed knights, grave
bishops, royal persons of either sex, and “other our bene-
factors,” looked down on the scene from their heavy gilded
frames, and, let us hope, not unkindly. All passed off
well and quietly ; the out-college men were gone, the lights

we
THE STORM RAGES. 175

were out, and the butler had locked the hall door by a
quarter past eleven, and the Dean returned in peace to his
owr. rooms.

Had Tom been told a week before that he would not have
enjoyed that night, that it would rot have been amongst the
happiest and proudest of his life, he would have set his in-
former down as a madman. As it was, he never once rose to
the spirit of the feast, and wished it all over a dozen times.
He deserved not to enjoy it; but not so Hardy, who was |
nevertholess almost as much out of tune as Tom; though the ~
University coxswain had singled him out, named him in his
speech, sat by him and talked to him for a quarter of an
hour, and asked him to go to the Henley and Thames regattas
in the Oxford crew.

The next evening, as usual, Tom found himself at “The
Choughs” with half a dozen others. Patty was in the bar
by herself, looking prettier than ever. One by one the rest
of the men dropped off, the last saying, “ Are you coming,
Brown?” and being answered in tho negativo.

Ho sat still, watching Patty as sho flitted sbout, washing up
the ale glasses and putting them on thoir shelves, und getting
out her work-basket; and then she came and sat down in
her aunt’s ohair opposite him, and began stitching away
demurely at an apron she was making. Then he broke
silence,—

“Where’s your aunt to-night, Patty ?”

“Oh, she has gone away for a few days, for a visit to some
friends.” ,

“You and I will keep house, then, together ; you shall
teach me all the tricks of the trade. I shall make a famous
barman, don’t you think?”

“You must, learn to behave better, then. But I promisod
aunt to shut up at nine; so you must go when it strikes.
Now promise me you will go.”

“Go at nine! what, in half an hour? The first evening
T have ever had a chance of spending alone with you; do
you think it likely?” and he looked into her eyes. She
turned away with a slight shiver, and a deep blush.

His nervous system had been so unusually excited in the
last few days, that he seemed to know everything that was
passing in her mind. He took her hand. “Why, Patty,
you're not afraid of me, surely?” he said, gently.

“No, not when you're like you are now. But you frightened
me just this minute. I never saw you look so before. Has
anything happened to you?” ,

“No, nothing. Now then, we're going to have a jolly
176 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

evening, and play Darby and Joan together,” he said, turning
away, and going to the bar window; “shall I shut up,
Patty ?”

“No, it isn’t nine yet ; somebody may come in.”

“That's just why I mean to put the shutters up; I don’t
want anybody.”

“Yes, but I do, though. Now I declare, Mr. Brown, if
you go on shutting up, I'll run into the kitchen and sit with
Dick.” :

“Why will you call me ‘Mr. Brown’?”

“ Why, what should I call you?”

“'Tom, of course.”

“Oh, I never! one would think you was my brother,” said
Patty, looking up with a pretty pertness which sho had a
most bewitching way of putting on. Tom’s rejoinder, and
the little squabble which they had afterwards about where
her work-table should stand, and other such matters, may be
passed over. At last he was brought to reason, and to
anchor opposite his enchantress, the work-table between
them ; and he sat leaning back in his chair, and watching her,
as she stitched away without ever lifting her eyes. He was
in no hurry to break the silence. The position was particu-
larly fascinating to him, for he had scarcely ever yet had a
good look at her before, without fear of attracting attention,
or being interrupted. At last he roused himself.

“Any of our men been here to-day, Patty?” he said,
sitting up.

“Thore now, I’ve won,” sho laughed ; “T said to myself, [
wouldn’t speak first, and I haven’t. What a time you were!
I thought you would never begin.”

“You're a little goose! Now I begin then ; who've been
here to-day ?”

“Of your college? let me seo;” and she looked away
across to the bar window, pricking her needle into the table.
“There was Mr. Drysdale and some others called for a glass
of ale as they passed, going out driving. Then there was Mr.
Smith and them from the boats about four: and that ugly
one—I can’t mind his name—”

“ What, Hardy 1”

“ Yos, that’s it; he was here about half-past six, and—”

“What, Hardy here after hall?” interrupted ‘fom, utterly
astonished.

“Yes, after your dinner up at college, He’s been here two
or three times lately.”

“The deuce-he has !”

‘Yes, and he talks so pleasant to aunt, too. I’m sure he
THE STORM RAGES. 177

is a very nice gentleman, after all. He sat and talked to-
night for half an hour, I should think.”

“ What did he talk about?” said Tom, with a sneer.

“Oh, he asked me whether I had a mother, and where I
came from, and all about my bringing up, and made me feel
quite pleasant. He is so nice and quiet and respectful, not
like most of you. I’m going to like him very much, as you
told me.”

“T don’t tell you so now.”

‘But you did say he was your great friend.”

“Well, he isn’t that now.”

“What, have you quarrelled ?”

“Yes.”

“Dear, dear ; how odd you gentlemen are!”

“Why, it isn’t a very odd thing for men to quarrel, is
it?”

“No, not in the public room. They're always quarrelling
there, over their drink and the bagatelle-board ; and Dick
has to turn them out. But gentlemen ought to know
better.”

“They don’t, you see, Patty.”

“But what did you quarrel about?”

“ Guess.”

“How can I guess? What was it about?”

“ About you.”

“About me!” she said, looking up from her one in
wonder. ‘“ How could you quarrel about me?”

“Well, I'll tell you ; he said I had no right to come here.
You won’t like him after that, will you Patty ?”

“T don’t know, I’m sure,” said Patty, going on with her
work, and looking troubled.

They sat still for some minutes. Evil thoughts crowded
into Tom’s head. He was in the humour for thinking: evil
thoughts, and, putting the worst construction on Hardy’s
visits, fancied he came there as his rival. He did not trust
himself to speak till he had mastered his precious discovery,
and put it away in the back of his heart, and weighted it
down there with a good covering of hatred and revenge, to be
brought out as occasion should serve. He was plunging
down rapidly enough now; but he had new motives for
making the most of his time, and never played his cards
better or made more progress. When o man sits down to
such a game, the devil will take good care ho sha’n’t want
cunning or strength. It was ten o’clock instead of nine be-
fore he left, which he did with a feeling of triumph. Poor
Patty remained behind, and shut up the bar, while Dick was

N

aes
178 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

locking the front door, her heart in a fiutter, and her hands
shaking. She hardly knew whether to laugh or cry ; she felt
the change which had come over him, and was half fascinated
and half repelled by it.

Tom walked quickly back to college, in a mood which I
do not care to describe. Tho only one of his thoughts which
my readers need be troubled with, put itself into some such
words as these in his head :—“S8o, it’s Abingdon fair next
Thursday, and she has half-promised to go with me. I know
I can make it certain, Who'll be going besides? Drysdale,
Tl be bound. T’ll go and see him.”

On entering college he went straight to Drysdale’s rooms,
and drank deeply, and played high into the short hours of the
night, but found no opportunity of speaking.

Deeper and deeper yet for the next few days, downwards and
ever faster downwards he plunged, the light getting fainter and
ever fainter above his head. Little good can come of dwelling
on those days. He left off pulling, shunned his old friends, and
lived with the very worst men he knew in college, who wers
ready ‘enough to let him share all their brutal orgies.

Drysdale, who was often present, wondered at the change,
which he saw plainly enough. Ho was sorry for it in his
way, but it was no business of his. He began to think that
Brown was a good enough fellow before, but would make a
devilish disagreeable one if he was going to turn fast man.

At “The Choughs ” all went on as if the downward path
knew how to mako itself smooth. Now that the races wore
over, and so many other attractions going on in Oxford, vory
few men came in to interfere with him. He was scarccly ever
away from Patty’s side, in the evenings while her aunt was
absent, and gained more and more power over her. He might
have had some compassion, but that he was spurred on by
hearing how Hardy haunted the place now, at times when he
could not be there. He felt that there was an influence
struggling with his in the girl’s mind ; he laid it to Hardy’s
door, and imputed it still more and more to motives as base
as his own. But Abingdon fair was coming on Thursday.
When he left “The Choughs ” on Tuesday night, he had ex-
tracted a promise from Patty to accompany him thore, and
had arranged their place of meeting.

All that remained to be done was to see if Drysdale was
going. Somehow he felt a disinclination tu go alone with
Patty. Drysdale was the only man of those he was now
living with to whom he felt the least attraction. In a vague
way ho clung to him ; and though he never faced tho thought
of what he was about fairly, yet it passed through his mind
‘
THE STORM RAGES. 179

that even in Drysdale’s company he would be safer than if
alone. It was all pitiless, blind, wild work, without rudder
or compass ; the wish that nothing very bad might come out
of it all, however, came up in spite of him now and again,
and he looked to Drysdale, and longed to become even
as he.

Drysdale was going. He was very reserved on the subject,
but at Jast confessed that he was not going alone. Tom por-
sistod. Drysdale was too lazy and carcloss to keop anything
from a man who was bent on knowing it. In the ond, it was
arranged that’ he should drive Tom out the next afternoon.
He did so. ‘They stopped at a small public-houce some two
miles out of Oxford. The cart was put up, and after care-
fully scanning the neighbourhood they walked quickly to the
door of a pretty retired cottage. As they entered, Drysdale
said, ‘

“By Jove, I thought I caught a glimpse of your friend
Hardy at that turn.”

“Friend ! he’s no friend of mine.”

“But didn’t you seo him?”

“© No.”

They reached college again between ten and eleven, and
parted, each to his own rooms.

To his surprise, Tom found a candle burning on his table.
Round the candle was tied a piece of string, at the end of
which hung a note. Whoever had put it there had clearly
been anxious that he should in no case miss it when he came
in. He took it up, and saw that it was in Hardy’s hand.
He paused, and trembled as he stood. Then with an effort
he broke the seal and read—

“TI must speak once more. To-morrow it may be too late.
If you go to Abingdon fair with her in the company of
Drysdale and his mistress, or, I believe, in any company, you
will return a scoundrel, and she—; in the name of the honour
of your mother and sister, in the name of God, I warn you.
May He help you through it.—Joun Harpy.”

Here we will drop the curtain for the next hour. At the
end of that time, Tom staggered out of his room, down the
staircase, across the quadrangle, up Drysdale’s staircase. He
paused at the door to gather some strength, ran his hands
through his hair, and arranged his coat; notwithstanding,
when he entered, Drysdale started to his feet, upsetting Jack
from his comfortable coil on the sofa.

“Why, Brown, you're ill; have some brandy,” he said,
and went to his cupboard for the bottle.

n2
180 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

Tom leant his arm on the fireplace ; his head on it. The
other hand hung down by his side, and Jack licked it, and
he loved the dog as he felt the caress. Then Drysdale came
to his side with a glass of brandy, which he took and tossed
off as though it had been water. ‘“ Thank you,” he said, and
as Drysdale went back with the bottle, reached a large arm-
chair and sat himself down in it.

“Drysdale, I sha’n’t go with you to Abingdon fair to-
morrow.”

“ Hullo! what, has the lovely Patty thrown you over ?”
said Drysdale, turning from the cupboard, and resuming his
lounge on the sofa.

“No:”’ he sank back into the chair, on the arms of which
his elbows rested, and put his hands up before his face, pres-
sing them against his burning temples. Drysdale looked at
him hard, but said nothing ; and there was a dead silence
of a minute or so, broken only by Tom’s heavy breathing,
which he was labouring in vain to control.

“No,” he repeated at last, and the remaining words came
out slowly as they were trying to steady themselves, “ but,
by God, Drysdale I can’t take her with you, and that—” a
dead pause.

“The young lady you met to-night, eh?”

Tom nodded, but said nothing.

“ Well, old fellow,” said Drysdale, “now you’ve made up
your mind, I tell you, I’m devilish glad of it. I’m no saint,
as you know, but I think it would have been ad——d shame
if you had taken her with us.”

“Thank you,” said ‘Tom, and pressed his fingers tighter on
his forehead ; and he did feel thankful for the words, though,
coming from such a man, they went into him like coals of
fire.

Again there was a long pause, Tom sitting as before.
Drysdale got up, and strolled up and down his room, with
his hands in the pockets of his silk-lined lounging coat,
taking at each turn a steady look at the other. Presently he
stopped, and took his cigar out of his mouth. “TI say,
Brown,” he said, after another minute’s contemplation of the
figure before him, which bore such an unmistakable impress
of wretchedness, that it made him quite uncomfortable, “ why
don’t you cut that concern?”

“How do you mean?” said Tom.

“Why that ‘Choughs’ business—I’'ll be hanged if it won’t
kill you, or make a devil of you before long, if you go on
with it.”

“It's not far from that now.”
THE STORM RAGES. 181

“So I see—and I'll tell you what, you're not the sort of
fellow to go in for this kind of thing. You'd better leave it
to cold-blooded brutes, like some we know—I needn’t men-
tion names.”

“Tm awfully wretched, Drysdale; I’ve been a brute my-
self to you and everybody of late.”

“Well, I own I don’t like the new side of you. Now
make up your mind to cut the whole concern, old fellow,” hoe
said, coming up goodnaturedly, and putting his hand on Tom’s
shoulder ; “it’s hard to do, I dare say, but you had better
make a plunge and get it over. There’s wickedness enough
going about without your helping to shove another one into
it.”

Tom groaned as he listened, but he felt that the man was
trying to help him in his own way, and according to his light,
as Drysdale went on expounding his own curious code of
morality. When it was ended, he shook Drysdale’s hand,
and, wishing him good night, went back to his own rooms.
The first step upwards towards the light had been made, for
he felt thoroughly humbled before the man on whom he had
expended in his own mind so much patronizing pity for the
last half-year—whom he had been fancying he was influencing
for good.

During the long hours of the night the scenes of the last
few hours, of the last few days, came back to him and burnt
into his soul. The gulf yawned before him now plain enough,
open at his feet—black, ghastly. He shuddered at it, won-
dered if he should even yet fall in, felt wildly about for
strength to stand firm, to retrace his steps ; but found it not
He found not yet the strength he was in search of, but in the
grey morning he wrote a short note :—

“T shall not be able to take you to Abingdon fair to-day.
You will not see me perhaps for some days. I am not well.
I am very sorry. Don’t think that Iam changed. Don’t be
unhappy, or I don't know what I may do.” There was no
address and no signature to the note.

When the gates opened he hurried out of the college, and,
having left it and a shilling ‘with Dick (whom he found
clearing the yard, and much astonished at his appearance, and
who promised to deliver it to Patty with his own hands
before eight o’clock), he got back again to his own rooms,
went to bed, worn out in mind and body, and slept till mid-
day.
182 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

CHAPTER XVII
NEW GROUND.

My readers have now been steadily at Oxford for six months
without moving. Most people find such a spell of the placo
without a change quite as much as they care to take ; perhaps
too, it may do our hero good to let him alone for a little, that
he may have time to look steadily into the pit which he has
been so near falling down, which is still yawning awkwardly
in his path ; moreover, the exigencies of a story-teller must
lead him away from home now and then. Like the rest of
us, his family must have change of air, or he has to go off to
see a friend properly married, or a connexion buried ; to wear
white or black gloves with or for some one, carrying such
sympathy as he can with him, that so he may come back
from every journey, however short, with a wider horizon.
Yes ; to come back home after every stage of life’s journeying
with a wider horizon—more in sympathy with men and
nature, knowing ever more of the righteous and eternal laws
which govern them, and of the rightcous and loving will
which is above all, and around all, and beneath all—this
must be the end and aim of all of us, or we shall be wandering
about blindfold, and spending time and labour and journey-
money on that which profiteth nothing. So now I must ask
my readers to forgot the old buildings and quadcangles cf the
fairost of England’s cities, tho caps and the gowns, the reading
and rowing, for a short space, and take a flight with me to
other sceues and pastures new.

The nights are pleasant in May, short and pleasant for
travel, We will leave the ancient city asleep, and do our
flight in the night to save time. Trust yourselves, then, to
the story-teller’s aérial machine. It is but a rough affair, I
own, rough and humble, unfitted for high or great flights, with
no gilded panels, or dainty cushions, or C-springs—not that
we shall care about springs, by the way, until we alight on
terra firma again—still, thera is much to be learned in a
third-class carriage if we will only not look while in it for
cushions, and fine panels, and forty miles an hour travelling,
and will not be shocked at our fellow-passengers for being
weak in their h’s and smelling of fustian. Mount in it, then,
you who will, after this warning ; the fares are holiday fares,
the tickets return tickets. Take with you nothing but the
poet’s luggage,

5 ‘* A smile for Hope, a tear for Pain,
A breath to swell the voice of Prayer,”
NEW GROUND. 183

and may you have a pleasant journey, for it is time that the
stoker should be looking to his going gear !

So now we rise slowly in the moonlight from St. Ambrose’s
quadrangle, and, when we are clear of the clock-tower, steer
away southwards, over Oxford city and all its sleeping wisdom
and folly, over street and past spire, over Christ Church and
the canons’ houses, and the fountain in Tom quad ; over St.
Aldate’s and the river, along which tho moonbeams lie in a
pathway of twinkling silvor, ovor the railway shods—no,
there was then no railway, but only the quiet fields and foot-
paths of Hincksey hamlet. Well, no matter; at any rate,
the hills beyond, and Bagley Wood, were there then as now:
and over hills and wood we rise, catching the purr of the
night-jar, the trill of the nightingale, and the first crow of
the earliest cock-pheasant, as he stretches his jewelled wings,
conscious of his strength and his beauty, heedless of the
fellows of St. John’s, who slumber within sight of his perch,
on whose hospitable board he shall one day lie, prone on his
back, with fair larded breast turned upwards for the carving
knife, having crowed his last crow. Ho knows it not; what
matters it to him? If he knew it, could a Bagley Wood
cock-pheasant desire a better ending ?

‘We pass over the vale beyond; hall and hamlet, church,
and meadow, and copse, folded in mist and shadow below us,
each hamlet holding in its bosom the materials of three-
volumed novels by the dozen, if we could only pull off the
roofs of tho houses and look steadily into the interiors ; but
our destination is forther yot. ‘The fuint white stroak behind
the distant Chilterns reminds us that we have no time for
gossip by the way ; May nights are short, and the sun will
be up by four. No matter; our journey will now be soon
over, for the broad vale is crossed, and the chalk hills and
downs beyond. Larks quiver up by us, “ higher, ever higher,”
hastening up to get a first glimpse of the coming monarch,
careless of food, flooding the fresh air with song. Steady
plodding rooks labour along below us, and lively starlings
tush by on the look-out for the early worm ; lark and swallow,
rook and starling, each on his appointed round. The sun
arises, and they get them to it; he is up now, and these
breezy uplands over which we hang are swimming in the
light of horizontal rays, though the shadows and mists still
lia on the wooded dells which slope away southwards.

Here let us bring to, over the village of Englebourn, and
try to get acquainted with the outside of the place before the
good folk are about, and we have to go down among them and
their sayings and doings.
184 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

The village lies on the southern slopes of the Berkshire
hills, on the opposite side to that under which our hero was
born. Another soil altogether is here, we remark in the first
place. This is no chalk, this high knoll which rises above—
one may almost say hangs over—the village, crowned with
Scotch firs, its sides tufted with gorse and heather. It is the
Hawk's Lynch, the favourite resort of Englebourn folk, who
come up for the view, for the air, because their fathers and
mothers came up before them, because they came up them-
selves as children—from an instinct which moves them all in
leisure hours and Sunday evenings, when the sun shines and
the birds sing, whether they care for view or air or not.
Something guides all their feet hitherward ; the children, to
play hide-and-seek and look for nests in the gorse-bushes ;
young men and maidens, to saunter and look and talk, as they
will till the world’s end—or as long, at any rate, as the
Hawk's Lynch and Englebourn last—and to cut their initials,
inclosed in a true lover’s knot, on the short rabbit’s turf ;
steady married couples, to plod along together consulting on
hard times and growing families ; even old tottering men,
who love to sit at the feet of the firs, with chins leaning on
their sticks, prattling of days long past, to any one who will
listen, or looking silently with dim eyes into the summer air,
feeling perhaps in their spirits after a wider and more peace-
fal view which will soon open for them. A common knoll,
open to all, up in the silent air, well away from every-day
Englebourn life, with the Hampshire range and the distant
Beacon Hill lying soft on the horizon, and nothing higher
between you and the southern sea, what a blessing the
Hawk’s Lynch is to the village folk, one and all! May
Heaven and a thankless soil long preserve it and them from
an inclosure under the Act!

4. There is much temptation lying about, though, for the
inclosers of the world. The rough common land stretches
over the whole of the knoll, and down to its base, and away
along the hills behind, of which the Hawk’s Lynch is an
outlying spur. Rough common land, broken only by pine
woods of a few acres each in extent, an occasional woodman’s
or squatter’s cottage and little patch of attempted garden.
But immediately below, and.on each flank of the spur, and
half-way up the slopes, come small farm inclosuree, breaking
here and there the belt of woodlands, which generally lies
between the rough wild upland, and the cultivated country

‘ below. As you stand on the knoll you can see the common
land just below you at its foot narrow into a mere road, with
a border of waste on each side, which runs into Englebourn
NEW GROUND. 185

street, ‘At the end of the straggling village stands the church
with its square tower, a lofty grey stone building, with bits of
fine decorated architecture about it, but much of churchwarden
Gothic supervening. The churchyard is large, and the graves,
as you can gee plainly even from this distance, are all crowded
on the southern side. The rector’s sheep are feeding in the
northern part, nearest to us, and a small gate at one corner
opens into his garden. The Rectory looks large and comfort-
able, and its grounds well cared for and extensive, with a
rookery of elms at the lawn’s end. It is the chief house of
the place, for there is no resident squire. .The principal
street contains a few shops, some dozen, perhaps, in all; and
several farm houses lie a little back from it, with garden in
- front, and yards and barns and orchards behind; and there
are two public-houses. The other dwellings are mere cottages,
and very bad ones for the most part, with floors below the
level of the street. Almost every house in the village is
thatched, which adds to the beauty though not to the comfort
of the place. The rest of the population who do not live in
the street are dotted about the neighbouring lanes, chiefly
towards the west, on our right as we look down from the
Hawk’s Lynch. On this side the country is more open, and
here most of the farmers live, as we may see by the number
of homesteads. And there is a small brook on that side too,
which with careful damming is made to turn a mill, there
where you see the clump of poplars. On our left as we look
down, the country to the east of the village is thickly wooded ;
but we can see that there is a village green on that side, and
a few scattered cottages, the farthest of which stands looking
out like a little white eye, from the end of a dense copse.
Beyond it there is no sign of habitation for some two miles ;
then you can see the tall chimneys of a great house, and a
well-timbered park round it. The Grange is not in Engle-
bourn parish—happily for that parish, one is sorry to remark.
It must be a very bad squire who does not do more good
than harm by living in a country village. But there are very
bad squires, and the owner of the Grange is one of them.
He is, however, for the most part, an absentee, so that we are
little concerned with him, and in fact, have only to notice
this one of his bad habits, that he keeps that long belt of
woodlands, which runs into Englebourn parish, and comes
almost up to the village, full of hares and pheasants. He
has only succeeded to the property some three or four years,
and yet the head of game on the estate, and above all in the
woods, has trebled or quadrupled. Pheasants by hundreds
are reared under hens, from eggs bought in Londca, and run,
186 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

about the keepers’ houses as tame as barn-door fowls all the
‘summer. When the first party comes down for the first
battue early in October, it is often as much as the beaters can
do to persuade these pampered fowls that they are wild game,
whose duty it is to get up, and fly away, and be shot at.
Howover, they soon learn more of the world—such of them,
at least, as are not slain—and are unmistakable wild birds
in a few days. Then they take to roosting farther from their
old haunts, more in the outskirts of the woods, and the time
comes for others besides the squire’s’ guests io take their
education in hand, and teach pheasants at least that they are
no native British birds. These are a wild set, living scattered
about the wild country ; turf-cutters, broom-makers, squatters,
with, indefinite occupations and nameless habits, a race hated
of keepers and constables. These have increased and flou-
rished of late years ; and, notwithstanding the imprisonments
and transportations which deprive them periodically of the
most enterprising members of their community, one and all
give thanks for the day when the owner of the Grange took
to pheasant breeding. If the demoralization stopped with
them, little harm might come of it, as they would steal fowls
in the homesteads if there were no pheasants in the woods—
which latter are less dangerous to get, and worth more when
gotten. But, unhappily, this method of earning a livelihood
has strong attractions, and is catching ; and the cases of farm
labourers who get into trouble about game are more frequent
season by season in the neighhouring parishes, and Engle-
bourn is no better than the rest. And the men are not likely
to be much discouraged from these practices, or taught better
by the farmers ; for, if there is one thing more than another
that drives that sturdy set of men, the Englebourn yeomen,
into a frenzy, it is talk of the game in the Grange covers.
Not that they dislike sport ; they like it too well, and, more-
over, have been used to their fair share of it. For the late
squire left the game entirely in their hands. “You know
best how much game your land will carry without serious
damage to the crops,” he used to say. “TI like to show my
friends a fair day’s sport when they are with me, and to have
enough gamo to supply tho houso and mako o few presents,
Beyond that it is no affair of mine, You can course whenever
you like ; and let me know when you want a day's shooting,
and you shall have it.” Under this system the yeomen
became keen sportsmen ; they and all their labourers took an
interest in preserving, and the whole district would have
tisen on a poacher. The keeper’s place became a sinecure,
and the squire had as much game as he wanted without
NEW GROUND. 187

‘expense, and was, moreover, the most popular mah in the

‘county. Even after the new man came, and all was changed,

the mere revocation of their sporting liberties, and the increase
of game, unpopular as these things were, would not alone
have made the farmers so bitter, and have raised that sense
of outraged justice in them. But with these changes came in
a custom new in the country—the custom of selling the game.
At first the report was not bolicved ; but soon ik bocamo
notorious that no head of game from the Grange estates was
ever given away, that not only did the tenants never get
a brace of birds or a haro, or tho labourers a rabbit, but not
one of the gentlemen who helped to kill the game ever found
any of the bag in his dog-cart after the day’s shooting. Nay,
so shameless had the system become, and so highly was the
art of turning the game to account cultivated at the Grange,
that the keepers sold powder and shot to any of the guests
who had emptied their own belts or flasks at something over
the market retail price. The light cart drove to the market-
town twice a week in the season, loaded heavily with game, but
more hoavily with the hatred and scorn of the farmers ; and, if
deop and bitter curses could break patent axles or necks, the
new squire and his game-cart would not long have vexed the
country-side. As it was, not a man but his own tenants
would salute him in the market-place; and these repaid
themselves for the unwilling courtesy by bitter reflections on
a squire who was mean enough to pay his butcher’s and
poulterer’s bill out of their pockets.

Alas, that the manly instinct of sport which is so strong in
all of us Englishmen—which sends Oswell’s single-handed
against the mightiest beasts that walk the earth, and takes
the poor cockney journeyman out a ten miles’ walk almost
Wefore daylight on the rare summer holiday mornings, to
angle with rude tackle in reservoir or canal—should be
dragged through such mire as this in many an English shire
in our day. If English landlords want to go on shooting
game much longer, they must give up selling it. For if
selling game becomes the rule, and not the exception (as it
seems likely to do before long), good-bye to sport in England.
Every man who loves his country more than his pleasures or
his pocket—and, thank God, that includes the great majority
of us yet, however much we may delight iu gun and rod, }<5
any demagogue in the land say what he pleases—will cry,
“ Down with it,” and losd a hand. to put it down for ever.

But, to return to our perch on the Hawk’s Lynch above
Englebourn village. The rector is the fourth of his race who
helds the family living—a kihd, easy-going, gentlemanly old
188 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

man, a Doctor of Divinity, as becomes his position, though
he only went into orders because there was the living ready
for him. In his day he had been a good magistrate and
neighbour, living with and much in the same way as, the
squires round about. But his contemporaries had dropped
off one by one; his own health had long been failing; his
wife was dead ; and the young generation did not seek him.
His work and the parish had no real hold on him ; so he had
nothing to fall back on, and had become a confirmed invalid,

‘ seldom leaving the house and garden, even to go to church,
and thinking more of his dinner and his health than of all
other things in earth or heaven.

The only child who remained at home with him was a
daughter, a girl of nineteen or thereabouts, whose acquaintance
we shall make presently, and who was doing all that a good
heart and sound head prompted in nursing an old hypochon-
driac, and filling his place in the parish. But though the old
man was weak and selfish, he was kind in his way, and ready
to give freely or to do anything which his daughter suggested
for the good of his people, provided the trouble were taken oft
his shoulders. In the year before our tale opens, he had
allowed some thirty acres of his glebe to be parcelled out in
allotments amongst the poor; and his daughter spent almost
what she pleased in clothing-clubs, and sick-clubs, and the
school, without a word from him. "Whenever he did remon-
strate, she managed to get what she wanted out of the house-
money, or her own allowance.

We must make acquaintance with such other of the inha-
bitants as it concerns us to know in the course of the story ;
for it is broad daylight, and the villagers will be astir directly.
Folk who go to bed before nine, after a hard day’s work, get
into the habit of turning out soon after the sun calls them,tSo
now, descending from the Hawk’s Lynch, we will alight at the
east end of Englebourn, opposite the little white cottage which
looks out at the end of the great wood, near the village green.

Soon after five on that bright Sunday morming, Harry
Winburn unbolted the door of his mother’s cottage, and
stepped out in his shirt-sleeves on to the little walk in front,
paved with pebbles. Perhaps some of my readere will recog-
nise the name of an old acquaintance, and wonder how he got
here ; so let us explain at once. Soon after our hero went to
school, Harry’s father had died of a fever. He had been a
journeyman blacksmith, and in the receipt, consequently, o1
rather better wages than generally fall to the lot of the
peasantry, but not enough to leave much of a margin over
current expenditure, Moreover, the Winburns had always
, NEW GEOUND 189

been open-handed with whatever money they had ; so that all he
left for his widow and child, of worldly goods, was their “few
sticks” of furniture, £5 in the savings’ bank, and the money
from his burial-club, which was not more than enough to give
him a creditable funeral—that object of honourable ambition
to all the independent poor. He left, however, another in-
heritance to them, which is in price above rubies, neither shall
silver be named in comparison thereof,—the inheritance of
an honest name, of which his widow was proud, and which
was not likely to suffer in her hands.

After the funeral, she removed to Englebourn, her own
native village, and kept her old father’s house till his death.
He was one of the woodmen to the Grange, and lived in the
cottage at:the corner of the wood in which his work lay.
When he, too, died, hard times came on Widow Winburn.
The steward allowed her to keep on the cottage. The rent
was a sore burthen to her, but she would sooner have starved
than leave it. Parish relief was out of the question for her
father’s child and her husband’s widow ; so she turned her
hand to every odd job which offered, and went to work in the
fields when nothing else could be had. Whenever there was
sickness in the place, she was an untiring nurse ; and, at one
time, for some nine months, she took the office of postman,
and walked daily some nine miles through a severe winter.
The fatigue and exposure had broken down her health, and
made her an old woman before her time. At lest, in a lucky
hour, the Doctor came to hear of her praiseworthy struggles,
and gave her the Rectory washing, which had made her life
a comparatively easy one again.

During all this time her poor neighbours had stood by her
as the poor do stand by one another, helping her in number-
less.small ways, so that she had been able to realize the great
objéct of her life, and keep Harry at school till he was nearly
fourteen. By this time he had learned all that the village
pedagogue could teach, and had in fact become an object of
mingled pride and jealousy to-that worthy man, who had his
misgivings Jest: Harry’s fame as a scholar should eclipse his
own before many years were over.

Mrs. Winburn’s character was so good, that no sooner was
her son ready for a place than a place was ready for him ; he
stepped at once into the dignity of carter’s boy, and his
earnings, when added to his mother’s, made them comfortable
enough. Of course she was wrapped up in him, and believed
that there was no such boy in the parish. And indeed she
was nearer the truth than most mothers, for he soon grew into
a famons specimen of a countryman ; tall and lithe, full of
190 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

nervous strength, and not yet bowed down or stiffened by the
constant toil of a labourer’s daily tife. In these matters, how-
ever, he had rivals in the village; but in intellectual accom-
plishments he was unrivalled. He was full of learning
according to the village standard, could write and cipher well,
was fond of reading such books as came in his way, and
spoke his native English almost without an accent. He is
one-and-twenty at the time when our story takes him up, a
thoroughly skilled labourer, the best hedger and ditcher in
the parish ; and, when his blood is up, he can shear twenty
sheep in a day, without razing the skin, or mow for sixteen
hours at a stretch, with rests of half an hour for meals twice
in the day.

Harry shaded his eyes with his hand for a minute, as he
stood outside the cottage drinking in the fresh pure air, laden
with the scent of the honeysuckle which he had trained over
the porch, and listening to the chorus of linncts and finches
from the copse at the back of the house ; and then set about
the household duties, which he always made it a point of
honour to attend to himself on Sundays. First he unshuttered
the little lattice-window of the room on the ground-floor; a
simple operation enough, for the shutter was a mere wooden
flap, which was closed over the window at night, and bolted
with a wooden bolt on the outside, and thrown back against the
wall in the daytime. Any one who would could have opened
it at any moment of the night ; but the poor sleep sound
without bolts. Then he took the one old bucket of the esta-
blishment, and strode away to tho well on the village green,
and filled it with clear cold water, doing tho game kind office
for the vessels of two or three rosy little damsels and boys, of
ages varying from ten to fourteen, who were already astir, and
to whom the winding-up of the parish chain and bucket would
_ have been a work of difficulty. Returning to the cottage, ‘he

proceeded to fill his mother’s kettle, sweep the hearth, strike
a light, and make up the fire with a faggot from the little
stack in the corner of the garden. Then he hauled the three-
legged round table before the fire, and dusted it carefully
over, and laid out the black japan tea-tray with two dolf cups
and saucers of gorgeous pattern, and diminutive plates to
match, and placed the sugar and slop basins, the big loaf and
small piece of salt butter, in their accustomed places, and the
little black teapot on the hob to get properly warm. There
was little more to be done indoors, for the furniture was scanty
enough ; but everything in turn received its fair share of
attention, and the little room, with its sunken tiled floor and
yellow-washed walls, looked cheerful and homely. Then

\
\
ENGLEBOURN VILLAGE. 191

Harry turned his attention to the shed of his own contriving,
which stood beside the faggot-stack, and from which expostu-
latory and plaintive grunts had been issuing ever since his first
appearance at the door, telling of a faithful and useful friend
who was sharp set on Sunday mornings, and desired his poor
breakfast, and to be dismissed for the day to pick up the rest
of his livelihood with his brethren porkers of the village on
the green and in the lanes. Harry served out to the porker
the poor mess which the wash of the cottage and the odds
and ends of the little garden afforded ; which that virtuous
animal forthwith began to discuss with both fore-feet in the
trough—by way, probably, of adding to the flavour—while his
master scratched him gently between the ears and on the back
with a short stick till the repast was concluded. Then he
opened the door of the stye, and the grateful animal rushed
out into the lane, and away to the green with a joyful squeal
and flirt of his hind-quarters in the air; and Harry, after
picking a bunch of wall-flowers, and pansies, and hyacinths,
a line of which flowers skirted the narrow garden walk, and
putting them in a long-nockod glass which ho took from
the mantel-piece, proceeded to his morning ablutions, ample
materials for which remained at the bottom of the family
bucket, which he had put down on a little bench by the side
of the porch. These finished, he retired indoors to shave and
dress himself.

CHAPTER XVIII.
ENGLEBOURN VILLAGE.

Dams Winsve_n was not Jong after her son, and they sat down
together to breakfast in their best Sunday clothes—she, in plain
large white cap, which covered all but a line of grey hair,
a black stuff gown reaching to neck and wrists, and small
silk neckerchief put on like a shawl; a thin, almost gaunt
old woman, whom the years had not used tenderly, and who
showed marks of their usage—but a resolute, high-couraged
soul, who had met hard times in the face, and could meet
them again if need were. She spoke in broad Berkshire, and
was otherwise a homely body, but self-possessed and without
a shade of real vulgarity in hor composition.

The widow looked with some anxiety at Harry as he took
his seat. Although something of a rustic dandy, of late he
had not been so careful in the matter of dress as usual ; but,
in consequence of her reproaches, on this Sunday there was
192 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD. "

nothing to complain of. His black velveteen shooting-coat
and cotton plush waistcoat, his brown corduroy knee-breeches
and gaiters, sat on him well, and gave the world assurance of
a well-to-do man, for few of the Englebourn labourers rose
‘above smock-frocks and fustian trousers. He wore a blue
oird’s-eye handkerchief round his neck, and his shirt, though
coarse in texture, was as white as the sun and the best
caundress in Englebourn could manage to bleach it. There
was nothing to find fault with in his dress therefore, but still
his mother did not feel quite comfortable as she took stealthy
glances at him. Harry was naturally rather a reserved fellow,
and did not make much conversation himself, and his mother
felt a little embarrassed on this particular morning.

It was not, therefore, until Dame Winburn had finished
her first slice of bread and butter, and had sipped the greater
part of her second dish of tea out of her saucer, that she
broke silence. °

“T minded thy business last night, Harry, when I wur up
at the Rectory about the washin’, It’s my belief as thou'lt get
tothnr’lotment next quarter-day. The Doctor spoke very kind
about it, and said as how he heer’d as high a character o’ thee,
young as thee bist, as of are’ a man in the parish, and as how
he wur set on lettin’ the lots to thaay as’d do best by ’em ;
only he said as the farmers went agin givin’ more nor an
acre to any man as worked for them, and the Doctor, you see,
he don’t like to go altogether agin the vestry folk.”

“What business is it o’ theirs,” said Harry, “so long as
they get their own work done? There’s scarce one on ’em as
hasn’t more land already nor he can keep as should be, and
for all that they want to snap up every bit as falls vacant, so
as no poor man shall get it.”

“*Tis mostly so with them as has,” said his mother, with a
half-puzzled look ; “Scriptur says as to them shall be given,
and they shall have more abundant.” Dame Winburn spoke
hesitatingly, and looked doubtfully at Harry, as a person who
has shot with a strange gun, and knows not what effect the
bolt may have. Harry was brought up all standing by this
unexpected quotation of his mother’s; but, after thinking
for a few moments while he cut himself a slice of bread,
replied :—

“Tt don’t say as those shall have more that can’t use what
they’ve got already. “Tis a deal more like Naboth’s vineyard
for aught as I can see. But ’tis little odds to me which way
it goes.”

“How canst talk so, Harry?” said his mother, reproach-
fully ; “thou know’st thou wast set on it last fall, like a
ENGLEBOURN VILLAGE. 193

wapse on sugar. Why, scarce a day past but thou wast up to
the Rectory, to see the Doctor about it ; and now thou’rt like
to get th’ lotment thou’lt not go anyst ’un.”

Harry looked out at the open door, without answering. It
was quite true that, in the last autumn, he had been very
anxious to get as large an allotment as he could into his own
hands, and that he had been for ever up towards the Rectory,
but perhaps not always on the allotment business. JLo was
naturally a self-reliant, shrewd fellow, and felt that if he
could put his hand on three or four acres of land, he could
soon make himself independent of the farmers. He knew
that at harvest-times, and whenever there was a pinch for
good labourers, they would be glad enough to have him;
while at other times, with a few acres of his own, he would
be his own master, and could do much better for himself. So
he had put his name down first on the Doctor's list, taken the
largest lot he could get, and worked it so well, that his crops,
amongst others, had been a sort of village-show last harvest-
time. Many of the neighbouring allotments stood out in sad
contrast to those of ILarry and the more cnorgelic of the
peasantry, and lay by the side of these latter, only half
worked and full of weeds, and the rent was never ready. It
was worse than useless to let matters go on thus, and the
question arose, what was to be done with the neglected lots.
Harry, and all the men like him, applied at once for them ;
and their eagerness to get them had roused some natural
jealousy amongst the farmers, who began to foresee that the
new system might shortly leave them with none but the worst
labourers. So the vestry had pressed on the Doctor, as Dame
Winburn said, not to let any man have more than an acre, or
an acre and a half ; and the well-meaning, easy-going, invalid
old man couldn’t make up his mind what to do. So here was
May come again, and the neglected lots were still in the
nominal occupation of the idlers. The Doctor got no rent,
and was annoyed at the partial failure of a scheme which he
had not indeed originated, but for which he had taken much
credit to himself. The negligent occupiers grumbled that
they were not allowed a drawback for manure, and that no
pigstyes were put up for them. ‘Twas allers understood so,”
they maintained, ‘and they’d never ha’ took to the lots but
for that.” Tho good men grumbled that it would be too late
now for them to do moro than clean the lots of weeds this
year. The farmers grumbled that it was always understood
no man should have more than one lot. The poor rector
had led his flock into a miry place with a vengeance. People
who cannot make up their minds breed trouble in other places

oO
194. TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

besides country villages. However quiet and out-of-the-way
the placo may be, there is always some quasi public topic which
‘ stands, to the rural Englishman, in the place of treaty, or
budget, or reform-bill. So the great allotment question, for
the time, was that which exercised the minds of the inha-
bitanis of Englebourn ; and until lately no ono had taken a
keener interest in it than larry Winburn. But that interest
had now much abated, and so Harry looked through the
cottage-door, instead of answering his mother.

“?Tis my belief as you med amost hev it for the axin’,”
Dame Winburn began again, when she found that he would
not re-open the subject himself. ‘The young missus said as
much to me herself last night. Ah! to be sure, things’d go
better if she had the guidin’ on ’em.”

“Tm not going after it any more, mother. We can keep
the bits o’ sticks here together without it while you be alive ;
and if anything was to happen to you, I don’t think I should
stay in these parts. But it don’t matter what becomes o’
me ; I can earn a livelihood anywhere.”

Dame Winburn paused a moment before answering, to
subdue her vexation, and then said, “How can ’eo let han-
kerin’ arter a lass take the heart out o’ thee so? Hold up thy
head, and act a bit measterful. The more thou makest o’
thyself, the more like thou art to win.”

“Did you hear aught of her, mother, last night?” replied
Harry, taking advantage of this ungracious opening to speak
of the subject which was uppermost in his mind.

“T heer’d she wur goin’ on well,” said his mother.

No likelihood of her comin’ home?”

“Not as I could make out. Why, she hevn’t been gone
not four months. Now, do ee’ pluck up a bit, Harry; and
be more like thyself.”

“Why, mother, P've not missed a day’s work since Christ-
mas ; so thero ain’t much to find fault with.”

“Nay, Harry, ’tisn’t thy work. Thou wert always good at
thy work, praise God. Thou’rt thy father’s own son for that.
But thou dostn’t keep about like, and take thy place wi’ the
lave on ‘em since Christmas, Thou look’st hagged at times,
and foll’ll sco’t, and tulk about thee afore long.”

“Lot ’em talk. I mind their talk no more than last year's
wind,” said Harry, abruptly.

“But thy old mother does,” she said, looking at him with
eyes full of pride and love ; and so Harry, who was a right good
son, began to inquire what it was which was specially weighing
on his mother’s mind, determined to do anything in reason to
re-place hor on the little harmless social pinnacle from which
ENGLEBOURN VILLAGE. 195

she was wont to look down on all the other mothers and sons
of the parish. He soon found out that her present grievance
arose from his having neglected his place as ringer of the
heavy bell in the village peal on the two preceding Sundays ;
and, as this post was in some sort the corresponding one to
stroke of the boat at Oxford, her anxiety was reasonable
enough. So Harry promised to go to ringing in good time that
~ morning, and then set about little odds and ends of jobs
till it would be time to start. Dame Winburn went to her
cooking and other household duties, which were pretty well
got under when her son took his hat and started for the
belfry. She stood at the door with a half-peeled potato in
one hand, shading her eyes with the other, as she watched
him striding along the raised footpath under the elms, when
the sound of light footsteps and pleasant voices coming up
from the other direction made her turn round and drop a
curtsey as the rector’s daughter and another young lady
stopped at her door.

“Good morning, Betty,” said the former ; “ here’s a bright
Sunday morning at last, isn’t it?”

“Tis indeed, miss ; but where hev’ee been to?”

“Oh, we've only been for a little walk before school-time.
This is my cousin, Betty. She hasn’t been at Englebourn
since she was quite a child; so I’ve been taking her to the
Hawk’s Lynch to see our view.”

“And you can’t think how I have enjoyed it,” said her
cousin ; “it is so still and beautiful.”

“ve heer’d say as there ain’t no such a place for thretty
mile round,” said Betty, proudly. ‘‘ But do’ee come in, tho’,
and sit'ee down a bit,” she added, bustling inside her door,
and beginning to rub down a chair with her apron; “’tis a
smart step for gentlefolk to walk afore church.” Betty’s
notions of the walking powers of gentlefolk were very
limited.

“No, thank you, we must be getting on,” said Miss Winter ;
“but how lovely your flowers are! Look, Mary, did you ever
see such double pansies? We've nothing like them at the
Rectory.”

“Do’ee take some,” said Betty, emerging again, and be-
ginning to pluck a handful of her finest flowers; “’tis all
our Harry’s doing ; he’s mazing partickler about secds.”

“Ifo scoms to mako ovorything thrivo, Botty. ‘Thero, that’s
plonty, thank you. Wo won't take many, for fear they should
fade before church is over.”

“Oh, dwont’ee be afeared, there’s plenty more; and you
be as welcom’ as the day.”

' 02
196 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

Betty never said a truer word ; she was one of the real
open-handed sort, who are found mostly amongst those who
have the least to give. They or any one else were welcome
to the best she had.

So the young ladies took the flowers, thanked her again,
and passed on towards the Sunday-school.

The rector’s daughter might have been a year or so older
than her companion: she looked more. Her position in the
village had been one of much anxiety, and she was fast getting
an old head on young shoulders. The other young lady was
a slip of a girl just coming out ; in fact, this was the first visit
which she had ever paid out of leading strings. She had lived
in a happy home, where she had always been trusted and
loved, and perhaps a thought too much petted.

There are some natures which attract petting; you can’t
help doing your best to spoil them in this way, and it is satis-
factory, therefore, to know (as the fact is) that they are just
the ones which cannot be so spoilt.

Miss Mary was one of these. ‘rustful, for she had never
been tricked ; fearless, for she had never been cowed; pure
and bright as the Englebourn brook at fifty yards from its
parent spring in the chalk, for she had a pure and bright
nature, and had come in contact as yet with nothing which
could soil or cast a shadow. What wonder that her life gave
forth light and music as it glided on, and that every one who
knew her was eager to have her with them, to warm them-
selves in the light and rejoice in the music !

Bosides all hor other attractions, or in consequence of them
for anything I know, she was one of the merriest young
women in the world, always ready to bubble over and break
out into clear laughter on the slightest provocation, And
provocation had not been wanting during the last two days
which she had spent with her cousin. As usual she had
brought sunshine with her, and the old Doctor had half-
forgotten his numerous complaints and grievances for the time.
So the cloud which generally hung over the house had been
partially lifted, and Mary, knowing and ‘suspecting nothing
of tho dark side of life at Englebourm Rectory, rallied her
cousin on her gravity, and lwughod till she cried at tho queer
ways and talk of the people about the place.

As soon as they were out of hearing of Dame Winbum,
Mary began—

ae Katie, I can’t say that you have mended your case
at all.”

“Surely you can’t deny that there is a great deal of
character in Betty’s face?” said Miss Winter.
ENGLEBOURN VILLAGE. 197

“Qh, plenty of character : all your people, as soon as they
begin to stiffen a little and get wrinkles, seem to be full of
character, and I enjoy it much more than beauty: but we
were talking about beauty, you know.”

“ Betty’s son is the handsomest young man in the parish,”
said Miss Winter ; “and I must say I don’t think you could
find a better-looking one anywhere.”

“Then I can’t have seen him.”

“Indeed you have ; I pointed him out to you at tho post-
office yesterday. )on’t you remember? he was waiting for a
letter.”

“Oh, yes! now I remember. Well, he was better than
most. But the faces of your young people in general are not
interesting—I don’t mean the children, but the young men
and women—and they are awkward and clownish in their
manners, without the quaintness of the elder generation, who
are the funniest old dears in the world.”

“They will all be quaint enough as they get older. You
must remember the sort of life they lead. ‘hey get their
notions very slowly, and they must have notions in their
heads before they can show them on their faces.”

“ Well, your Betty’s son looked as if he had a notion of
hanging himself yesterday.”

“Tt’s no laughing matter, Mary. I hear he is desperately
in love.”

“ Poor fellow! that makes a difference, of course. I hope
he won't carry out his notion. Who is it, do you know? Do
tell me all about it.”

“Our gardener’s daughter, I believe. Of course, I never
meddle with these matters; but one can’t help hearing the
servants’ gossip. I think it likely to be true, for he was
about our premises at all sorts of times until lately, and I
never see him now that she is away.”

“Js she pretty?” said Mary, who was getting interested.

“Yes, she is our belle. In fact, they are the two beauties
of the parish.”

“Fancy that cross-grained old Simon having a pretty
daughter. Oh, Katie, look here! who is this figure of fun?”

The figure of fun was a middle-aged man of small stature,
and very bandy-legged, dressed in a blue coat and brass but-
tons, and carrying a great bass-viol bigger than himself, in a
rough baize cover. He camo out of a footpath into tho road
just before them, and, on seeing them, touched his hat to Miss
Winter, and then fidgeted along with his load, and jerked his
head in a deprecatory manner away from them as ho walked
on, with the sort of look and action which a favourite terrier
198 TOM BROWN AT OXTORD.

uses when his master holds out a lighted cigar to his nose.
He was the village tailor and constable, also the principal
performer in the church-music which obtained in Englebourn.
Tn the latter capacity he had of late come into collision with
Miss Winter.

Vor this was another of tho questions which divided the
parigh—The great church-music question. From timo im-
memorial, at least ever since the gallery at the west end had
been built, the village psalmody had been in the hands of
the occupiers of that Protestant structure. In the middle of
the front row sat the musicians, three in number, who played
respectively a bass-viol, a fiddle, and a clarionet. On one
side of them were two or three young women, who sang treble
—shrill, ear-piercing treble—with a strong nasal Berkshire
drawl in it. On the other side of the musicians ‘sat the
blacksmith, the wheelwright, and other tradesmen of the place.
Tradesmen means in that part of the country what we mean
by artisan, and these were naturally allied with the labourers,
and consorted with them. So far as church-going was con-
cerned, thoy formed a sort of independent opposition, sitting
in tho gallery, instead of in the navo, whero the farmers and
the two or three principal shopkeepers—the great landed and
commercial interests—regularly sat and slept, and where the
two publicans occupied pews, but seldom made even the pre-
tence of worshipping.

The rest of the gallery was filled by the able-bodied male
peasantry. The old worn-out men generally sat below in tho
free seats; the women also, and some few boys. But the
hearts of these latter were in the gallery—a seat on the back
benches of which was a sign that they had indued the toga
virilis, and were thenceforth free from maternal and pastoral
tutelage in the matter of church-going. The gallery thus
constituted had gradually usurped the psalmody as their par-
ticular and special portion of the service : they left the clerk
and the school children, aided by such of the aristocracy
below as cared to join, to do the responses ; but, when singing
time came, they reigned supreme. The slate on which the
Psalms wore announced was hung out from before the contre
of tho gallery, and the clerk, leaving his place under the
reading desk, marched up there to give them out. Ho took
this method of preserving his constitutional connexion with
the singing, knowing that otherwise he could not have main-
tained the rightful position of his office in this matter. So
matters had stood until shortly before the time of our story.

The present curate, however, backed by Miss Winter, had
tricd a reform. He was a quiet man, with a wife and several
ENGLEBOURN VILLAGE. 199

children, and small means. He had served in the diocese
ever since he had been ordained, in 1 hum-drum sort of way,
going where he was sent for, and performing his routine
duties reasonably well, but without showing any great aptitude
for his work. He had little interest, and had almost given
up expecting promotion, which he certainly had done nothing
particular to merit. But there was one point on which he
was always ready to go ont of his way, and tnako a little
trouble, Ile was a good musician, and had formed choirs
at all his former curacies.

Soon after his arrival, therefore, he, in concert with Miss
Winter, had begun to train tho children in church-inusic. A
small organ, which had stood in a passago in the Rectory for
many years, had been repaired, and appeared first at the
schoolroom, and at length under the gallery of the church ;
and ib was announced one week to the party in possession,
that, on the next Sunday, the constituted authorities would
take the church-music into their own hands. Then arose a
strife, the end of which had nearly been to send the gallery
off, in a body, headed by the offended bass-viol, to the small
red-brick little Bethel at the other end of tho village. Fortu-
nately the curate had too much good sense to drive matters to
extremities, and so alienate the parish constable, and a large
part of his flock, though he had not tact or energy enough to
bring them round to his own views. So a compromise was come
to ; and the curate’s choir were allowed to chant the Psalms
and Canticles, which had always been read before, while the
gallery remained triumphant masters of the regular Psalms.

My readers will now understand why Miss Winter's salu-
tation to the musical constable was not so cordial as it was to
the other villagors whom they had come across previously.

Indeed, Miss Winter, though she acknowledged the con-
stable’s salutation, did not seem inclined to encourage him to
accompany them, and talk his mind out, although he was
going the same way with them ; and, instead of drawing him
out, as was her wont in such cases, went on talking herself to
her cousin.

The little man walked out in the road, evidently in trouble
of mind. He did not like to drop behind or go ahead without
some further remark from Miss Winter and yet could not
scrow up his courage to the point of opening tho convorsation
himself. So he ambled on alongside the footpath on which
they were walking, showing his discomfort by a twist of his
neck every few seconds, and perpetual shiftings of his bass-
viol, and hunching up of one shoulder.

The conversation of the young ladies under these circum-
200 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

stances was of course forced ; and Miss Mary, though infinitely
delighted at the meeting, soon began to pity their involuntary
companion. She was full of the sensitive instinct which the
best sort of women have to such a marvellous extent, and
which tells them at once and infallibly if any one in their
company has even a creased rose-leaf next their moral skin.

Betore they had walked a hundred yards she was inter-
ceding for the rebellious constable.

“ Katie,” she said softly, in French, “ do speak to him. The
poor man is frightfully uncomfortable.”

“Tt serves him right,” answered Miss Winter, in the same
language : “ you don’t know how impertinent he was the other
day to Mr. Walker. And he won't give way on the least
point, and leads the rest of the old singers, and makes them
as stubborn as himself.”

“But do look how he is winking and jerking his head at
you. You really mustn’t be so cruel to him, Katie. I shall
have to begin talking to him if you don’t.”

Thus urged, Miss Winter opened the conversation by asking
after his wife, and when she had ascertained “ that his missus
wur pretty middlin,” made some other common-place remark,
and relapsed into silence. By the help of Mary, however, a
sort of disjointed dialogue was kept up till they came to the
gate which led up to the school, into which the children
were trooping by twos and threes. Here the ladies turned
in, and were going up the walk, towards the school door,
when the constable summoned up courage to speak on’ the
matter which was troubling him, and, resting the bass-viol
carefully on his right foot, called out after them,

‘Oh, please marm! Miss Winter !”

“Well,” she said quietly, turning round, “what do you
wish to say ?”

“Why, please marm, I hopes as you don’t think I be any
ways unked ’bout this here quire-singin’ as they calls it—I’m
sartin you knows as there ain’t amost nothing I wouldn’t
do to please ee.”

“Well, you know how to do it very easily,” she said when
he paused. “I don’t ask you even to give up your music and
try to work with us, though I think you might have done
that. 1 only ask you to uso some psalins and tunes which
are fit to be used in a church.”

“To be sure us ool ‘Taint we as wants no new-fingled
tunes ; them as we sings be aal owld ones as ha’ been used in
our church ever since I can mind. But you only choose
thaay as you likes out o’ the book, and we be ready to kep to
thaay.”
ENGLEBOURN VILLAGE. 201

“JT think Mr. Walker made a selection for you some weeks
ago,” said Miss Winter; “did not he 1” :

“Fes, but ’tis narra mossel o’ use for we to try his ’goriums
and sich like. I hopes you wunt be offended wi’ me, miss,
for I be telling nought but truth.” He spoke louder as they
got nearer to the school door, and, as they were opening it,
shouted his last shot after them, “’Tis na good to try thaay
tunes 0’ his’n, miss. When us praisos God, us likes to praise
un joyful.”

“'Thoro, you hear that, Mary,” said Miss Winter. “ You'll
soon begin to see why I look grave. ‘There never was such a
hard parish to manage. Nobody will do what they ought.
I never can get them to do anything. Perhaps we may
manage to teach the children better, that’s my only comfort.”

“ But, Katie dear, what do the poor things sing? Psalms,
I hope.”

“Oh yes, but they choose all the odd ones on purpose, I
believe. Which class will you take ?”

And go the young ladies settled to their teaching, and the
children in her class all fell in love with Mary before church-
time.

The bass-viol proceeded to the church and did the usual
rehearsals, and gossipped with the sexton, to whom he con-
fided the fact ‘that the young missus was “ terrible vexed.”
The bells soon began to ring, and Widow Winburn’s heart
was glad as she listened to the full peal, and thought to herself
that it was her Harry who was making so much noise in the
world, and speaking to all the neighbourhood. Then the
‘peal ceased as church-time drew near, and the single bell
began, and the congregation camo flocking in from all sides.
The farmers, letting their wives and children enter, gathered
round the chief porch and compared notes in a ponderous
manner on crops and markets. ‘The labourers collected near
the door by which the gallery was reached. All the men
of the parish scemed to like standing about before church,
until they had seen the clergyman safely inside. He came
up with the school children and the young ladies, and in due
course the bell stopped and the service began. There was a
very good congregation still at Englebourn ; the adult genera-
tion had been bred up in times when every decent person in
the parish went to church, and the custom was still strong,
notwithstanding the rector’s bad example. He scarcely ever
came to church himself in the mornings, though his wheel-,
chair might be seen going up and down on the gravel before
his house or on the lawn on warm days, and this was one of
his daughter’s greatest troubles,
202 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

The little choir of children sang admirably, led by the
schoolmistress, and Miss Winter and the curate exchanged
approving glances. They performed the liveliest chant in
their collection, that the opposition might have no cause to
complain of their want of joyfulness. And in turn Miss
Winter was in hopes that, out of deference to her, the usual
rule of selection in the gallery might have been modified. It
was with no small annoyance, therefore, that, after the Litany
was over, and the tuning finished, she heard the clerk give
out that they would praise God by singing part of the ninety-
first Psalm. Mary, who was on the tiptoe of expectation as
to what was coming, saw the curate give a slight shrug with
his shoulders and lift of his eyebrows as he left the reading-
desk, and in another minute it became a painful effort for her
to keep from laughing as she slyly watched her cousin’s face ;
while the gallery sang with vigour worthy of any cause or
occasion—

‘¢ On the old lion He shall go,
The adder fell and long ;
On the young lion tread also,
With dragons stout and strong.”
The trebles took up the last line, and. repeated—
‘* With dragons stout and strong ;”

and then the whole strength of the gallery chorused again—
‘¢ With dra-gons stout and strong,”

and the bass-viol seemed to her to prolong the notes and to
gloat over them as he droned them out, looking triumphantly
at the distant curate. Mary was thankful to kneel down to
compose her face. Tho first trial was the severe one, and
she got through the second psalm much better; and by the
time Mr. Walker had plunged fairly into his sermon she was
a model of propriety and sedateness again. But it was to be
a Sunday of adventures. The sermon had scarcely begun
when there was a stir down by the door at the west end, and
people began to look round and whisper. Presently a man
came softly up and said something to the clerk ; the clerk
jumped up and whispered to the curaté, who paused for a
moment with a puzzled look, and, instead of finishing his
sentence, said in a loud voice, “ Farmer Groves’ house is on
fire |”

The curate probably anticipated the effect of his words ;
in a minute he was the only person left in the church except
the clerk and one or two very infirm old folk. He shut up
and pocketed his sermon, and followed his flock.

It proved luckily to be only Farmer Groves’ chimney and
not his house which was on fire, The farmhouse was only
ENGLEBOURN VILLAGE. 203

two fields from the village, and the congregation rushed across
there, Harry Winburn and two or three of the most active
young men and boys leading. As they entered the yard the
flames were rushing out of the chimney, and any moment the
thatch might take fire. Here was the real danger. <A ladder
had just been reared against the chimney, and, while a
frightened farm-girl and a carter-boy held it at the bottom,
a& man was going up it carrying a bucket of wator. It shook
with his weight, and tho top was slipping gradually along the
face of the chimnoy, and in another moment would rost against
nothing. Larry and his companions saw tho danger at a
glance, and shouted to the man to stand still till thoy could
get to the ladder. They rushed towards him with tho rush
which men can only make under strong excitement; but as
the foremost of them caught a spoke with one hand, and,
before he could steady it, the top slipped clear of the chimney,
and ladder, man, and bucket came heavily to the ground.

Then came a scene of bewildering confusion, as women and
children trooped into the yard—“ Who was it?” “Was he
dead?” “Tho firo was catching tho thatch.” “The stables
were on fire.” “ Who done it?”—all sorts of cries and all
sorts of acts except the right ones. Fortunately, two or three
of the men, with heads on their shoulders, soon organized a
line for handing buckets ; the flue was stopped below, and
Harry Winburn, standing nearly at the top of the ladder,
which was now safely planted, was deluging the thatch round
the chimney from the buckets handed up to him. Ina few
minutes he was able to pour water down tho chimney itself,
and soon afterwards the whole affair was at an end. The
farmer’s dinner was spoilt, but otherwise no damage had been
done, except to the clothes of the foremost men; and the
only accident was that first fall from the ladder.

The man had been carried out of the yard while the fire
was still burning ; so that it was hardly known who it was.
Now, in answer to their inquiries, it proved to bo old Simon,
the rector’s gardener and head man, who had seen the fire,
and sent the news to the church, while he himself went to the
spot, with such result as we have seen.

The surgeon had not yet seen him. Some declared he was
dead ; others, that he was sitting up at home, and quite well.
Little by little the crowd dispersed to Sunday’s dinners ; and,
when they met again before the afternoon’s service, it was
ascertained that Simon was certainly not dead, but all else
was still nothing more than rumour. Public opinion was
much divided, some holding that it would go hard with a
man of his age and heft ; but the common belief seemed to
204 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

be that he was of that sort “‘as’d take a deal o’ killin’,”
and that he would be none the worse for such a fall as
that.

The two young ladies had been much shocked at the acci-
dent, and had accompanied the hurdle on which old Simon
was carried to his cottage door ; after afternoon service they
went round by the cottage to inquire. The two girls knocked
at the door, which was opened by his wife, who dropped a
curtsey and smoothed down her Sunday apron when she found
who were her visitors.

She seemed at first a little unwilling to let them in; but
Miss Winter pressed so kindly to see her husband, and Mary
made such sympathizing eyes at her, that the old woman
gave in and conducted them through the front room into
that beyond, where the patient lay.

“‘T hope as you'll excuse it, miss, for I knows the place do
smell terrible bad of baccer; only my old man he said as
how—”

“Qh, never mind, we don’t care at all about the smell.
Poor Simon! I’m sure if it does him any good, or soothes
the pain, I shall be glad to buy him ‘some tobacco myself.”

The old man was lying on the bed with his coat and boots
off, and a worsted nightcap of his wife’s knitting pulled on
to his head. She had tried hard to get him to go to bed at
once, and take some physic, and his present costume and
position was the compromise. His back was turned to them
as they entered, and he was evidently in pain, for he drew his
breath heavily and with difficulty, and gave a sort of groan at
every respiration, Te did not seem to notice their entrance ;
so his wife touched him on the shoulder, and said, “Simon,
here’s the yourg ladies come to see how you be.”

Simon ‘turned himself round, and winced and groaned as
he pulled off his nightcap in token of respect.

“We didn’t like to go home without coming to see how
you were, Simon. Has the doctor been ?”

“Oh, yes, thank’ee, miss. He’ve a been and feel’d un all
over, and listened at the chest on un,” said his wife.

« And what did he say ?”

“Fle zem’d to zay as there wur no bwones bruk—ugh,
ugh,” put in Simon, who spoke his native tongue with a
buzz, imported from farther west, “but a couldn’t zay wether
or no there warn’t som infarnal injury—’

“ Etarnal, Simon, etarnal!” interrupted his wife ; “how
canst use such words afore the young ladies 7”

“| tell’ee wife, as ’twur infarnal—ugh, ugh,” retorted the
gardener.
ENGLEBOURN VILLAGE. 205

“Tnternal injury?” suggested Miss Winter. “I'm vory
sorry to hear it.”

“Zummut inside o’ me like, as wur got out 0” place,”
explained Simon; “and I thenks a must be near about the
mark, for I feels mortal bad here when I tries to move ;” and
he put his hand on his side. ‘ Hows’m’ever, as there’s no
bwones bruk, I hopes to be about to-morrow mornin’, please
tho Lord—ugh, ugh.”

“You mustn’t think of it, Simon,” said Miss Winter.
“You must be quite quict for a week, at least, till you get rid
of this pain.”

“So I tells un, Miss Winter,” put in the wife. “You
hear what the young missus says, Simon?”

“ And wut’s to happen to Tiny?” said the contumacious
Simon, scornfully. “ Her'll cast her calf, and me not by.
Her’s calving may be this minut. ‘iny’s time wur up, miss,
two days back, and her’s never no gurt while arter her time.”

“She will do very well, I dare say,” said Miss Winter.
“One of the men can look after her.”

The notion of any one else attending Tiny in her interest-
ing situation seemed to excite Simon beyond bearing, for he
yaised himself on one elbow, and was about to make a
demonstration with his other hand, when the pain scized him
again, and he sank back groaning.

“There, you see, Simon, you can’t move without pain.
You must be quiet till you have seen the doctor again.”

“There's the red spider out along the south wall—ugh,
ugh,” persisted Simon, without seeming to hear her ; “and
your new g’raniums a’most covered wi blight. I wur a tacklin’
one on ’em just afore you cum in.”

Following the direction indicated by his nod, the girls
became aware of a plant by his bed-side, which he had héen
fumigating, for his pipe was leaning against the flower-pot
in which it stood.

“ He wouldn’t lie still nohow, miss,” explained his wife,
“till I went and fetched un in a pipe and one o’ thaay plants
from the greenhouse.”

“Tt was very thoughtful of you, Simon,” said Miss Winter;
“you know how much I prize these new plants: but we
will manage them; and you mustn’t think of these things
now. You have had a wonderful escapo to-day for a man
of your age. I hope we shall find that thero is nothing
much the matter with you after a fow days, but you might
have been killed, you know. You ought to be very thankful
to God that you were not killed in that fall.”

“So I be, miss, werry thankful to un—ugh, ugh ;—and if
206 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

it plaase the Lord to spare my life till to-morrow mornin’,—
ugh, ugh,—we'll smoke them cussed insects,”

This last retort of the incorrigible Simon on her cousin’s
attempt, as the rector’s daughter, to improve the occasion, was
too much for Miss Mary, and she slipped out of tho room lest
sho should bring disgraco on horself by an oxplosion of laugh-
ter. She was joined by her cousin in another minute, and
the two walked together towards the Rectory.

_ “J hope you were not faint, dear, with that close room,
smelling of smoke ?”

“Oh dear, no ; to tell you the truth, I was only afraid of
laughing at your quaint old patient. What a rugged old dear
itis, I hope he isn’t much hurt.”

“T hope not, indeed ; for he is the most honest, faithful
old servant in the world, but so obstinate. He never will go
to church on Sunday mornings ; and, when I speak to him
about it, he says papa doesn’t go. Which is very wrong and
impertinent of him.”

 

CHAPTER XIX.
A PROMISE OF FAIRER WEATHER.

Att dwellers in and about London are, alas, too well ac-
quainted with that never-to-be-enough-hated change which
wo have to undergo once, ab least, in every spring. As euch
succooding winter wours away, the samo thing happens to us.

For somo time wo do not trust tho fair lengthening days,
and cannot believe that the dirty pair of sparrows who live
opposite our window are really making love and going to
build, notwithstanding all their twittering. But morning
after morning rises fresh and gentle ; there is no longer any
vice in the air; we drop our over-coats; we rejoice in the
green shoots which the privet hedge is making in the square
garden, and hail the returning tender-pointed leaves of the
plane-trees as friends ; we go out of our way to walk through
Covent Garden Market to see the ever-brightening show of
flowers from the happy country.

This state of things goes on sometimes for a few days only,
sometimes for weeks, till we make sure that we are safe for
this spring at any rate. Don’t we wish we may get it! Sooner
or later, but sure—sure as Christmas bills, or the income-tax,
or anything, if there be anything, surer than these—comes
the morning when we are suddenly conscious as soon as
we riso that there is something the matter. We do not fool
A PROMISE OF FAIRER WEATHER. 207

comfortable in our clothes ; nothing tastes quite as it should
at breakfast ; though the day looks bright enough, thero is a
fierce dusty taint about it as we look out through windows,
which no instinct now prompts us to throw open, as it has
done every day for the last month.

But it is only when we open our doors and issue into the
street, that the hateful reality comes right home to us. All
moisturo, and softness, and pleasantness has gone clean out of
tho air since last night; we scem to inhalo yards of horsehair
instead of satin ; our skins dry up; our eyes, and hair, and
whiskers, and clothes are soon filled with loathsome dust, and
our nostrils with the reek of the great city. We glance at the
weather-cock on the nearest steeple, and see that it points
N.E. And so long as the change lasts, we carry about with
us a feeling of anger and impatience as though we personally
were being ill-treated. We could have borne with it well
enough in November ; it would have been natural, and all in
the day's work in March; but now, when Rotten-row is
beginning to be crowded, when long lines of pleasure-vans are
leaving town on Monday mornings for Hampton Court or the
poor remains of dear Epping Forest, when the exhibitions are
open or about to open, when the religious public is up, or on
its way up, for May meetings, when the Thames is already
sending up faint warnings of what we may expect as soon as
his dirty old life’s blood shall have been thoroughly warmed
up, and the Ship, and Trafalgar, and Star and Garter are in
full swing at the antagonist poles of the cockney system, we
do feel that this blight which has come over us and everything
is an insult, and that while it lasts, as there is nobody who
can be made particularly responsible for it, we are justified in
going about in general disgust, and ready to quarrel with any-
body we may meet on the smallest pretext.

This sort of east-windy state is perhaps the best physical
analogy for that mental one in which our hero now found
himself. The real crisis was over; he had managed to pass
through the eye of the storm, and drift for the present at
least into the skirts of it, where he lay rolling under bare
poles, comparatively safe, but without any power as yet to get
the ship well in hand, and make her obey her helm. The
storm might break over him again at any minute, and would
find him almost as helpless as ever.

For he could not follow Drysdale’s advice at once, and
break off his visits to “The Choughs” altogethor. Io went
back again after a day or two, but only for short visits ; he
never stayed behind now after the other men left the bar, and
avoided interviews with Patty alone as diligently as he had
208 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

sought them before, She was puzzled at his change of man-
nor, and not being able to account for it, was piqued, and
ready to revenge herself and pay him out in the hundred little
ways which the least practised of her sex know how to employ
for the discipline of any of the inferior or trousered half of the
creation, If she had beon really in love with him, it would
have been a different matter ; but she was not. In the last six
weeks she had certainly often had visions of the pleasures of
being a lady and keeping servants, and riding in a carriage like
the squires’ and rectors’ wives and daughters about her home.
She had a liking, even a sentiment for him, which might very
well have grown into something dangerous before long ; but
as yet it was not more than skin deep. Of late, indeed, she
had been much more frightened than attracted by the conduct
of her admirer, and really felt it a relief, notwithstanding her
pique, when he retired into the elder brother sort of state.
But she would have been more than woman if she had not
resented the change ; and so very soon the pangs of jealousy
were added to his other troubles. Other men were beginning
to frequent “The Choughs” regularly. Drysdale, besides
dividing with Tom the prestige of being an original discoverer,
was by far the largest customer. St. Cloud came, and brought
Chanter with him, towhom Patty was actually civil, not because
she liked him at all, but because she saw that it made Tom
furious. Though he could not fix on any one man in particu-
lar, he felt that mankind in general were gaining on him. In
his better moments, indeed, he often wished that she would
take the matter into her own hands and throw him over for
good aud all; but keep away from the place altogether he
could not, and often, when he fancied himself on the point
of doing it, a pretty toss of her head or kind look of her
eyes would scatter all his good resolutions to the four
winds.

And so the days dragged on, and he dragged on through
them ; hot fits of conceit alternating in him with cold fits of
despondency and mawkishness and discontent with everything
and everybody, which were all the more intolerable from their
entire strangeness. Instead of seeing the bright side of all
things, ho scomed to be looking at creation through yollow
spectacles, and saw faults and blemishes in all his acquaintance
which had been till now invisible.

But the more he was inclined to depreciate all other men,
the more he felt that there was one to whom he had been
grossly unjust. And, as he recalled all that had passed, he
began to do justice to the man who had not flinched from
warning him and braving him, who he felt had been watching
A PROMISE OF FAIRER WEATHER. 209

over him, and trying to guide him straight, when he had lost
all power or will to keep straight himself.

From this time the dread increased on him lest any of the
other men should find out his quarrel with Hardy. Their
utter ignorance of it encouraged him in the hope that it might
all pass off like a bad dream. While it remained a matter
between them alone, he felt that all might come straight,
though ho could not think how. He began to loiter by tho
ontranco of the passago which lod to Hardy’s rooms ; somo-
times he would find something to say to his scout or bed-
maker which took him into the back regions outside Hardy’s
window, glancing at it sideways as he stood giving his orders.
There it was, wide open, generally—he hardly knew whether
he hoped to catch a glimpse of the owner, but he did hope
that Hardy might hear his voice. He watched: him in
chapel and hall furtively, but constantly, and was always
fancying what he was doing and thinking about. Was it as
painful an effort to Hardy, he wondered, as to him to go on
speaking, as if nothing had happened, when they met at the
boats, as they did now again almost daily (for Diogenes
was bent on training some of the torpids for next year), and
yet never to look one another in the face ; to live together as
usual during part of every day, and yet to feel all the time
that a great wall had risen between them, more hopelessly
dividing them for the time than thousands of miles of ocean
or continent 4

Amongst other distractions which Tom tried at this crisis
of his life, was reading. For three or four days running, he
really worked hard—very hard, if we were to reckon by the
number of hours he spent in his own rooms over his books
with his oak sported—hard, even though we should only réckon
by results. For, though scarcely an hour passed that he was
not balancing on the hind legs of his chair with a vacant look
in his eyes, and thinking of anything but Greek roots or Latin
constructions, yet on the whole he managed to get through
a good deal, and one evening, for the first time since his
quarre] with Hardy, felt a sensation of real comfort—it hardly
amounted to pleasure—as he closed his Sophocles some houre
or so after hall, having just finished the last of the Greek
plays which he meant to take in for his first examination.
He leaned back in his chair and sat for a few minutes, letting
his thoughts follow their own bent. They soon took to going
wrong, and he jumped up in fear lest he should be drifting
back into the black stormy sea, in the trough of which he |
had been labouring so lately, and which he felt ho was by
no means clear of yet. At first he caught up his cap and

P
210 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

gown as though he were going out. There was a wine party
at one of his acquaintance’s rooms; or he could go and smoke a
cigar in the pool room, or at any one of a dozen other places.
On second thoughts, however, he threw his academicals back
on to the sofa, and went to his book-caso. Tho reading had
paid so well that evening that ho resolved to go on with it.
Ife had no particular object in selecting one book more than
another, and so took down carelessly the first that came to hand.
It happened to be a volume of Plato, and opened of its
own accord in the “Apology.” He glanced at a few lines.
What a flood of memories they called up! This was almost the
last book he had read at school ; and teacher, and friends, and
lofty oak-shelved library stood out before him at once. Then
the blunders that he himself and others had made rushed
through his mind, and he almost burst into a laugh as he
wheeled his chair round to the window, and began reading
where he had opened, encouraging every thought of the old
times when he first read that marvellous defence, and throwing
himself back into them with all his might. And still, as he
read, forgotten words of wise comment, and strange thoughts
of wonder and longing, came back to him. The great truth
which he had been led to the brink of in those early days rose
in all its awe and all its attractiveness before him. He leant
back in his chair, and gave himself up to his thought; and
how strangely that thought bore on the struggle which had
been raging in him of late; how an answer seemed to be
trembling to come out of it to all tho crics, now defiant, now
plaintive, which had gone up out of his heart in this Lime of
trouble! Jor his thought was of that spirit, distinct from
himself, and yet communing with his inmost soul, always
dwelling in him, knowing him better than he knew himself,
never misleading him, always leading him to light and truth,
of which the old philosopher spoke. “The old heathen,
Socrates, did actually believe that—there can be no question
about it ;” he thought, “Has not the testimony of the best
men through these two thousand years borne witness that he
was right—that he did not believe a lie? That was what wo
ewere told. Surely I don’t mistake! Were we not told, too,
or did 1 dream it, that what was truo for him is truo for every
man—lor mot ‘That thero is a spirit dwelling in me, striving
with me, ready to lead me into all truth if I will submit to
his guidance ?
“Ay! submit, submit, there’s the rub! Give yourself up
to his guidance! Throw up the reins, and say you’ve made a

mess of it. Well, why not? Haven't I made a mess of it?
Am I fit to hold the reins?
A PROMISE OF FAIRER WEATHER. 211

“ Not I”—ho got up and began walking about his rooms—
“T give it up.”

“Give it up!” he went on presently ; “yes, but to whom?
Not to the demon, spirit, whatever it was, who took up his
abode in the old Athenian—at least, so he said, and so I
believe. No, no! Two thousand years and all that they have
seen have not passed over the world to leave us just where
he was left. Woe want no demons or spirits. And yet the
old heathen was guided right, and what can a man want
more? and who ever wanted guidance more than I now—
here—in this room—at this minute? I give up the reins;
who will take them?” And so there came on him one of
those seasons when a man’s thoughts cannot be followed in
words. A sense of awe came on him, and over him, and
wrapped him round; awe at a presence of which he was
becoming suddenly conscious, into which he seemed to have
wandered, and yet which he felt must have been there, around
him, in his own heart and soul, though he knew it not. Thero
was hope and longing in his heart mingling with tho fear of
that presenco, but withal tho old reckless and daring feoling
which he knew so well, still bubbling up untamed, untamable
it seemed to him.

The room stifled him now; so he threw on his cap and
gown, and hurried down into the quadrangle. It was very
quiet ; probably there were not a dozen men in college. Ho
walked across to the low dark entrance of the passage which.
led to Hardy’s rooms, and there paused. Was he there by
chance, or was he guided there? Yes, this was the right way
for him, he had no doubt now as to that ; down the dark
passage and into the room he knew so well—and what then?
He took a short turn or two before the entrance. How could
he be sure that Hardy was alone? And, if not, to go in
would be worse than useless. If he were alone, what should
he say? After all, must he go in there? was there no way
but that ?

The college clock struck a quarter to seven. It was his
usual time for “The Choughs;” the house would be quiet
now ; was there not one looking out for him there who would
be grieved if he did not come? After all, might not that be
his way, for this night at least? He might bring pleasure to
one human being by going there at once. That he know;
what else could he be sure of ?

At this moment he heard Hardy’s door open, and a voice
saying “Good night,” and the next Grey camo out of tho
passage, and was passing close to him.

“Join yourself to him.” The impulse camo so strongly

P2
212 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

into Tom’s mind this time, that it was like a voice speaking
to him. He yielded to it, and, stepping to Grey’s side, wished
him good evening. ‘The other returned his salute in his shy
way, and was hurrying on, but Tom kept by him.

“ Have you been reading with Hardy ?”

“Yes.”

“ How is he? I have not seen anything of him for some
time.”

“Oh, very well, I think,” said Grey, glancing sideways at
his questioner, and adding, after a moment, “I have wondered
rather not to see you there of late.” ;

“ Are you going to your school?” said Tom, breaking away
from the subject.

“Yes, and I am rather late; I must make haste on; good
night.”

“* Will you let me go with you to-night? It would be a
real kindness. Indeed,” he added, as he saw how embarrassing
his proposal was to Grey, “I will do whatever you tell me—
you don’t know how grateful I shall be to you. Do let me
go—just for to-night. Try me once.”

Grey hesitated, turned his head sharply once or twice as
they walked on together, and then said with something like
a sigh—

“T don’t know, I’m sure. Did you ever teach in a night-
school ?”

“No, but I have taught in the Sunday-school at home
sometimes. Indeed, I will do whatever you tell me.”

“Oh! but this is not at all like a Sunday-school. They
aro a very rough, wild lot.”

“The rougher the better,” said Tom ; “I shall know how
to manage them then.”

“ But you must not really be rough with them.”

“No, I won’t ; I didn’t mean that,” said Tom hastily, for
he saw his mistake at once. “I shall take it as a great favour,
if you will let me go with you to-night. You won’t repent
it, I’m sure.”

Grey did not seem at all sure of this, but saw no means of
getting rid of his companion, and so they walked on together
and turned down a long narrow court in the lowest part of
the town. At the doors of the houses, labouring men, mostly
Trish, lounged or stood about, smoking and talking to one
another, or to the women who leant out of the windows, or
passed to and fro on their various errands of business or
pleasure. A group of half-grown lads were playing at pitch-
farthing at the farther end, and all over the court were
scattered children of all ages, ragged and noisy little creatures
A PROMISE OF FAIRER WEATHER. 213

most of them, on whom paternal and maternal admonitions -
and cuffs were constantly being expended, and to all appear-
ances in vain.

At the sight of Grey a shout arose amongst the smaller
boys, of ‘‘ Here’s the teacher!” and they crowded round him
and Tom as they went up the court. Several of the men
gave him a half-surly half-respectful nod, as he passed along,
wishing them good evoning. ‘The rest merely starcd at him
and his companion. Thoy stopped at a door which Grey
opencd, and led the way into tho passage of an old tumble-
down cottage, on the ground floor of which were two low
rooms which served for the school-rooms.

A hard-featured, middle-aged woman, who kept the house,
was waiting, and said to Grey, “Mr. Jones told me to say,
sir, he would not be here to-night, as he has gota bad fever
case—so you was to take only the lower classes, sir, he said ;
and the policeman would be near to keep out tho big boys
if you wanted him. Shall I go and toll him to stop round,
sir?”

Grey looked embarrassed for a moment, and thon said, ‘ No,
never mind: you can go;” and then, turning to Tom, added,
“ Jones is the curate; he won't be here to-night ; and some
of the bigger boys are very noisy and troublesome, and only
come to make a noise. However, if they come we must do
our best.”

Meantime, the crowd of small ragged urchins had filled the
toom, and were swarming on to the benches and squabbling
for the copy-books which were laid out on the thin desks.
Grey set to work to get them into order, and soon tho
smallest were draughted off into the inner room with slates
and spelling-books, and the bigger ones, some dozen in
number, settled to their writing. Tom seconded him so
readily, and seemed so much at home, that Grey felt quite
relieved.

“You seem to get on capitally,” he said; “I will go into
the inner room to the little ones, and you stay and take these.
There are the class-books when they have done their copies,”
and so went off into the inner room and closed the door.

Tom set himself to work with a will, and as he bent over
one after another of tho pupils, and guided tho small grubby
hands which clutched the inky pons with cramped fingors, and.
went spluttering and blotching along tho lines of the copy-
books, felt the yellow scales dropping from his eyes, and more
warmth coming back into his heart than he had known there
for many a day.

All went on well inside, notwithstanding a few small out-
214 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

‘breaks between the scholars, but every now and then mud
was thrown against the window, and noises outside and in
the passage threatened some interruption. At last, when the
writing was finished, the copy-books cleared away, and the
class-books distributed, the door opened, and two or three big
boys of fifteen or sixteen lounged in, with their hands in their
pockets and their caps on. There was an insolent look about
them which set Tom’s back up at once ; however, he kept his
temper, made them take their caps off, and, as they said they
wanted to read with the rest, let them take their places on
the benches.

But now came the tug of war. He could not keep his eyes
on the whole lot at once, and, no sooner did he fix his attention
on the stammering reader for the time being and try to help
him, than anarchy broke out all round him. Small stones
and shot were thown about, and cries arose from the smaller
fry, “Please, sir, he’s been and poured some ink down my
back,” “ He’s stole my book, sir,” “ He’s gone and stuck a pin
in my leg.” ‘The evil-doers were so cunning that it was im-
possible to catch them ; but, as he was hastily turning in his
own mind what to do, a cry arose, and one of the benches
went suddenly over backwards on to the floor, carrying with
it its whole freight of boys, except two of the bigger ones,
who were the evident authors of the mishap.

Tom sprang at the one nearest him, seized him by the collar,
hauled him into the passage, and sent him out of the street-
door with a sound kick ; and then, rushing back, caught hold
of the second, who went down on his back and clung round
Tom’s legs, shouting for help to his remaining companion, and
struggling and swearing. It was all the work of a moment,
and now the door opened, and Grey appeared from the inner
room. ‘Tom left off hauling his prize towards the passage, and
felt and looked very foolish.

“This fellow, and another whom I have turned out, upset
that form with all the little boys on it,” he said, apolo-
getically.

“Tt’s a lie, ’twasn’t me,” roared the captive, to whom om
adiministored a sound box on the ear, while the small boys,
rubbing different parts of their bodies, chorused, “twas him,
teacher, "twas hii,” and heaped further charges of pinching,
pin-sticking, and other atrocities on him.

Grey astonished Tom by his firmness. “ Don’t strike him
again,” he said. ‘Now, go out at once, or I will send for
your father.” The fellow got up, and, after standing a
moment and considering his chance of successful resistance
to physical force in the person of Tom, and moral in that of
A PROMISE OF FAIRER WEATHER. 215

Grey, slunk out. “You must go too, Murphy,” went on Grey
to another of the intruders.

“Oh, your honour, let me bide. I'll be as quiet as a mouse,”
pleaded the Irish boy ; and Tom would have given in, but
Grey was unyielding.

“You were turned out last week, and Mr. Jones said you
were not to come back for a fortnight.”

“ Well, good night to your honour,” said Murphy, and took
himsolf off.

“The rest may stop,” said Grey. “You had botter take
the inner room now; I will stay here.”

“T am very sorry,” said Tom.

“You couldn't help it; no one can manage those two.
Murphy is quite different, but I should have spoiled him if I
had let him stay now.”

The remaining half-hour passed off quietly. Tom retired
into the inner room, and took up Grey’s lesson, which he had
been reading to the boys from a Jargo Biblo with pictures,
Out of consideration for their natural and acquired restloss-
ness, the little fellows, who were all between eight and cleven
years old, were only kept sitting at their pot-hooks and spelling
for the first half-hour or so, and then were allowed to crowd
round. the teacher, who read and talk to them, and showed
them the pictures. Tom found the Bible open at the story
of the prodigal son, and read it out to them as they clustered
round ‘his knees. Some of the outside ones fidgeted about a
little, but those close round him listened with ears, and eyes,
and bated breath ; and two little blue-eyed boys without shoes
—their ragged clothes concealed by long pinatores which their
widowed mother had put on clean to send them to school—
leaned against him and looked up in his face, and his heart
warmed to the touch and the look. ‘‘ Please, teacher,
read it again,” they said when he finished ; so he read it
again, and sighed when Grey came in and lighted a candle
(tor the room was getting dark) and said it was time for
prayers.

A few collects, and the Lord’s Prayer, in which all the
young voices joined, drowning for a minute the noises from
the court outside, finished the evening's schooling. The chil-
dren trooped out, and Grey went to speak to the woman who
kept tho house, ‘om, left to himself, felt strangoly happy,
and, for something to do, took the snuflers and commenced a
crusade against a large family of bugs, who, taking advantage
of the quiet, came cruising out of a crack in the otherwise
neatly papered wall. Some dozen had fallen on his spear
when Grey re-appeared, and was ineel:. horrified af the

 
216 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

Ho called the woman, and told her to have the hole cele
fumigated and mended.

“y thought we had killed them all long ago, ” he ‘said ;
“but the place is tumbling down.”

“Tt looks well enough,” said Tom. ‘

“ Yes, we have it kept as tidy as possible. It ought to be
at least a little better than what the children see at home.”
And so they left the school and court and walked up to
college.

“Where are you going?” Tom said, as they entered the
gate.

“To Hardy’s rooms ; will you come?”

“No, not to-night,” said Tom, “I know that you want to
be reading ; I should only interrupt.”

“ Well, good-night, then,” said Grey, and went on, leaving
Tom standing in the porch. On the way up from the school
he had almost made up his mind to go to Hardy’s rooms that
night, Ife longed, and yet feared to do so ; and, on the whole,
was not sorry for an excuse. Their first meeting must be
alone, and it would be a very embarrassing one, for him at
any rate. Grey, he hoped, would tell Hardy of his visit to
the school, and that would show that he was coming round,
and make the meeting easier. His talk with Grey, too, had
removed one great cause of uneasiness from his mind. It was
now quite clear that he had no suspicion of the quarrel, and,
if Hardy had not told him, no one else could know of it.

Altogether, he strolled into the quadrangle a happier and
sounder man than he had been since his first visit to “The
Choughs,” and looked up and answered with his old look and
voice when he heard his name called from one of the first-
floor windows.

The hailer was Drysdale, who was leaning out in lounging-
coat and velvet cap, and enjoying a cigar as usual, in the midst
‘of the flowers of his hanging garden.

“You’ve heard the good news, I suppose ?”

“No, what do you mean 1”

“Why, Blake has got the Latin verse.”

“Vlunaht Tm go glad.”

“Como up and have a weed.” ‘Tom ran up the staircaso
and into Drysdale’s rooms, and was leaning out of the window
at his side in another minute.

“ What does he get by it?” he said, “do you know?”

“No; some books bound in Russia, I dare say, with
the Oxford arms, and ‘Dominus illuminatio mea’ on the
back.

“No money 7”
A PROMISE OF FAIRER WEATHER. 217

“Not much—perhaps a ten’ner,” answered Drysdale, but
no end of xi8oc, I suppose.”

“Tt makes it look well for his first, don’t you think? But
I wish he had got some money for it. I often feel very
uncomfortable about that bill, don’t you?”

“Not I, what’s the good ? It’s nothing when you are
used to it. Besides, it don’t fall due for another six weeks.”

“ But if Blake can’t meet it thon?” said Tom.

“Well, it will be vacation, and I’ll trouble greasy Benjamin
to catch me then.”

“But you don’t mean to say you won't pay it?” said Tom
in horror.

“Pay it! You may trust Benjamin for that. He'll pull
round his little usuries somehow.”

“Only we have promised to pay on a certain day, you
know.”

“Ob, of course, that’s the form. That only means that he
can’t pinch us sooner.”

“Ido hope, though, Drysdale, that it will be paid on the
day,” said Tom, who could not quite swallow the notion of
forfeiting his word, even though it were only a promise to pay
to a scoundrel.

“All right. You've nothing to do with it, remember. He
won't bother you. Besides, you can plead infancy, if the
worst comes to the worst. There's such -a queer old bird
gone to your friend Hardy’s rooms.’

The mention of Hardy broke the disaatocable ‘train of
thought into which Tom was falling, and he listened eagerly
as Drysdale went on.

“Tt was about half an hour ago. I was looking out here,
and saw an old fellow come hobbling into quad on two sticks,
in a shady blue uniform coat and white trousers. The kind
of old boy you read abont in books, you know. Commodore
Trunnion, or Uncle Toby, or ono of that sort. Well, I
watched him backing and filing about tho quad, and trying
one staircase and another ; but there was nobody about. So
down I trotted, and went up to him for fun, and to see
" what he was after. It was as good as a play, if you could
have seen it. I was ass cnough to take off my cap and
make a low bow as I came up to him, and he pulled off
his uniform cap in return, and we stood there bowing to
one another. He was a thorough old gentleman, and I felt
rather foolish for fear he should sec that I expected a lark
when I came out. But I don’t think he had an idea of it,
and only set my capping him down to the wonderful good
manners of the college. So we got quite thick, and I piloted
218 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

him across to Hardy’s staircase in the back quad. I wanted
him to come up and quench, but he declined, with many
apologies. I’m sure he is a character.”

“He must be Hardy’s father,” said Tom.

“T shouldn’t wonder. But is his father in the navy?”

“Ho is a retired captain.”

“Then no doubt you're right. What shall wedo? Have
a hand at picquet. Some men will be here directly. Only
for love.”

Tom declined the proffered game, and went off soon after
to his own rooms, a happier man than he had been since his
first night at “The Choughs.”

 

CHAPTER XX.
TID RECONCILIATION,

Tom roso in the morning with a presentiment that all would
be over now before long, and, to make his presentiment come
true, resolved, before night, to go himself to Hardy and give in.
All he reserved to himself was the liberty to do it in the manner
which would be least painful to himself. He was greatly
annoyed, therefore, when Hardy did not appear at morning
chapel ; for he had fixed on the leaving chapel as the least un-
pleasant time in which to begin his confession, and was going
to catch Hardy then, and follow him to his rooms, All the
morning, too, in answer to his inquiries by his scout Wiggins,
Hardy’s scout replied that his master was out, or busy. He
did not come to the boats, he did not appear in hall ; so that,
after hall, when Tom went back to his own rooms, as he ‘did
at once, instead of sauntering out of college, or going to a
wine party, he was quite out of heart at his bad luck, and
began to be afraid that he would have to sleep on his unhealed
wound another night.

He sat down in an arm-chair, and fell to musing, and
thought how wonderfully his life had been changed in these
few short weeks. IIc could hardly get back across the gulf
which separated him from the self who had come back into
those rooms after Haster, full of anticipations of the pleasures
and delights of the coming summer term and vacation. To
his own surprise he didn’t seem much to regret the loss of his
chateaux en Espagne, and felt a sort of grim satisfaction in
their utter overthrow.

While occupied with these thoughts, he heard talking on
his stairs, accompanied by a strange lumbering tread. These
THE RECONCILIATION. 219

came nearer ; and at last stopped just outside his door, which
opened in another moment, and Wiggins announced—

“ Capting Hardy, sir.” ;

Tom jumped to his legs, and felt himself colour painfully.
“Here, Wiggins,” said he, “wheel round that arm-chair for
Captain Hardy. Iam so very glad to see you, sir,” and he
hastoned round himself to meet the old gentleman, holding
out his hand, which the visitor took very cordially, as soon as
he had passed his heavy stick to his left hand, and balanced
himeelf safely upon it.

“Thank you, sir; thank you,” said the old man after a few
moments’ pause, “I find your companion ladders rather
steep ;” and then he sat down with some difficulty.

Tom took the Captain’s stick and undress cap, and put
them reverentially on his sideboard ; and then, to get rid of
some little nervousness which he couldn’t help feeling, bustled
to his cupboard, and helped Wiggins to place glasses and
biscuits on the table. “Now, sir, what will you take? I
have port, sherry, and whiskey here, and can get you any-
thing else. Wiggins, run to Hinton’s and get some dessert.”

“No dessert, thank you, for me,” said the Captain; “Tl
take a cup of coffee, or a glass of grog, or anything you have
ready. Don’t open wine for me, pray, sir.”

“Oh, it is all the better for being opened,” said Tom,
working away at a bottle of sherry with his corkscrew—“ and,
Wiggins, get some coffee and anchovy toast in a quarter of an
hour ; and just put out some tumblers and toddy ladles, and
bring up boiling water with the coffee.”

While making his hospitable preparations, Tom managed
to get many side-glances at the old man, who sat looking
steadily and abstractedly before him into the fireplace, and was
much struck and touched by the picture. The sailor wore a
well-preserved old undress uniform coat and waistcoat, and
white drill trousers; ho was a man of middle height, but
gaunt and massive, and Tom tecognised the framework of the
long arms and grand shoulders and chest which he had so
often admired in the son. His right leg was quite stiff from
an old wound on the kneecap ; the left eye was sightless, and
the scar of a cutlass travelled down the drooping lid and on
to the weather-beaten cheek below. His head was high and
broad, his hair and whiskers silver white, while the shaggy
eyebrows wero scarcely grizzled. is face was deeply lined,
and the long clean-cut lower jaw, and drawn look about the
mouth, gave a grim expression to the face at the first glance,
which wore off as you looked, leaving, however, on most men
who thought about it, the impression which fastened on our
220 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

hero, “ An awkward man to have met at the head of boarders
towards the end of the great war.”

In a minute or two Tom, having completed his duties,
faced the old sailor, much reassured by his covert inspection ;
and, pouring himself out a glass of sherry, pushed the
decanter across, and drank to his guest.

“Your health, sir,” he said, “and thank you very much for
coming up to see me.”

“Thank you, sir,” said the Captain, rousing himself and
filling, “I drink to you, sir. The fact is, I took a great
liberty in coming up to your rooms in this off-hand way,
without calling or sending up, but you'll excuse it in an old
sailor.” Here the Captain took to his glass, and seemed a
little embarrassed. Tom felt embarrassed also, feeling that
something was coming, and could only think of asking how
the Captain liked the sherry. . The Captain liked the sherry
very much. Then, suddenly clearing his throat, he went on.
“T felt, six, that you would excuse me, for I have a favour to
ask of you.” He paused again, while Tom muttered some-
thing about “great pleasure,” and then went on.

“You know my son, Mr. Brown 1”

“Yes, sir; he has been my best friend up here; I owe
more to him than to any man in Oxford.”

The Captain’s eye gleamed with pleasure as he replied,
“ Jack is a noble tellow, Mr, Brown, though I say it who am
his father. I’ve often promised myself a cruise to Oxford
since he has been here. I came here at last yesterday, and
have been having a long yarn with him. I found there was
something on his mind. He can’t keep anything from his
old father: and so I drew out of him that he loves you as
David loved Jonathan. He made my old eye very dim while
he was talking of you, Mr. Brown. And then I found that
you two aro not as you used to be. Some coldness sprung up
between you; but what about Icouldn’t get at. Young men
are often hasty—I know I was, forty years ago—Jack says he
has been hasty with you. Now, that boy is all I have in the
world, Mr. Brown. I know my boy’s friend will like to send
an old man home with a light heart. So I made up my mind
‘to come over to you and ask you to make it up with Jack. I
gave him the slip after dinner and hero I am.”

“Oh, sir, did he really ask you to come to me ?”

“ No, sir,” said the Captain, “he did not—I’m sorry for it
—I think Jack must be in the wrong, for he said he had been
too hasty, and yet he wouldn’t ask me to come to you and
make it up. But he is young, sir; young and proud. He
said he couldn’t move in it, his mind was made up ; he was
Es
THE RECONCILIATION. 221

wretched enough over it, but the move must come from you.
And so that’s the favour I have to ask, that you will make it
up with Jack. It isn’t often a young man can do such a
favour to an old one—to an old father with one son. You'll
not feel the worse for having done it, if it’s ever so hard to
do, when you come to be my age.” And the old man looked
wistfully across the table, the muscles about his mouth
quivering as he ended.

Tom sprang from his chair, and grasped tho old sailor’s:
hand, as he felt the load pass out of his heart. “ Favour,
sir!” he said,“ I have been a mad fool enough already in
this business—I should have been a double-dyed scoundrel,
like enough, by this time but for your son, and I’ve quarrelled
with him for stopping me at the pit’s mouth. Favour!. If
God will, ’ll prove somehow where the favour lies, and what
I owe to him; and to you, sir, for coming to me to-night.
Stop here two minutes, sir, and ’ll run down and bring him
over.”

Tom tore away to Hardy's door and knocked. ‘There was
no pausing in the passage now. “Come in.” He opened the
door but did not enter, and for'a moment or two could not
speak. The rush of associations which the sight of the well-
known old rickety furniture, and the figure which was seated,
book in hand, with its back to the door and its feet up
against one aide of the mantel-piece, called up, choked him.

“ May I come in?” he said at last.

He saw the figure give a start, and the book trembled a
little, but then came the answer, slow but firm—

“T have not changed my opinion.”

“No; dear old boy, but'I have,” and Tom rushed across to
his friend, dearer than ever to him now, and threw his arm
round his neck ; and, if the un-English truth must out, had
three parts of a mind to kiss the rough face which was now
working with strong emotion.

“Thank God!” said Hardy, as he grasped the hand which
hung over his shoulder.

“ And now come over to my rooms; your father is there
waiting for us.”

“ What, the dear old governor? That’s what he has been
after, is it? I couldn’t think where he could havo ‘ hove to,’
as ho would say.”

Hardy put on his cap, and the two hurried back to Tom's
rooms, the lightest hearts in the University of Oxford.
222 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

CHAPTER XXI.
OAPTAIN HARDY ENTERTAINED BY ST. AMBROSE.

TuErn are moments in the life of the most self-contained
and sober of us all, when we fairly bubble over, like a full
bottle of champagne with the cork out ; and this was one of
them for our hero, who, however, be it remarked, was neither
self-contained nor sober by nature. When they got back to
his rooms, he really hardly knew what to do to give vent to
his lightness of heart ; and Hardy, though self-contained and
sober enough in general, was on this occasion almost as bad
as his friend. They rattled on, talked out the thing which
came uppermost, whatever the subject might chance to be;
but, whether grave or gay, it always ended after a minute or
two in jokes not always good, and chaff, and laughter. The
poor Captain was a little puzzled at first, and made one or two
endeavours to turn the talk into improving channels. But
very soon he saw that Jack was thoroughly happy, and that
was always enough for him. So he listened to one and the
other, joining cheerily in the laugh whenever he could ; and,
when he couldn’t catch the joke, looking like a benevolent
old lion, and making as much belief that he had understood
it all as the simplicity and truthfulness of his character would
allow.

The spirits of the two friends seemed inexhaustible. They
lasted out the hottle of sherry which Tom had uncorked, and
the remains of a, bottle of his famous port. He had tried hard
to bo allowed to open a fresh bottle, but the Captain had
made such a point of his not doing so, that he had given in
for hospitality’s sake, They lasted out the coffee and anchovy
toast ; after which the Captain made a little effort at moving,
which was supplicatingly stopped by Tom.

“Oh, pray don’t go, Captain Hardy. I haven’t been so
happy for months. Besides, I must brew you a glass of grog.
I pride myself on my brew. Your son there will tell you
that I am a dead hand at it. Here, Wiggins, a lemon!”
shouted Tom.

“Well, for once in a way, I suppose. Eh, Jack?” said
the Captain, looking at his son.

“Oh yes, father. You mayn’t know it, Brown, but, if there
is one thing harder to do than another, it is to get an old
sailor like my father to take a glass of grog at night.”

The Captain laughed a little laugh, and shook his thick
stick at his son, who went on.

“ And as for asking him to take o pipe with it—”
CAPTAIN HARDY AT ST. AMBROSE, 223

“Dear me,” said Tom, “I quite forgot. I really beg your
pardon, Captain Hardy ;” and he jut down the lemon he was
squeezing, and produced a box of cigars.

“It’s all Jack’s nonsense, sir,” said the Captain, holding

‘out his hand, nevertheless, for the box.

“ Now, father, don’t be absurd,” interrupted Hardy, snatch-
ing the box away from him. “You might as well give him a
glass of absinthe. He is churchwarden ot homo, and can’t
smoke anything but a long clay.”

“‘’m very sorry I haven’t one hero, but I can send out in
a minute.” And Tom was making for the door to shout for
Wiggins.

*“ No, don’t call. Tl fetch somo from my rooms.”

‘When Hardy left the room, Tom squeezed away at his
lemon, and was preparing himself for a speech to Captain
Hardy full of confession and gratitude. But tle Captain was
before him, and led the conversation into a most unexpected
channel.

“TI suppose, now, Mr. Brown,” he began, “you don’t find
any difficulty in construing your Thucydides ?”

“ Indeed, I do, sir,” said Tom, laughing. “TI find him a
very tough old customer, except in the simplest narrative.”

“For my part,” said the Captain, “I can’t get on at all, I
find, without a translation. But you see, sir, I had none of
the advantages which you young men have up here. In fact,
Mr. Brown, I didn’t begin Greek till Jack was nearly ten years
old.” The Captain in his secret heart was prouder of his
partial victory over the Greek tongue in his old age, than of
his undisputed triumphs over the French in his youth, and
was not averse to talking of it.

“J wonder that you ever began it at all, sir,” said Tom.

You wouldn’t wonder if you knew how an uneducated
man like me feels, when he comes to a place like Oxford.”

“ Uneducated, sir!” said Tom. ‘“ Why your education has
been worth twice as much, I’m sure, as any we get here.”

“No, sir; we never learnt anything in the navy when I
was a youngster, except a little rule-ofthumb mathematics.
One picked up a sort of smattering of 4 language or two
knocking about the world, but no grammatical knowledge,
nothing scientific. Ifa boy doesn’t get a method, he is beat-
ing to windward in a crank craft all his life. He hasn’t got
any regular place to stow away what he gets into his brains,
and so it lies tumbling about in the hold,’and he loses it, or
it gets damaged and is never ready for use. You see what I
mean, Mr. Brown?”

“Yes, sir. But I’m afraid we don’t all of us get much
224 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

method up here. Do you really enjoy ee Piney ities
now, Captain Hardy 1.”

“Indeed I do, sir, very much, » said the Captain. “There? 8
a great deal in ‘his history to interest an old sailor, you: know.
I dare say, now, that .I.enjoy those parts about,the sea-fights
more than you'do.” , The Captain looked at Tom as if he had
made an audacious remarl. er

“T am sure you do, sir,” said Tom, smiling,

“Because you see, Mr. Brown,” : said thé Captain, “ when
one has. been in that sort of. thing oneself, one likes to read
how, people jn other times managed, and to think what one
would have done in their place. I don’t believe that the
Greeks just at that time were very resolute fighters, though.
Nelson - or Collingwood would have finished that war in a
year or two.”

-“ Not with triremes, do’ you think, sir?” said: Poin,

Le Yes, sir, with any vessels which were to be. had,” said
the Captain. “But you are right about triremes. ' Tt has
‘always been a great puzzle to. me how those triremes could
have been worked. ... How do you: understand the three banks
of oars, Mr. Brown 7” ;

“ Well, sir, I suppose they must have been one above the
other somehow.”

“But the upper bank must have had oars twenty feet long,
‘and more, in that case,” said te Captain. ‘“ You must allow
for leverage, you see.’

. “Of course, sir, When one comes to. ‘think of it, it isn’t
‘easy to see how they were manned and worked,” eaid Tom.

“Now my notion about triremes—” began. the Captain,
holding the head of his atick. with, both hands, and looking
across at Tom. °
i. “ Why, father!” cried Hardy, returning at the moment
‘with the pipes, and catching the Captain’s last word, “on one
of your hobby horses already! You're not safe (I con't
leave you for two minutes. Here’s a long pipe for you. How
in the world did he get on triremes 7”

“Thardly know,” said Tom ; “but I want to hear what
Captain Hardy thinks about them. You were saying, sir,
that the upper oars must have been twenty feet long at least. 2

“My notion. is—” said the Captain, taking the pipe and
tabacco-pouch from’ his son’s hand.

“Stop one moment,” said Hardy ; “I found Blake at my
‘rooms, and asked him to come.over here, You'don’t object ”

“Object, my dear fellow ! I’m much obliged to you. Now,
Hardy, would you like to haye any one else? I can send in:
a minute.” —
 

 

 

 

P, 224.

The Reconciliation in Tom's Rooms. Captain Hardy discourseth on the ‘‘ Trireme.”
CAPTAIN HARDY AT 8ST. AMBROSE. 225

“No one, thank you.”

“You won’t stand on ceremony now, will you, with me?”
said Tom.

“You see I haven't.”

« And you never will again ?”

“No, never. Now, father, you can heave ahead about
those oars.”

The Captain went on charging his pipe, and proceeded :
“You see, Mr. Brown, they must have been at least twenty
feet long, because, if you allow the lowest bank of oars to
have been three feet above the water-line, which even Jack
thinks they must have been—”

“Certainly. That height at least to do any good,” said
Hardy.

“Not that I think Jack’s opinion worth much on the
point,” went on his father.

“It’s very ungrateful of you, then, to say so, father,” said
Hardy, “after all the time I’ve wasted trying to make it all
clear to you.”

“T don’t say that Jack’s is not o good opinion on most
things, Mr. Brown,” said the Captain ; “ but he is all at sca
about triremes. He believes that the men of the uppermost
bank rowed somehow like lightermen on the Thames, walking
up and down.”

“T object to your statement of my faith, father,” said
Hardy.

“Now you know, Jack, you have said so, often.”

“T have said they must have stood up to row, and
s o—”

“You would have had awful confusion, Jack. You must
have order between decks when you're going into action.
Besides, the rowers had cushions.”

“That old heresy of yours again.”

“Well, but Jack, they had cushions. Didn't the rowers
who were marched across the Isthmus to man the ships
which were to surprise the Pireus, carry their oars, thongs,
and cushions ?”

“Tf they did, your conclusion doesn’t follow, father, that
they sat on them to row.”

“You hear, Mr. Brown,” said the Captain ; “ he admits my
point about the cushions.”

“Oh, father, I hope you used to fight the French more
fairly,” said Hardy.

“ But, didn’t he? Didn’t Jack admit my point?”

“Tmplicity, sir, I think,” said Tom, catching Hardy’s eye,
which was dancing with fun.

Q
226 TOM: BROWN AT OXFORD.

“‘Of course he did. You hear that, Jack. Now my notion
about triremes—”

A knock at the door interrupted the Captain again, and
Blake came in and was introduced.

“My. Blake is almost our best scholar, father ; you should |
appeal to him about the cushions.”

“T am very proud to make your acquaintance, sir,” said the
Captain ; “I have heard my son speak of you often.”

“We were talking about triremes,” said Tom ; “Captain
Hardy thinks the oars must have been twenty feet long.”

“Not easy to come forward well with that sort of oar,”
said Blake ; “ they must have pulled a slow stroke.”

“Our torpid would have bumped the best of them,” said
Hardy.

“ T don’t think they could have made more than six knots,”
said the Captain; “but yet they used to sink one another,
and a light boat going only six knots couldn’t break another
in two amid-ships. It’s a puzzling subject, Mr. Blake.”

“Tt is, sir,” said Blake; “if we only had some of their
fo’castle songs we should know more about it. I’m afraid
they had no Dibdin.”

“TT wish you would turn one of my father’s favourite songs
into anapests for him,” said Hardy.

“What are they?” said Blake.

“¢Tom Bowling,’ or ‘The wind that blows, and the ship
that goes, and the lass that loves a sailor.’”

“ By the way, why shouldn’t we have a song?” said Tom.
“What do you say, Captain Hardy?”

The Captain winced a little as he saw his chance of
expounding his notion as to triremes slipping away, but
answered, :

“By all means, sir; Jack must sing for me though. Did
you ever hear him sing ‘Tom Bowling’ ?”

“No, never, sir. Why, Hardy, you never told me you
could sing.”

“You uever asked me,” said Hardy, laughing ; “but if I
sing for my father, he must spin us a yarn.”

“Oh yes ; will you, sir?”

“Vl do my best, Mr. Brown ; but I don’t know that you'll
care to listen to my old yarns. Jack thinks everybody must
like them as well as he, who used to hear them when he was
a child.”

“Thank you, sir; that’s famous. Now Hardy, strike
up.” :
“After you. You must set the example in your own
rooms.”
CAPTAIN HARDY AT ST. AMBROSE. 227

So Tom sang his song. And the noise brought Drysdale
and another man up, who were loitering in quad on the look-
out for something to do. Drysdale and the Captain recog-
nised one another, and were friends at once. And then
Hardy sang “'Tom Bowling,” in a style which astonished the
rest not a little, and as usual nearly made his father cry ; and
Blake sang, and Drysdale and the other man. And then the
Captain was called on for his yarn ; and, the general voice
being for “something that had happened to him,” “the
strangest thing that had ever happened to him at sea,” the old
gentleman laid down his pipe and sat up in his chair with his
hands on his stick and began. ;

THE OAPTAIN’S STORY.

It will be forty years ago next month since the ship I was
then in came home from the West Indies station, and was
paid off. I had nowhere in particular to go just then, and so
was very glad to got a letter, the morning after I wont ashoro
ut Portsmouth, asking me to go down to Plymouth for a week
or so. It came from an old sailor, a friend of my family, who
had been Commodore of the fleet. He lived at Plymouth ;
he was a thorough old sailor—what you young men would
call “an old salt”—and couldn’t live out of sight of the blue
sea and the shipping. It is a disease that a good many of us
take who have spent our best years on the sea. J have it
myself—a sort of feeling that we must be under another kind
of Providence, when we look out and see a hill on this side
and a hill on that. It’s wonderful to see the trees come out
and the corn grow, but then it doesn’t come so home to an
old sailor. I know that we’re all just as much under the
Lord’s hand on shore as at sea ; but you can’t read in a book
you haven’t been used to, and they that go down to the sea
in ships, they see the works of the Lord and His wonders in
the deep. It isn’t their fault if they don’t see His wonders
on the land so easily as other people.

But, for all that, there’s no man enjoys a cruise in the
country more than a sailor. It’s forty years ago since I started
for Plymouth, but I haven’t forgotten the road a bit, or how
beautiful it was ; all through the New Forest, and over Salis-
. bury Plain, and then on by the mail to Exeter, and through
Devonshire. It took me three days to get to Plymouth, for
we didn’t got about so quick in thoso days.

The Commodore was very kind to me when I got there,
and I went about with him to the ships in the bay, and
through the dock-yard, and picked up a good deal that was of
use to me afterwards. I was a lieutenant in those days, and

Q2
228 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

had seen a good deal of service, and I found the old Commo-
dore had a great nephew whom he had adopted, and had set
his whole heart upon. He was an old bachelor himself, but
the boy had come to live with him, and was to go to sea ; so
he wanted to put him under some one who would give an eye
to him for the first year or two. He was a light slip of a
boy then, fourteen years old, with deep set blue eyes and long
eyelashes, and cheeks like a girl’s, but as brave as a lion and
as merry asa lark. The old gentleman was very pleased to
see that we took to one another. We used to bathe and boat
together ; and he was never tired of hearing my stories about
the great admirals, and the fleet, and the stations I had
been on.

Well, it was agreed that I should apply for a ship again
directly, and go up to London with a letter to the Admiralty
from the Commodore, to help things on. After a month or
two I was appointed to a brig, lying at Spithead ; and so I
wrote off to the Commodore, and he got his boy a midship-
man’s berth on board, and brought him to Portsmouth him-
self a day or two before we sailed for the Mediterranean. The
old gentleman came on board to see his boy’s hammock slung,
and went below into the cockpit to make sure that all was
right. He only left us by the pilot-boat when we were well
out in the Channel. He was very low at parting from his
boy, but bore up as well as he could; snd we promised to
write to him from Gibraltar, and as often afterwards as we
had a chance.

I was soon as proud and fond of little Tom Holdsworth as
if he had been my own younger brother ; and, for that matter,
so were all the crew, from our captain to the cook’s boy. He
was such a gallant youngster, and yet so gentle. In one
cutting-out business we had, he climbed over the boatswain’s
shoulders, and was almost first on deck ; how he came out of
it without a scratch I can’t think to this day. But he hadn’t
a bit of bluster in him, and was as kind as a woman to any
one who was wounded or down with sickness.

After we had been out about a year we were sent to cruise
off Malta, on the look-out for the French fleet. It was a long
business, and the post wasn’t so good then as it is now. Wo
wore sometimes for months without getting a letter, and knew
nothing of what was happening at home, or anywhere elso.
We had a sick time too on board, and at last he got a fever.
He bore up against it like a man, and wouldn’t knock off duty
for a long time, He was midshipman of my watch; so I
used to make him turn in early, and tried to ease things to
him as much as I could ; but he didn’t pick up, and I began
OAPTAIN HARDY AT 8ST. AMBROSE. 229

to get very anxious about him. I talked to the doctor, and
turned matters over in my own mind, and at last I came to
think he wouldn’t get any better unless he could sleep out of
the cockpit. So, one night, the 20th of October it was—I
remember it well enough, better than I remember any day
since ; it was a dirty night, blowing half a gale of wind from
the southward, and we were under close-reefed topsails—Ihad .
the first watch, and at nine o'clock I sent him down to my
cabin to sleep there, where he would be freshor and quieter,
and I was to turn into his hammock when my watch was
over.

I was on deck three hours or so after he went down, and
the weather got dirtier and dirtier, and the scud drove by,
and the wind sang and hummed through the rigging—it
made me melancholy to listen to it. I could think of nothing
but the youngster down below, and what I should say to his
poor old uncle if anything happened. Well, soon after mid-
night I went down and turned into his hammock. I didn’t
go to sleep at once, for I remember very well listening to the
ercaking of the ship’s timbers as she rose to the swell, and
watching the Jamp, which was slung from the ceiling, and
gave light enough to make out the other hammocks swinging
slowly all together. At last, however, I dropped off, and 1
reckon I must have been asleep about an hour, when I woke
with a start. For the first moment I didn’t see anything but
the swinging hammocks and the lamp ; but then suddenly I
became aware that some one was standing by my hammock,
and I saw the figure as plainly as I see any one of you now,
for the foot of the hammock was close to the lamp, and the
light struck full across on the head and shoulders, which
was all that I could see of him. There he was, the old
Commodore ; his grizzled hair coming out from under a red
woollen nightcap, and his shoulders wrapped in an old thread-
bare blue dressing-gown which I had often seen him in. His
face looked pale and drawn, and there was a wistful dis-
appointed look about the eyes. I was so taken aback I could
not speak, but lay watching him. He looked full at my face
once or twice, but didn’t seem to recognise me ; and, just as
I was getting back my tongue and going to speak, he said
slowly : “ Where’s Tom? this is his hammock. I can’t seo
Tom ;” and then he looked vaguely about and passed away
somehow, but how I couldn’t see. In a moment or two I
jumped out and hurried to my cabin, but young Holdsworth was
fast asleep. I sat down, and wrote down just what I had seen,
naking a note of the exact time, twenty minutes to two. I
didn’t turn in again, but sat watching the youngster. When
230 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

he woke I asked him if he had heard anything of his great
uncle by the last mail, Yes, he had heard ; the old gentle-
man was rather feeble, but nothing particular the matter. I
kept my own counsel and never told a soul in the ship ; and,
when the mail came to hand a few days afterwards with a
letter from the Commodore to his nephew, dated late in
September, saying that he was well, I thought the figure by
my hammock must have been all my own fancy.

However, by the next mail came the news of the old
Commodore’s death. It had been a very sudden break-up,
his executor said. He had left all his property, which was
not much, to his great nephew, who was to get leave to come
home as soon as he could.

The first time we touched at Malta, Tom Holdsworth left
us and went home. We followed about two years afterwards,
and the first thing I did after landing was to find out the
Commodore’s executor. THe was a quiet, dry little Plymouth
lawyer, and very civilly answered all my questions about the
last days of my old friend. At last I asked him to tell me
as near as he could the time of his death ; and he put on his
spectacles, and got his diary, and turned over the leaves. I
was quite nervous till he looked up and said,—“ Twenty-five
minutes to two, sir, 4.M., on the morning of October 21st ; or
it might be a few minutes later.”

“ How do you mean, sir?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, “it is an odd story. The doctor was
sitting with me, watching the old man, and, as I tell you, at
twenty-five minutes to two, he got up and said it was all over.
We stood together, talking in whispers for, it might be, four
or five minutes, when the body seemed to move. He was an
odd old man, you know, the Commodore, and we never could
get him properly to bed, but he lay in his red nightcap and
old dressing-gown, with a blanket over him. It was not a
pleasant sight, I can tell you, sir. I don’t think one of you
gentlemen, who are bred to face all manner of dangers, would
have liked it. As I was saying, the body first moved, and
then sat up, propping itself behind with its hands. The eyes
were wide open, and he looked at us for a moment, and said
slowly, ‘I’ve been to the Mediterranean, but I didn’t see
Tom.’ Thon tho body sank back again, and this timo the old
Commodore was really dead. But it was not a pleasant thing
to happen to one, sir. Ido not remember anything like it in
my forty years’ practice.”
DEPARTURES EXPECTED AND UNEXPECTED. 231

CHAPTER XXII.
DEPARTURES EXPECTED AND UNEXPECTED.

THERE was a silence of a few seconds after the Captain had
finished his story, all the men sitting with eyes fixed on him,
and not a little surprised at the results of their call. Drysdale
was the first to break the silence, which ho did with a “ By
George!” and a long respiration; but, as he did not seem
prepared. with any further remark, Tom took up the run-
ning.
“ What a strange story,” he said ; “and that really happened
to you, Captain Hardy ?”

“To me, sir, in the Mediterranean, more than forty years
ago.”

“The strangest thirg about it is that the old Commodore
should have managed to get all the way to the ship, and then
not have known where his nephew was,” said Blake.

“He only knew his nephew’s berth, you see, sir,” said the
Captain.

“ But he might have beat about through the ship till he
had found him.” .

«You must remember that he was at his last breath, sir,”
said the Captain ; “you can’t expect a man to have his head
clear at such a moment.”

“Not a man, perhaps; but I should a ghost,” said
Blake.

“Time was everything to him,” went on the Captain,
without regarding the interruption, “space nothing. But the
strangest part of it is that J should have secon the figure at
all. It’s true I had been thinking of the old uncle, because
of the boy’s illness ; but I can’t suppose he was thinking of
me, and, as I say, he never recognised me. I have taken a
great deal of interest in such matters since that time, but I
have never met with just such a case as this.”

“No, that is the puzzle. One can fancy his appearing to
his nephew well enough,” said Tom.

“We can’t account for these things, or for a good many
. other things which ought to be quite as startling, only we see
them every day. But now I think it is time for us to be
going, eh Jack?” and the Captain and his son rose to go.

Tom saw that it would be no kindness to them to try to
prolong the sitting, and so he got up too, to accompany them
to the gates. This broke up the party. Before going,
Drysdale, after whispering to Tom, went up to Captain Hardy,
and said,— we,
232 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“T want to ask you to do me a favour, sir. Will you and
your son breakfast with me to-morrow ?”

“We shall be very happy, sir,” said the Captain.

“TJ think, father, you had better breakfast with me, quietly.
We are much obliged to Mr. Drysdale, but I can’t give up a
whole morning. Besides, I have several things to talk to you
about.”

‘‘ Nonsense, Jack,” blurted out the old sailor, “leave your
books alone for one morning. I’m come up here to enjoy
myself, and see your friends.”

Hardy gave a slight shrug of his shoulders at the word
friends, and Drysdale, who saw it, looked a little confused.
He had never asked Hardy to his rooms before. The Captain
saw that something was the matter, and hastened in his own
way to make all smooth again.

“Never mind Jack, sir,” he said, “he shall come. It’s a
great treat to me to be with young men, especially when they
are friends of my boy.”

“T hope you'll come as a personal favour to me,” said
Drysdale, turning to Hardy. “Brown, you'll bring him,
won't you }?”

“Oh yes, I’m sure he'll come,” said Tom.

“That's all right. Good night, then;” and Drysdale
went off.

Hardy and Tom accompanied the Captain to the gate.
During his passage across the two quadrangles, the old gentle-
man was full of the praises of the men, and of protestations
as to the improvement in social manners and customs since
his day, when there could have been no such meeting, he
declared, without blackguardism and drunkenness, at least
among young officers ; but then they had less to think of
than Oxford men, no proper education. And so the Captain
‘was evidently travelling back into the great trireme question
when they reached the gate. As they could go no farther
with him, however, he had to carry away his solution of the
three-banks-of-oars difficulty in his own bosom to the Mitre.

“Don’t let us go in,” said Tom, as the gate closed on the
Captain, and they turned back into the quadrangle, “let us
take a turn or two ;” so they walked up and down the inner
quad in the starlight.

Just at first they were a good deal embarrassed and con-
fused ; but before long, though not without putting con-
siderable force on himself, Tom got back into something like
his old familiar way of unbosoming himself to his re-found
friend, and Hardy showed more than his old anxiety to meet
him half-way. is ready and undisguised sympathy soon
DEPARTURES EXPECTED AND UNEXPEOTED. 233

dispersed the few remaining clouds which were still hanging
between them ; and Tom found it almost a pleasure, instead
of a dreary task, as he had anticipated, to make a full con-
fession, and state the case clearly and strongly against himself
to one who claimed neither by word nor look the least
superiority over him, and never seemed to remember that he
himself had been ill-treated in the matter.

“ He had such a chance of lecturing me and didn’t do it,”
thought Tom afterwards, when he was considering why he felt
so vory grateful to Hardy. “It was so cunning of him, too. !
Tf ho had begun lecturing, I should have begun to defend !
myself, and never have felt half such a scamp as I did when"
I was telling it all out to him in my own way.” ;

The result of Hardy’s management was that Tom made
a clean breast of it, telling everything down to his night at
the ragged school ; and what an effect his chance opening
of the “Apology” had had on him. Here for the first time
Hardy came in with his usual dry, keen voice, ‘‘ You needn't
have gone so far back as Plato for that lesson.”

“T don’t understand,” said Tom.

“ Well, there’s something about an indwelling spirit which
guideth every man in St. Paul, isn’t there?”

“Yes, a great deal,” Tom answered, after a pause; “ but
it isn’t the same thing.”

“Why not the same thing ?”

“Oh, surely you must feel it. It would be almost blas-
phemy in us now to talk as St. Paul talked. It is much
easier to face the notion, or the fact, of a demon or spirit such
as Socrates felt to be in him, than to face what St. Paul seems
to be meaning.”

“Yes, much easier. The only question is whether we will
be heathens or not.”

“How do you mean?” said Tom.

“ Why, a spirit was speaking to Socrates, and guiding him.
He obeyed the guidance, but knew not whence it came. A
spirit is striving with us too, and trying to guide us—we feel
that just as much as he did. Do we know what spirit it is ?
whence it comes? Will we obey it? If we can’t name it—
know no more of it than he knew about his demon, of
course, we are in no better position than he—in fact,
heathens.”

Tom made no answer, and after a slight turn or two more,
Hardy said, “ Let us go in;” and they went to his rooms.
When the candles were lighted, Tom saw the array of books
on the table, several of them open, and remembered how near
the examinations were.
234 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“T see you want to work,” he said. ‘“ Well, good-night. I
know how fellows like you hate being thanked—there, you
needn’t wince ; I’m not going to try it on. The best way to
thank you, I know, is to go straight for the future. Tl do
that, please God, this time at any rate. Now what ought I
to do, Hardy ?”

“Well, it’s very hard to say. I’ve thought about it a great
deal this lagt few days—since I felt you were coming round—
but can’t make up my mind. How do you feel yourself?
What's your own instinct about it?”

“Of course, I must break it all off at once, completely,”
said Tom, mournfully, and half hoping that Hardy might not
agree with him.

“Of course,” answered Hardy, “ but how +”

“Tn the way that will pain her least. I would sooner lose
my hand or bite my tongue off than that she should feel
lowered, or lose any self-respect, you know,” said Tom, looking
helplessly at his friend. -

“Yes, that’s all right—you must take all you can on your
own shoulders. It inust leave a sting though for both of you,
manage how you will.”

“But I can’t bear to let her think I don’t care for her—I
needn’t do that—I can’t do that.”

“I don’t know what to advise. However, I believe I was
wrong in thinking she cared for you so much. She will
be hurt, of course—she can’t help being hurt—but it won’t be
so bad as I used to think.”

Tom made no answer ; in spite of all his good resolutions,
he was a, little piqued at this last speech. Hardy went on
prosently, “I wish she wore well out of Oxford. It’s a bad
town for a girl to be living in, especially as a barmaid in
a place which we haunt. J don’t know that she will take
much harm now ; but it’s a very trying thing for a girl of
that sort to be thrown every day amongst a dozen young men
above her in rank, and not one in ten of whom has any man-
liness about him.”

“ How do you mean—no manliness }”

“T mean that a girl in her position isn’t safe with us. If we
had any manliness in us she would be—”

“You can’t expect all men to be blocks of ice, or milksops,”
said Tom, who was getting nettled.

“Don’t think that I meant you,” said Hardy ; “indeed I
didn’t. “But surely, think a moment; is ita proof of manliness
that the pure and the weak should fear you and shrink from
you? Which is the true—ay, and the brave—man, he who
trembles beforea woman or he before whom a woman trembles?”
DEPARTURES EXPECTED AND UNEXPECTED. 235

‘Neither,’ said Tom ; “but I see what you mean, and
when you put it that way it’s clear enough.”

“ But yowyre wrong in saying ‘neither’ if you do see what
J mean.” Tom was silent. ‘Can there be any true manliness
without purity 7” went on Hardy. Tom drew a deep breath,
but said nothing. “And where thon can you point to a place
where there is so little manliness as here? It makes my
blood boil to see what one must see every day. There are a
sct of men up here, and have been ever since I can remember
the place, not one of whom can look at a modest woman
without making her shudder.”

“There must always be some blackguards,” said Tom.

“Yes; but woluckily the blackguards,set the fashion, and
give the tone to public opinion I’m, sure both of us have
seen enough to know perfectly well thatup here, amongst us
undergraduates, men who are deliberately and avowedly profli-
gates, aro rather admired and courted,—aro said té“know the
world, and all that,—while a man who tries to lead*a pure
life, and makes no secret of it, is openly sneered at by them,
looked down on more or less by the great mass of men, and, to
use the word you used just now, thought a milksop by almost
all.”

“T don’t think it is so bad as that,” said Tom. “There
are many mon who would respect him, though thoy might not
be ablo to follow him.”

“Of course, I never meant that there are not many such,
but they don’t set the fashion. I am sure I’m right. Let us
try it by the best test. Haven’t you and I in our secret hearts
this cursed feeling, that the sort of man we are talking of
ais a milksop 1”

After 2 moment's thought, Tom answered, “I am afraid I
have, but I really am thoroughiy ashamed of it now, Hardy.
But you haven't it. If you had it you could never have
spoken to me as you have.”

“JT beg your pardon. No man is more open than I to the
bad influences of any place he lives in. God knows I am
even as other men, and worse ; for I have been taught ever
since I could speak, that the crown of all real manliness, of
all Christian manliness, is purity.”

Neither of the two spoke for some minutes. Then Hardy
looked at his watch—

“Past eleven,” he said. “I must do some work. Well,
Brown, this will be a day to be remembered in my calendar.”

Tom wrung his hand, but did not venture to reply. As he
got to the door, however, he turned back, and said—

“Do you think I ought to write to her?”
236 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“ Well, you can try. You'll find it a bitter business, I fear.”

“Tl try then. Good night.”

Tom went to his own rooms, and set to work to write his
letter ; and certainly found it as difficult and unpleasant a
task as he had ever set himself to work upon. Half a dozen
times he tore up sheet after sheet of his attempts ; and got up
and walked about, and plunged and kicked mentally against
the collar and traces in which he had harnessed himself by
his friend’s help,—trying to convince himself that Hardy was
a Puritan, who had lived quite differently from other men,
and knew nothing of what a man ought to do in a case like
this. That after all very little harm had been done! The
world would never go on at all if people were to be so scru-
pulous! Probably, not another man in the college, except
Grey, perhaps, would think anything of what ho had done!
Done !—why, what had he done? He couldn’t be taking it
more seriously if he had ruined her !

At this point he managed to bring himself up sharp again
more than once. “No thanks to me, at any rate, that she
isn’t ruined. Had I any pity, any scruples? My God, what
a mean, selfish rascal I have been!” and then he sat down
again, and wrote, and scratched out what he had written, till
the other fit came on, and something of the same process had
to be gone through again.

We must all recognise the process, and remember many
occasions on which we have had to put bridle and bit on, and
tide ourselves as if we had been horses or mules without
understanding ; and what a trying business it was—as bad as
getting a young colt past a gipsy encampment in a narrow
lane.

At last, after many trials, Tom got himself well in hand,
and produced something which seemed to satisfy him ; for,
after reading it three or four times, he put it in a cover, with
a small case, which he produced from his desk, sealed it,
directed it, and then went to bed.

Next morning, after chapel, he joined Hardy, and walked
to his rooms with him, and after a few words on indifferent
matters, said—

“ Well, I wrote my letter last night.”

“Did you satisfy yourself?”

“Yes, I think so. I don’t know, though, on second
thoughts; it was very tough work.”

“T was afraid you would find it so,”

«But wouldn’t you like to see it?”

“No, thank you. I suppose my father will be here
directly.”
DEPARTURES EXPECTED AND UNEXPECTED. 237

“ But I wish you would read it through,” said Tom, pro-
ducing a copy.

“ Well, if you wish it, I suppose I must; but I don’t see
how I can do any good.”

Hardy took the letter, and sat down, and Tom drew a chair
closé to him, and watched his face while he read :—

“It is best for us both that I should not see you any more,
at least at present. I feel that I have done youa great wrong.
I dare not say much to you, for fear of making that wrong
greater. I cannot, I need not tell you how I despise myself
now—how I long to make you any amends in my power. If
ever I can be of any service to you, I do hope that nothing
which has passed will hinder you from applying tome. You
will not believe how it pains me to write this ; how should
you? I don’t deserve that you should believe anything I say.
I must seem heartless to you ; I have been, I am heartless.
I hardly know what I am writing. I shall long all my life
to hear good news of you. I don’t ask you to pardon me,
but if you can prevail on yourself not to send back the
enclosed, and will keep it as a small remembrance of one
who is deeply sorry for the wrong he has done you, but
who cannot and will not say he is sorry that he ever met
you, you will be adding another to the many kindnesses
which I have to thank you for, and which I shall never
forget.”

Hardy read it over several times, as Tom watched im-
patiently, unable to make out anything from his face.

“What do you think? You don’t think there’s anything
wrong in it, I hope?”

“No, indeed, my dear fellow. I really think it does you
credit. I don’t know what else you could have said very
well, only—”

“ Only what?”

 Couldn’t you have made it a little shorter ?”

“No, I couldn't; but you don’t mean that. What did you
mean by that ‘only’ ?”

“Why, I don’t think this letter will end the business ; at
least, I’m afraid not.”

“ But what more could I have said?”

“Nothing more, certainly ; but couldn’t you have been a
little quieter—it’s difficult to get the right word—a little
cooler, perhaps. Couldn’t you have made the part about not
seeing her again a little more decided?” __

“But you said I needn’t pretend I didn’t care for her.”

“Did 19”

“Yes. Besides, it would have been a lie.” !
’

238 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

“T don’t want you to tell a lie, certainly. But how about
this ‘small remembrance’ that you speak of? What's
that ?’

“Oh, nothing ; only a littlo locket I bought for hor.”

“ With some of your hair in it ?”

“Well, of course. Come now, there’s no harm in that.”

“No; no harm. Do you think she will wear it?”

“ Flow can I tell?”

“Tt may make her think it isn’t all at an end, I’m afraid.
If she always wears your hair—”

“By Jove, you're too bad, Hardy. I wish you had had to
write it yourself. It’s all very easy to pull my letter to pieces,
I dare say, but—”

“T didn’t want to read it, remember.”

“No more you did. I forgot. But I wish you would just
write down now what you would have said.”

‘Yes, I think I see myself at it. By the way, of course
you have sent your letter ?”

“Yes, I sent it off before chapel.”

“T thought so. In that case I don’t think we need trouble
ourselves further with the form of the document.”

“Oh, that’s only shirking. How do you know I may not
want it for the next occasion ?”

“No, no! Don’t let us begin laughing about it. A man
never ought to have to write such letters twice in his life.
If he has, why he may get a good enough precedent for the
second out of the ‘Complete Lotter Writer,’”

“So you won't correct my copy ?”

“No, not I.”

At this point in their dialogue, Captain Hardy appeared
on the scene, and the party went off to Drysdale’s to breakfast,

Captain Hardy’s visit to St. Ambrose was a great success.
He stayed some four or five days, and saw everything that
was to be seen, and enjoyed it all in a sort of reverent way
which was almost comic. Tom devoted himself to the work
of cicerone, and did his best to do the work thoroughly.
Oxford was a sort of Utopia to the Captain, who was reso-
lutely bent on seeing nothing but beauty and learning and
wisdom within the precincts of the University. On one or
two occasions his faith was tried sorely by the sight of young
gentlemen gracefully apparelled, dawdling along two together
in low easy pony carriages, or lying on their backs in punts
for hours, smoking, with not even a Bell’s Life by them to
pass the time. Dawdling and doing nothing were the objects
of his special abhorrence ; but with this trifling exception the
Captain continued steadily to behold towers and quadrangles,
DEPARTURES EXPECTED AND UNEXPECTED. 239

and chapels, and the inhabitants of the colleges, through
rose-coloured spectacles. His respect for a “regular educa-
tion,” and for the seat of learning at which it was dispensed,
was so strong, that he invested not only the tutors, doctors,
and proctors (of whom he saw little except at a distance), but
even the most empty-headed undergraduate whose acquaint-
ance he made, with a sort of fancy halo of scientific knowledge,
and often talked to those youths in a way which was curiously
bewildering and embarrassing to them. Drysdale was par-
ticularly hit by it. He had humour and honesty enough
himself to appreciate the Captain, but it wasa constant puzzle
to him to know what to make of it all.

“ He’s a regular old brick, is the Captain,” he said to Tom,
on the last evening of the old gentleman’s visit; ‘but, by
Jove, I can’t help thinking he must be poking fun at us half
his time. It is rather too rich to hear him talking on as if
we were all as fond of Greek as he seems to be, and as if no
man ever got drunk up here.”

“T declare I think he believes it,” said Tom. ‘ You seo
we're all careful enough before him.”

“That son of his too must be a good fellow. Don’t you
see he can never have peached. His father was telling me
last night what a comfort it was to him to see that Jack’s
poverty had been no drawback to him. He had always told
him it would be so amongst English gentlemen, and now he
found him living quietly and independently, and yet on equal
terms, and friends with men far above him in rank and fortune,
‘like you, sir,’ the old boy said. By Jove, Brown, I felt
devilish foolish. I believe I blushed, and it isn’t often I
indulge in that sort of luxury. If I weren’t ashamed of
doing it now, I should try to make friends with Hardy. But
I don’t know how to face him, and I doubt whether he
wouldn’t think me too much of a rip to be intimate with.”

Tom at his own special request attended the Captain’s
departure, and took his seat opposite to him and his son at
the back of the Southampton coach, to accompany him a few
miles out of Oxford. For the first mile the Captain was full
of the pleasures of his visit, and of invitations to Tom to
come and see them in the vacation. If he did not mind
homely quarters he would find a hearty welcome, and there
was no finer bathing and boating place on the coast. If he
liked to bring his gun, there were plenty of blue rock-pigeons
and sea-otters in the caves at the Point. Tom protested with
the greatest sincerity that there was nothing he should enjoy
so much. Then the young men got down to walk up Bagley
Hill, and when they mounted again found the Captain with
6%

240 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

a large leather ‘case in his hand, out of which he took two
five-pound notes, and began pressing them on his son, while
Tom tried to look as if he did not know what was going on.
For some time Hardy steadily refused, and the contention
became animated, and it was useless to pretend any longer
not to hear,

“Why, Jack, you’re not too proud I hope, to take a present
from your own father,” the Captain said at last.

“But, my dear father, I don’t want the money. You
make me a very good allowance already.”

“Now, Jack, just listen to me and be reasonable. You know
a great many of your friends have been very hospitable to
me: I could not return their hospitality myself, but I wish
you to do so for me.”

“Well, father, I can do that without this money.”

“Now, Jack,” said the Captain, pushing forward the notes
again, “I insist on your taking them. You will pain me very
much if you don’t take them.”

So the son took the notes at last, looking as most men of
his age would if they had just lost them, while the father’s
face was radiant as he replaced his pocket-book in the breast-
pocket inside his coat. His eye caught Tom’s in the midst
of the operation, and the latter could not help looking a little
confused, as if he had been unintentionally obtruding on their
privacy. But the Captain at once laid his hand on his knee
and said—

“ A young fellow is never the worse for having a ten-pound
note to veer and haul on ; ch, Mr. Brown?”

“No, indecd, sir. A great doal better I think,” said Tom,
and was quite comfortable again. The Captain had no new
coat that summer, but he always looked like a gentleman.

Soon the coach stopped to take up a parcel at a cross-road,
and the young men got down. They stood watching it until
it disappeared round a corner of the road, and then turned
back towards Oxford, and struck into Bagley Wood, Hardy
listening with evident pleasure to his friend’s enthusiastic
praise of his father. But he was not in a talking humour,
and they were soon walking along together in silence.

This was the first time they had been alone together since
the morning after their reconciliation ; so presently Tom seized
the occasion to recur to the subject which was uppermost in
his thoughts.

“She has never answered my letter,” he began, abruptly.

“T am very glad of it,” said Hardy,

“But why?”

“ Because you know, you want it all broken off completely.”
DEPARTURES EXPECTED AND UNEXPECTED, 241

“Yes, but still she might have just acknowledged it. You
don’t know how hard it is to me to keep away from the
place.”

“‘My dear fellow, I know it must be hard work, but you
are doing the right thing.”

“Yes, I hope so,” said Tom, with a sigh. “I haven’t been
within a hundred yards of ‘The Choughs’ this five days.
The old lady must think it so odd.”

IIardy mado no roply. What could ho say but that no
doubt she did ?

“Would you mind doing me a great favour?” said Tom,
after a minute.

“ Anything I can do.— What is it?”

“Why, just to step round on our way back,—-I will stay as
for off as you like,—and see how things are going on ;—how
she is.”

“ Very well. Don’t you like this view of Oxford? I always
think it is the best of them all.” ,

“No. You don’t seo anything of half tho colleges,” said
Tom, who was very loth to leave the other subject for the
picturesque.

“But you get all the spires and towers so well, and the
river in the foreground. Look at that shadow of a cloud
skimming over Christchurch Meadow. It’s a splendid old
place after all.”

“It may be from a distance, to an outsider,” said Tom ;
“but I don’t know—it’s an awfully chilly, deadening kind
of place to live in. There's something in the life of the
place that sits on me like a weight, and makes me feel
dreary.”

“ How long have you felt that? You're coming out in a
new line.”

“J wish I were. I want anew line. I don’t care a straw
for cricket; I hardly like pulling; and as for those wine
parties day after day, and suppers night after night, they turn
me sick to think of.”

“You have the remedy in your own hands, at any rate,”
said Hardy, smiling.

“‘How do you mean ?”

“Why, you needn’t go to them.”

“Oh, one can’t help going to them. What else is there to
do?”

Tom waited for an answer, but his companion only nodded.
to show that he was listening, as he strolled on down the path,
looking at the view.

“TY can say what I feel to you, Hardy. I always have been
R
242 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

able, and it’s such a comfort to me now. It was you who put
these sort of thoughts into my head too, so you ought to sym-
pathize with me.”

“T do, my dear fellow. But you'll be all right again in a
fow days.”

“Don’t you beliove it. It isn’t only. what you seom to
think, Hardy. You don’t know me so well as I do you, after
all. No, I’m not just love-sick, and hipped because I can’t
go and sec hor. That has something to do with it, I dare
say, but it’s the sort of shut-up selfish life wo lead here that
I can’t stand. A man isn’t meant to live only with fellows
like himself, with good allowances paid quarterly, and no care
but how to amuse themselves. One is old enough for some-
thing better than that, I’m sure.”

“No doubt,” said Hardy, with provoking taciturnity.

““ And the moment one tries to break through it, one only
gets into trouble.”

“Yes, there’s a good deal of danger of that, certainly,” said
Hardy.

“Don’t you often long to be in contact with some of the
realities of life, with men and women who haven’t their bread
and butter already cut for them? How can a place be a
university where no one can come up who hasn’t two hun-
dred a year or so to live on?”

“You ought to have been at Oxford four hundred years
ago, when there were more thousands here than we have
hundreds.”

“T don’t see that. It must have been ten times as bad
thon,”

“Not at all, But it must have been a vory different stato of
things from ows; they must have been almost all poor scholars,
who worked for their living, or lived on next to nothing.”

“ How do you really suppose they lived, though?”

“Oh, I don’t know. But how should you like it now, if
we had fifty poor scholars at St. Ambrose, besides us servitors
—say ten tailors, ten shoemakers, and so on, who came up
from love of learning, and attended all the lectures with us,
and worked for the present undergraduates while they were
hunting, and cricketing, and boating ?”

“Woll, I think it would be a very good thing—at any rate,
we should save in tailors’ bills.”

“ Even if we didn’t get our coats so well built,” said Hardy,
laughing. “Well, Brown, you have a most catholic taste,
and ‘a capacity for taking in new truths, all the elements of
a good Radical in you.”

“T tell you I hate Radicals,” said Tom, indignantly.
THE ENGLEBOURN CONSTABLE. 243

“Well, here we are in the town. I'll go round by ‘The
Choughs’ and catch you up before you get to High Street.”

Tom, left to himself, walked slowly on for a little way, and
then quickly back again in an impatient, restless manner, and
was within a few yards of the corner where they had parted
when Hardy appeared again. He saw at a glance that some
thing had happened.

“What is it—she is not ill?” ho said, quickly.

“No; quite well, her aunt says.”

“You didn’t see her then ?”

“No. The fact is she has gone home.”

 

CHAPTER XXIII.
THE ENGLEBOURN CONSTABLE.

On the afternoon of a splendid day in tho early part of
June, some four or five days after the Sunday on which the
morning service at Englebourn was interrupted by the fire at
Farmer Groves’, David Johnson, tailor and constable of tho
parish, was sitting at his work in a small erection, half shed,
half summer-house, which leaned against the back of his
cottage. Not that David had not a regular workshop with a
window looking into the village street, and a regular counter
close under it, on which passers-by might see him stitching,
and from which he could gossip with them easily, as was his
wont. But although the constable kept the king’s peace and
made garments of all kinds for his livelihood—from the
curate’s frock down to the ploughboy’s fustians—he was ad-
dicted for his pleasure and solace to the keeping of bees.
The constable’s bees inhabited a row of hives in the narrow
strip of garden which ran away at the back of the cottage.
This strip of garden was bordered along the whole of one
side by the rector’s premises. Now honest !\uvid loved
gossip well, and considered it a part of his duty as con-
stable to be well up in all events and rumours which hap-
pened or arose within his liberties. But he loved his bees
better than gossip, and, as he was now in hourly expectation
that they would be swarming, was working, as has been
said, in his summer-house, that he might be at hand at the
critical moment. The rough table on which he was seated
commanded a view of the hives; his big scissors and some
shreds of velveteen lay near him on the table, also the strect-
door key and an old shovel, of which the uscs wil] appear
presently. '
R2
244 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

On his knees lay the black velveteen coat, the Sunday
garment of Harry Winburn, to which he was fitting new
sleeves. In his exertions at the top of the chimney in
putting out the fire Harry had grievously damaged the gar-
ment in question. The farmer had presented him with five
shillings on the occasion, which sum was quite inadequate to
the purchase of a new coat, and Harry, being too proud to
call the farmer’s attention to the special damage which he had
suffered in his service, had contented himself with bringing
his old coat to be new sleeved.

Harry was a favourite with the constable on account of his
intelligence and independence, and because of his relations
with the farmers of Englebourn on the allotment question.
Although by his office the representative of law and order in
the parish, David was a man of the people, and sympathized
with the peasantry more than with the farmers. He had
passed some years of his apprenticeship at Reading, where
he had picked up notions on political and social questions
much ahead of the Englebourn worthies. When he returned
to his native village, being a wise man, he had kept his new
lights in the background, and consequently had succeeded in
the object of his ambition, and had been appointed constable.
His reason for seeking the post was a desire to prove that the
old joke as to the manliness of tailors had no application to
his case, and this he had established to the satisfaction of all
the neighbourhood by the resolute manner in which, when-
ever called on, he performed his duties. And, now that his
character was made and his position secure, he was not so
careful of betraying his leanings, and had lost some custom
amongst the farmers in consequence of them.

The job on which he was employed naturally turned his
thoughts to Harry. He stitched away, now weighing in his
mind whether he should not go himself to Farmer Groves, and
represent to him that he ought to give Harry a new coat ;
now rejoicing over the fact that the rector had decided to let
Harry have another acre of the allotment Jand ; now specu-
lating on the attachment of his favourite to the gardener’s
daughter, and whether he could do anything to forward his
suit. In the pursuit of which thoughts he had forgotten all
about his bees, when suddenly a great humming arose, fol-
lowed by a rush through the air like the passing of an express
train, which recalled him to hiriself. He jumped from the
table, casting aside the coat, and, seizing the key and shovel,
hurried out into the garden, beating the two together with all
his might.

The process in question, known in country phrase as “ tang-
THE ENGLEBOURN CONSTABLE. 245

ing,” is founded upon the belief that the bees will not settle
unless under the influonce of this peculiar music ; and the
constable, holding faithfully to the popular belief, rushed
down his garden, “ tanging ” as though his life depended upon
it, in the hopes that the soothing sound would induce the
swarm to settle at once on his own apple trees.

Is “tanging” a superstition or not? People learned in
bees ought to know, but I never happened to meet one who
had settled the question. It is curious how such beliefs or
superstitions fix themselves in the popular mind of a country
side, and are held by wise and simple alike. David the con-
stable was a most sensible and open-minded man of his time
and class, but Kemble or Akerman, or other learned Anglo-
Saxon scholar would have vainly explained to him that
“tang,” is but the old word for “to hold,” and that the object
of “ tanging” is, not to lure the bees with sweet music of key
and shovel, but to give notice to the neighbours that they
have swarmed, and that the owner of the maternal hive means
to hold on to his right to the emigrants. David would have
listened to the lecture with pity, and have retained unshaken
belief in his music.

In the present case, however, the tanging was of little
avail, for the swarm, after wheeling once or twice in the air,
disappeared from the eyes of the constable over the rector’s
wall. He went on “tanging” violently for a minute or two,
and then paused to consider what was to be done. Should
he get over the wall into the rector’s garden at once, or should
he go round and ask leave to carry his search into the par-
sonage grounds? As a man and beo-fancier he was on the
point of following straight at orfve, over wall and fence ; but
the constable was also strong within him. He was not on
the best of terms with old Simon, the rector’s gardener, and
his late opposition to Miss Winter in the matter of the sing-
ing also came into his mind. So he resolved that the parish
constable would lose caste by disregarding his neighbour’s
boundaries, and was considering what to do next, when he
heard a footstep and short cough on the other side of the wall
which he recognised.

“Be you there, Maester Simon?” he called out. Where-
upon the walker on the other side pulled up, and after a
second appeal answered shortly —

“ Hes.” Y

“ Hev’ee seed aught o’ my bees? Thaay’ve a bin’ and riz,
and gone off somweres athert the wall.” —

“Wes, I seen ’em.”

“ Wer’ be ’em then?”
246 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“ Aal-amang wi’ ourn in the limes.”

“ Aal-amang wi’ yourn,” exclaimed the constable. “ Drattle
‘em. Thaay be mwore trouble than they be wuth,”

“‘T knowed as thaay wur yourn zoon as ever I sot eyes on
’em,” old Simon went on.

“How did’ee know ’em then ?” asked the constable.

“’Cause thine be aal zettin’ crass-leggéd,” said Simon, with
achuckle. “Thee medst cum and pick’em all out if thee’st
a mind to ’t.”

Simon was mollified by his own joke, and broke into a
short, dry cachination, half laugh, half cough; while the
constable, who was pleased and astonished to find his neigh-
bour in such a good humour, hastened to get an empty hive
and a pair of hedger’s gloves—fortified with which he left
his cottage and made the best of his way up street towards
the Rectory gate, hard by which stood Simon’s cottage. The
old gardener was of an impatient nature, and the effect of
the joke had almost time to evaporate, and Simon was fast
relapsing into his usual state of mind towards his neighbour
before the latter made his appearance.

“ Wher’ hast been so long?” he exclaimed, when the con-
stable joined him. :

“T seed the young missus and t’other young lady a standin’
talkin’ afore the door,” said David ; “so I stopped back, so
as not to disturve ’em.”

“Be ’em gone in? Who was ’em talkin’ to?”

“To thy missus, and thy daarter too, I b’lieve ’twas.
Thiay be both at whoam, bean’t ’em?”

“Like enough. But what was ’em zayin’?”

“T couldn’t heer nothin’ partic’lar, but I judged as ’twas
summat about Sunday and the fire.”

“°Tis na use for thaay to go on fillin’ our pleace wi’ botiles.
I dwon’t mean to take no mwore doctor’s stuff.”

Simon, it may be said, by the way, had obstinately refused
to take any medicine since his fall, and had maintained a
constant war on tho subject, both with his own womon and
with Miss Winter, whom he had impressed more than ever
with a belicf in his wrongheadedness.

“ Ah! and how be’ce, tho’, Maester Simon?” said David ;
“J didn’t mind to ax afore. You dwon’t feel no wus for
your fall, I hopes 7”

“T feels a bit stiffish like, and as if summat wur cuttin’ m’
at times, when I lifts up my arms.”

‘Tis a mercy ‘tis no wus,” said Dawid; “we bean’t so
young nor lissom as we was, Maester Simon.”

To which remark Simon replied by a grunt. He disliked
THE ENGLEBOURN CONSTABLE. 247 .

allusions to his age—a rare dislike amongst his class in that
part of the country. Most of the people are fond of making
themselves out older than they are, and love to dwell on their
experiences, and believe, as firmly as the rest of us, that
everything has altered for the worse in the parish and district
since their youth.

But Simon, though short of words and temper, and an
uncomfortable acquaintance in consequence, was inclined to
be helpful enough in other ways. The constable, with his
assistance, had very soon hived his swarm of cross-legged
docs. :

Thon the: constable insisted on Simon’s coming with him
and taking a glass of ale, which, after a little coquetting,
Simon consented to do. So, after carrying his re-capture
safely home, and erecting the hive on a three-legged stand of
his own workmanship, he hastened to rejoin Simon, and the
two soon found themselves in the bar of the “Red Lion.”

The constable wished to make tho most of this opportunity,
and so began at once to pump Simon as to his intentions
with regard to his daughter. But Simon was not easy to
lead in any way whatever, and seemed in a more than usually
no-business-of-yours line about his daughter. Whether he
had any one in his eye for her or not, David could not make
out; but one thing he did: make out, and it grieved him
much. Old Simon was in a touchy and unfriendly state of
mind against Harry, who, he said, was falling into bad ways,
and beginning to think much too much of his self. Why was
he to be wanting more allotment ground than any one else ?
Simon had himself given Harry some advice on the point,
but not to much purpose, it would seem, as he summed up
his notions on the subject by the remark that, “”I'was waste
of soap to lather an ass.”

The constable now and then made a stand for his young
friend, but very judiciously ; and, after feeling his way for
some time, he came to the conclusion—as, indeed, the truth
was—that Simon was jealous of Harry’s talent for growing
flowers, and had been driven into his present frame of mind
at hearing Miss Winter and her cousin talking about the
flowers at Dame Winburn’s under his very nose for the last
four or five days. They had spoken thus to interest the old
“man, meaning to praise Harry to him. The fact was, that
the old gardener was one of those men who never can stand
hearing other people praised, and think that all such praise
must be meant in dopreciation of themselves.

When tliey had finished their alo, the afternoon was getting
on, and the constable rose to go back to his work ; while old
248 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

Simon declared his intention of going down to the hay-field,
to see how the mowing was getting on. He was sure that
the hay would never be made properly, now that he couldn’t
be about as much as usual.

Tn another hour the coat was finished, and the constable,
being uneasy in his mind, resolved to carry the garment
home himself at once, and to have a talk with Dame Winburn.
So he wrapped the coat in a handkerchief, put it under his
arm, and set off down the village.

He found the dame busy with her washing ; and after
depositing his parcel sat down on the settle to have a talk with
her. They soon got on the subject which was always upper-
most in her mind, her son’s prospects, and she poured out
to the constable her troubles. First there was this sweet-
hearting after old Simon’s daughter,—not that Dame Win-
burn was going to say anything against her, though she
might have her thoughts as well as other folk, and for her
part she liked to see girls that were fit for something besides
dressing themselves up like their betters,—but what worrited
her was to see how Harry took it to heart. He wasn’t like
himself, and she couldn’t see how it was all toend. It made
him fractious too, and he was getting into trouble about his
work. He had left his regular place, and was gone mowing
with a gang, most of them men out of the parish that she
knew nothing about, and likely not to be the best of company.
And it was all very well in harvest time, when they could go
and earn good wages at mowing and reaping anywhere about,
and no man could earn better than her Harry, but when it came
to winter again she didn’t see but what he might find the
want of a regular place, and then the farmers mightu’t tako
him on; and his own land that ho had got, and scemed to
think so much of, mightn’t turn out all he thought it would.
And so in fact the old lady was troubled in her mind, and
only made the constable more uneasy. He had a vague sort
of impression that he was in some way answerable for Harry,
who was a good deal with him, and was fond of coming about
his place, And although his cottage happened to be next to
old Simon’s, which might account for the fact to some extent,
yet the’ constable was conscious of having talked to his young
friend on many matters in a way which might have unsettled
him, and encouraged his natural tendency to stand up for his
own rights and independence, and he knew well enough that
this temper was not the one which was likely to keep a
labouring man out of trouble in the parish.

He did not allow his own misgivings, however, to add to
the widow’s troubles, but, on the contrary, cheered her by
THE ENGLEBOURN CONSTABLE. 249

praising up Harry as much as even she could desire, and
prophesying that all would come right, and that those that
lived would see her son as respected as any man in the parish ;
he shouldn’t be surprised, indeed, if he were churchwarden
before he died. And then, astonished at his own boldness,
and feeling that he was not capable of any higher flight of
imagination, the constable rose to take his leave. He asked
where Harry was working, and, finding that he was at mowing
in the Danes’ Close, set off to look after him. The kind-
hearted constable could not shake off the feeling that some-
thing was going to happen to Harry which would get him
into trouble, and he wanted to assure himself that as yet
nothing had gone wrong. Whenever one has this sort of
vague feeling about a friend, there is a natural and irresistible
impulse to go and look after him, and to be with him.

The Danes’ Close was a part of the glebe, a large field of
some ten acres or so in extent, close to the village. Two
footpaths ran across it, so thot it was almost common pro-
perty, and the village children considered it as much their
playground as the green itself. They trampled the grass a
good deal more than seemed endurable in the eyes of Simon,
who managed the rector’s farming operations as well as the
garden ; but the children had their own way, notwithstanding
the threats he sometimes launched at them. Miss Winter
would have sooner lost all the hay than have narrowed their
amusements. It was the most difficult piece of mowing in
the parish, in consequence of the tramplings and of the large
crops it bore. The Danes, or some other unknown persons,
had made the land fat, perhaps with their carcases, and the
benefit had lasted to the time of our story. At any rate, the
field bore splendid crops, and the mowers always got an
extra shilling an acre for cutting it, by Miss Winter’s special
order, which was paid by Simon in the most ungracious
manner, and with many grumblings that it was enough to
ruin all the mowers in the countryside.

As the constable got over the stile into the hay-field, a
great part of his misgivings passed out of his head. He was
a simple kindly man, whose heart lay open to all influences
of scene and weather, and the Danes’ Close, full of life and
joy and merry sounds, as seen under the slanting rays of the
evening sun, was just the place to rub all the wrinkles out
of him.

The constable, however, is not singular in this matter.

What man amongst us all, if he will think the matter over
calmly and fairly, can honestly say that there is any one spot
on the earth’s surface in which he has enjoyed so much real,
250 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

wholesome, happy life as in a hay-field? He may have won
renown on horseback or on foot at the sports and pastimes in
which Englishmen glory ; he may have shaken off all rivals,
time after time, across the vales of Aylesbury, or of Berks, or
any other of our fumous hunting counties; he may have
' stalked the oldest and shyest buck in Scotch forests, and
killed the biggest salmon of the year in the Tweed, and trout
in the Thames ; he may have made topping averages in first-
rate matches of cricket; or have made long and perilous
marches, dear to memory, over boggy moor, or mountain, or
glacier ; he may have successfully attended many brealfast-
parties within drive of Mayfair, on velvet lawns, surrounded
by all the fairy-land of pomp, and beauty, and luxury, which
London can pour out ; he may have shone at private theatricals
and at-homes; his voice may have sounded over hushed audi-
ences at St. Stephen’s, or in the law courts ; or he may have
had good times in any other scenes of pleasure or triumph
open to Englishmen ; but I much doubt whether, on putting
his recollections fairly and quietly together, he would not say
at last that the fresh-mown hay-field is the place where he
has spent the most hours which he would like to live over
again, the fewest which he would wish to forget.

As children, we stumble about the new-mown hay, revelling
in the many colours of the prostrate grass and wild floweis,
and in the power of tumbling where we please without hurt-
ing ourselves: as small boys, we pelt one another and the
village school-girls and our nursemaids and young lady cousing
with the hay, till, hot and weary, we retire to tea or syllabub
boneath the shade of some great oak or chin standing up like
a monarch out of the fair pasture ; or, following the mowers,
we rush with eagerness on the treasures disclosed by the
scythe-stroke,—the nest of the unhappy late-laying titlark,
or careless field-mouse : as big boys, we toil ambitiously with
the spare forks and rakes, or climb into the wagons and receive
with open arms the delicious load as it is pitched up from
below, and rises higher and higher as we pass along the long
lines of haycocks : a year or two later we are strolling there
with our first sweethearts, our souls and tongues loaded with
‘sweet thoughts and soft speeches; we take a turn with the
scythe as the bronzed mowers lie in the shade for their short
rest, and willingly pay our footing for the feat. Again, we
come back with book in pocket, and our own children tumbling
about as we did before them; now romping with them, and
smothering them with the sweet-smelling load—now musing
and reading and dozing away the delicious summer evenings.
And so shall we not come back to the end, enjoying as grand-
‘THE ENGLEBOURN CONSTABLE. 251.

fathers the lovemaking and the rompings of younger genera.
tions yet?
Were any of us ever really disappointed or melancholy in
a hay-field? Did we ever lio fairly back on a haycock and
look up into the blue sky, and listen to the merry sounds,
the whetting of scythes and the laughing prattle of women
and children, and think evil thoughts of the world or our
brethren? Not we! or if we have so done, we ought to be
ashamed of ourselves, and deserve never to be out of town
again during hay-harvest. '
There is something in the sights and sounds of a hay-field
which seems to touch the same chord in one as Lowell’s lines
in the “‘ Lay of Sir Launfal,” which end—
** For a cap and bells our lives we pay ;
‘We wear out our lives with toiling and tasking ;
It is only Heaven that is given away ;
It is only God may be had for the asking.

Thoro is uo prico sot on tho Javish summor,
And Juno may bo had by the poorest comor.”

But the philosophy of the hay-field remains to be written.
Let us hope that whoovor takes the subject in hand will not
dissipate all its sweetness in the process of the inquiry wherein
the charm lies.

The constable had not the slightest notion of speculating
on his own sensations, but was very glad, nevertheless, to find
his spirits rising as he stepped into the Danes’ Close. All
the hay was down, except a small piece in the further corner,
which the mowers were upon. There were groups of children
in many parts of the field, and women to look after them, _
mostly sitting on the fresh swarth, working and gossiping,
‘while the little ones played about. He had not gone twenty
yards before he was stopped by the violent crying of a child ;
and, turning towards the voice, he saw a little girl of six or
seven, who had strayed from her mother, scrambling out of
the ditch, and wringing her hands in an agony of pain and
terror. The poor little thing had fallen into a bed of nettles,
and was very much frightened, and not a little hurt, The
constable caught her up in his arms, soothing her as well as
he could, and hurrying along till he found some dock-leaves,
sat down with her on his knee, and rubbed her hands with
the leaves, repeating the old saw—

“ Out nottle,
In dock :
Dock shall ha’

A new smock ;
Nettle shan’t

o”

Ha’ narrun’.
252 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

What with the rubbing, and the constable’s kind manner,
and listening to the doggrel rhyme, and feeling that nettle
would get her deserts, the little thing soon ceased crying.
But several groups had been drawn towards the place, and
amongst the rest came Miss Winter and her cousin, who had
been within hearing of the disaster. The constable began to
feel very nervous and uncomfortable, when he looked up from
his charitable occupation, and suddenly found the rector’s
daughter close to him. But his nervousness was uncalled for.
The sight of what he was about, and of the tender way in
which he was handling the child, drove all remembrance of
his heresies and contumaciousness in the matter of psalmody
out of her head. She greeted him with frankness and cor-
diality, and presently—when he had given up his charge to
the mother, who was inclined at first to be hard with the poor
little sobbing truant—came up, and said she wished to speak
a few words to him.

David was highly delighted at Miss Winter’s manner ; but
he walked along by her side not quite comfortable in his
mind, for fear lest she should start the old subject of dispute,
and then his duty as a public man would have to be done at
all risk of offending her. He was much comforted when she
began by asking him whether he had seen much of Widow
Winburn’s son lately.

David admitted that he generally saw him every day.

Did he know that he had left his place, and had quarrelled
with Mr. Tester?

Yes, David knew that Harry had had words with Farmer
Tester ; but Farmer Tester was a sort that it was very hard
not to have words with.

“ Still, it is very bad, you know, for so young a man to be
quarrelling with the farmers,” said Miss Winter.

“Twas the varmer as quarrelled wi’ he, you see, miss,”
David answered, “which makes all the odds. He cum to
Harry all in a fluster, and said as how he must drow up the
land as he'd a’got, or he’s place—one or tother on’em. And
so you see, miss, as Harry wur kind o’ druv to it. “Twarn’t
likely as he wur to drow up the land now as he wur just rep-
pin’ the benefit ov it, and all for Varmer Tester’s place, wich
be no sich gurt things, miss, arter all.”

“Very likely not; but I fear it may hinder his getting
employment. The other farmers will not take him on now if
they can help it.”

“No ; thaay falls out wi’ one another bad enough, and
calls all manner o’ names. But thaay can’t abide a poor man
to speak his mind, nor take his own part, not one on ’em,”
THE ENGLEBOURN CONSTABLE. 253

said David, looking at Miss Winter, as if doubtful how she
might take his strictures ; but she went on, without any show
of dissent, —

“TJ shall try to get him work for my father ; but I am sorry
to find that Simon does not scem to like the idea of taking
him on. It is not easy always to make out Simon’s mean-
ing. When I spoke to him, he said something about a
bleating sheep losing a bite ; but I should think this young
man is not much of a talker in general ?” she paused.

“That's true, miss,” said David, energetically ; “there
ain’t a quieter spoken or steadier man at his work in the
parish.”

“Ym very glad to hear you say so,” said Miss Winter,
“and I hope we may soon do something for him. But what
I want you to do just now is to speak a word to him about
the company he seems to be getting into.”

The constable looked somowhat aghast at this spooch of
Miss Winter's, but did not answer, not knowing to what she
was alluding. She saw that he did not understand, and went.
on—

“He is mowing to-day with a gang from the heath and
the next parish ; I am sure they are very bad men for him to
be with. I was so vexed when I found Simon had given
them the job; but he said they would get it all down
in a day, and be done with it, and that was all he cared
for.”

“ And ’tis a fine day’s work, miss, for five men,” said
David, looking over the field ; “and ’tis good work too, you
mind the swarth else,” and he picked up a handful of the
fallen grass to show her how near the ground it was cut.

‘Oh, yes, I have no doubt they are very good mowers,
but they are not good men, I’m sure. There, do you see now
who it is that is bringing them beer? I hope you will see
Widow Winburn’s son, and speak to him, and try to keep
him out of bad company. We should be all so sorry if he
were to get into trouble.”

David promised to do his best, and Miss Winter wished
him good evening, and rejoined her cousin.

“Well, Katie, will he do your behest ?”

“Yes, indeed ; and I think he is the best person to do it.
Widow Winburn thinks her son minds him more than any
one.”

“Do you know, I don’t think it will ever go right. I’m
sure she doesn’t care the least for him.”

“Oh, you have only just seen her once for two or three
minutes.”

 
254 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“ And then that wretched old Simon is so perverse about
it,” said the cousin. “ You will never manage him.”

“Ho is very provoking, certainly ; but I get my own way
generally, in spite of him. And it is such a perfect plan,
isn’t it?”

“Qh, charming ! if you can only bring it about.”

“Now we must be really going home, papa will be getting
restless.” So the young ladies left the hay-field deep in castle-
building for Harry Winburn and the gardener’s daughter,
Miss Winter being no more able to resist a tale of true love
than her cousin, or the rest of her sex. They would have
been more or less than women if they had not taken an
interest in so absorbing a passion as poor Harry’s. By the
time they reached the Rectory gate they had installed him in
the gardener’s cottage with his bride and mother (for there
would be plenty of room for the widow, and it would be so
convenient to have the laundry close at hand), and had pen-
sioned old Simon, and sent him and his old wife to wrangle
away the rest of their time in the widow's cottage. Castle-
building is a delightful and harmless exercise. ;

Meantime David the constable had gone towards the
mowers, who were taking a short rest before finishing off the
last half-acre which remained standing. The person whose
appearance had so horrified Miss Winter was drawing beer
for them from a small barrel. This was an elderly raw-boned
woman with a skin burnt as brown as.that of any of the
mowers. She wore a man’s hat and spencer, and had a strong
harsh voice, and altogether was not a prepossessing person.
She wont by the name of Daddy Cowell in the parish, and
had beon for years a proscribed person. Sho lived up on the
heath, often worked in the fields, took in lodgers, and smoked
a short clay pipe. These eccentricities, when added to her
half-male clothing, were quite enough to account for the sort
of outlawry in which she lived. Miss Winter, and other good
people of Inglebourn, believed her capable of any crime, and
tho childven wero taught to stop talking and playing, and
run away when she came near them ; but the constable, who
had had one or two search-warrants to execute in her house,
and had otherwise had frequent occasions of getting acquainted
with her in the course of his dutics, had by no moans so
ovil an opinion of her. He had never seen much harm
in her, he had often been heard to say, and she never made
pretence to much good. Nevertheless, David was by no
means pleased to see her acting as purveyor to the gang
which Harry had joined. He knew how such contact
would damage him in the eyes of all the parochial respect-
THE SCHOOLS. 255

abilities, and was anxious to do his best to get him clear
of it.

With these views he went up to the men, who were resting
under a large elm tree, and complimented them on their day’s
work. They were themselves well satisfied with it, and with
one another. When men have had sixteen hours’ or so hard
mowing in company, and none of them can say that the others
have not done their fair share, they are apt to rospect ono
anothor more at the ond of it. It was Haorry’s first day with
this gang, who were famous for going about the neighbour-
hood, and doing great feats in hay and wheat harvest. They
were satisfied with him and he with them, none the less so
probably in his present frame of mind, because they also were
loose on the world, servants of no regular master. It was a
bad time to make his approaches, the constable saw ; so, after
sitting by Harry, until the gang rose to finish off their work
in the cool of the evening, and asking him to come round by
his cottage on his way homo, which Harry promisod to do, he
walked back to the village.

CHAPTER XXIV.
THH SOHOOLS.

Turre is no more characteristic spot in Oxford than the
quadrangle of the schools. Doubtless in the times when the
University held and exercised the privileges of infang-thief
and outfang-thief, and other such old-world rights, there must
have been a place somewhere within the libertics devoted to
examinations even more exciting than the great-go. But.
since alma mater has ceased to take cognizance of “ treasons,
insurrections, felonies, and mayhem,” it is here, in that fateful
and inexorable quadrangle, and the buildings which surround
it, that she exercises her most potent spells over the spirits
of her children. I suppose that a man being tried for his
life must be more uncomfortable than an undergraduate being
examined for his degree, and that to be hung—perhaps even
to be pilloried—must be worse than to be plucked. But
after all, the foelings in both cases must bo essontially the
same, only more intense in thé former; and an institution
which can examine a man (in literis humanioribus, in hu-
manities so called) once a year for two or three days at a time,
has nothing to complain of, though it has no longer the power
of hanging him at once out of hand.

The schools’ quadrangle is for the most part a lonely place.
Men pass through the melancholy iron-gates by which that
256 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

quadrangle is entered on three sides—from Broad-street, from
the Ratcliffe, and from New College-lane—when necessity
leads them that way, with alert step and silently. No nurse-
maids or children play about it. Nobody lives in it. Only
whon the examinations are going on you may seo a few
hooded figures who walk as though conscious of the powers
of academic life and death which they wield, and a good deal
of shuddering undergraduate life flitting about the place—
luckless youths, in white ties and bands, who are undergoing
the peine forte et dure with different degrees of composure ;
and their friends who are there to look after them, You
may go in and watch the torture yourself if you are so minded,
for the vivd voce schools are open to the public. But one such
experiment will be enough for you, unless you are very hard-
hearted. The sight of the long table, behind which sit Minos,
Rhadamanthus and Co. full-robed, stern of face, soft of speech,
seizing their victim in turn, now letting him run a little way
as a cat does a mouse, then drawing him back, with claw of
wily question, probing him on this side and that, turning him
inside out—the row of victims opposite, pale or flushed, of
anxious or careless mien, according to temperament, but ono
and all on the rack as they bend over the allotted paper, or
read from the well-thumbed book—the scarcely-less-to-be-
pitied row behind of future victims, “sitting for the schools”
as it is called, ruthlessly brought hither by statutes, to watch
the sufferings they must hereafter undergo—should fill the
friend of suffering humanity with thoughts too deep for tears.
Through the long day till four o’clock, or later, the torture
lasts. Then the last victim is dismissed ; the men who are
“sitting for the schools” fly all ways to their colleges, silently,
in search of relief to their over-wrought feelings—probably also
of beer, the undergraduate’s universal specific. The beadles
close those ruthless doors for a mysterious half-hour on the
examiners. Outside in the quadrangle collect by twos and
threes the friends of the victims, waiting for the re-opening
of the door, and the distribution of the “testamurs.” The
testamurs, lady readers will be pleased to understand, are
certificates under the hands of the examiners that your sons,
brothers, husbands, perhaps, have successfully undergone tho
torture. But, if husbands, oh, go not yourselves, and send
not your sons to wait for the testamur of the head of your
house ; for Oxford has seldom seen a sight over which she
would more willingly draw the veil with averted face than
that of the youth rushing wildly, dissolved in tears, from the
schools’ quadrangle, and shouting “ Mamma! pape’s plucked |
papa’s plucked !”
THE SCHOOLS. 257

The examination is nearly over which is to decide the
academical fate of some of our characters ; the paper-work of
the candidates for honours has been going on for the last
week. Every morning our three St. Ambrose acquaintances
have mustered with the rest for the anxious day’s work, after
such breakfasts as they have been able to eat under the
circumstances. They take their work in very different ways.
Grey rushes nervously back to his rooms whenever he is out
of the schools for ten minutes, to look up dates and dodges.
He worries himself sadly over every blunder which he dis-
covers himself to have made, and sits up nearly all night
cramming, always hoping for a better to-morrow. Blake
keeps up his affected carelessness to the last, quizzing the
examiners, laughing over the shots he has been making in
the last paper. His shots, it must be said, turn out well for
the most part; in the taste paper particularly, as they com-
pare notes, he seems to have almost struck the bull’s-eye in
his answers to one. or two questions which Hardy and Grey
have passed over altogether. When he is wide of the mark
he passes it off with some jesting remark “that a fool can ask
in five minutes more questions than a wise man can answer
in a week,” or wish “that the examiners would play fair,
and change sides of the table for an hour with the candidates,
for a finish.” But he, too, though he does it on the sly, is
cramming with his coach at every available spare moment.
Hardy had finished his reading a full thirty-six hours before
the first day of paper-work, and had braced himself for the
actual struggle by two good nights’ rest and a long day on
the river with Tom. He had worked hard from the first,
and so had really mastered his books. And now, fecling
that he has fairly and honestly done his best, and that if he
fails it will be either from bad luck or natural incapacity, and
not from his ‘own fault, he manages to keep a cooler head
than any of his companions in trouble.

The week’s paper-work passes of uneventfully: then comes
the vied voce work for the candidates for honours. They go
in, in alphabetical order, four a day, for one more day’s work,
the hardest of all, and then there is nothing more to do but
wait patiently for the class list. On these days there is o
good attendance in the enclosed space to which the public
are admitted. The front seats are often occupied by the
private tutors of the candidates, who are thero, like New-
market trainers, to see the performance of their stables,
marking how each colt bears pressing, and comports himself
when the pinch comes. They watch the examiners, too,
carefully, to see what line they take, whether science, or

B
258 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

history, or scholarship is likely to tell most, that they may
handle the rest of their starters accordingly. Behind them,
for the most part, on the hindermost benches of the flight of
raised steps, anxious younger brothers and friends sit, for a
few minutes at a time, flitting in and out in much unrest, and
making the objects of their solicitude more nervous than ever
by their sympathy.

. It is now the afternoon of the second day of the vivd voce
examinations in honours.: Blake is one of the men in. His
tutor, Hardy, Grey, Tom, and other St. Ambrose men, have
all been in the schools more or less during his examination,
and now Hardy and Tom are waiting outside the doors for the
issuing of the testamurs.

The group is small enough. It is so much of course that a
class-man should get his testamur that there is no excite-
ment about it; generally the man himself stops to receive it.

The only anxious faces in the group are Tom’s and Hardy’s.
They have not exchanged a word for the last few minutes in
their short walk before the door. Now the examiners come
out and walk away towards their colleges, and the next minute
the door again opens and the clerk of the schools appears with
the slips of paper in his hand.

“ Now you'll see if I am not right,” said Hardy, as they
gathered to the door with the rest. “TI tell you there isn’t
the least chance for him.”

The clerk read out the names inscribed on the testamurs
which he held, and handed them to the owners.

“Haven't you one for Mr. Blake of St. Ambrose?” said
Tom, desperately, as the clerk was closing the door.

“No, sir; none but those I have just given out,” answered
the clerk, shaking his head. The door closed, and they
turned away in silence for the first minute.

‘ “JT told you how it would be,” said Hardy, as they passed
out of the south gate into the Ratcliffe Quadrangle.

“ But he seemed to be doing so well when I was in.”

“You were not there at the time. I thought at first they
would have sent him out of the schools at once.”

“Tn his divinity, wasn’t it?”

“Yes; he was asked to repeat one of the Articles, and
didn’t know three words of it, From that moment I saw it
was all over, The examiner and he both lost their tempers,
and it went from bad to worse, till the examiner remarked
that he could have answered one of the questions he was
asking when he was ten yeare old, and Blake replied, So
could he. They gave him a paper in divinity afterwards, but
you could see there was no chance for him.”
 

 

258.

P.

“ Schools.

"In the

“Vivd voce.
THE SCHOOLS. 259

“ Poor fellow ! what will he do, do you think? How will
he take it?”

“T can’t tell. But I’m afraid it will be a very serious
matter for him. He was the ablest man in our year too.
What a pity !”

They got into St. Ambrose just as the bell for afternoon
chapel was going down, and went in. Blake was there, and
one look showed him what had happened. In fact he had
expected nothing else all day since his breakdown in the
Articles. Tom couldn’t help watching him during chapel ;
and afterwards, on that evening, acknowledged to a friend
that whatever else you might think of Blake, there was no
doubt about his gameness.

After chapel he loitered outside the door in the quadrangle,
talking just as usual, and before hall he loitered on the steps
in well-feigned carelessness, Everybody else was thinking of -
his breakdown ; some with real sorrow and sympathy ; others
as of any other nine-days’ wonder—pretty much as if the
favourite for the Derby had broken down ; others with ill-
concealed. triumph, for Blake had many enemies amongst the
men. _ He himself was conscious enough of what they were
thinking, but maintained his easy, gay manner through it
all, though the effort it cost him was tremendous. The only
allusion he made to what had happened which Tom heard was
when he asked him to wine. '

“Are you engaged to-night, Brown?” he said. Tom
answered in the negative. “Come to me, then,” he went
on. ‘ You won't get another chance in St. Ambrose. I have
a few bottles of old wine left; we may as well floor them:
they won’t bear moving to a hall with their master.”

And then he turned to some other men and asked them,
every one in fact whom he came across, especially the dominant
fast set with whom he had chiefly lived. These young gentle-
men (of whom we had a glimpse at the outset, but whose
company we have carefully avoided ever since, seeing that
their sayings and doings were of a kind of which the less said
the better) had been steadily going on in their way, getting
more and more idle, reckless, and insolent. Their doings had
been already so scundalous on several occasions as to call for
solemn meetings of the college authorities ; but, no vigorous
measures having followed, such deliberations had only made
matters worse, and given the men a notion that they could
do what they pleased with impunity. This night the climax
had come ; it was as though the flood of misrule had at last
broken banks and overflowed the whole colloge.

For two hours the wine party in Blake’s large ground-floor

82
260 © TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

rooms was kept up with a wild reckless mirth, in keeping
with the host’s temper. Blake was on his mettle. He had
asked every man with whom he had a speaking acquaintance,
as if he wished to face out his disaster at once to the whole
world. Many of the men came feeling uncomfortable, and
would sooner have stayed away and treated the pluck as a
real misfortune. But after all Blake was the best judge of"
how he liked it to be treated, and, if he had a fancy for
giving a great wine on the occasion, the civilest thing to do
was to go to it. And so they went, and wondered as much
as he could desire at the brilliant coolness of their host,
speculating and doubting nevertheless in their own secret
hearts whether it wasn’t acting after all. Acting it was, no
doubt, and not worth the doing; no acting is. But ono
must make allowances. No two men take a thing just alike,
and very few can sit down quietly when they have lost a fall
in life’s wrestle, and say, “ Well, here I am, beaten no doubt
this time. By my own fault too. Now, take a good look at
me, my good friends, as I know you all want to do, and say
your say out, for I mean getting up again directly and having
another turn at it.”

Blake drank freely himself, and urged his guests to drink,
which was a superfluous courtesy for the most part. Many
of the men left his rooms considerably excited. They had
dispersed for an hour or so to billiards, or a stroll in the
town, and at ten o’clock reassembled at supper parties, of
which there were several in college this evening, especially a
monster one at Chanter’s rooms—a ‘“ champagne supper,” as
he had carefully and ostentatiously announced on the cards of
invitation.

This flaunting the champagne in their faces had been
resented by Drysdale and others, who drank his champagne
in tumblers, and then abused it and clamoured for beer in
the middle of the supper. Chanter, whose prodigality in
some ways was only exceeded by his general meanness, had
lost his temper at this demand, and insisted that, if they
wanted beer, they might send for it themselves, for he
wouldn’t pay for it. This protest was treated with up-
roarious contempt, and gallons of ale soon made their ap-
pearance in college jugs and tankards. The tables were
cleared, and songs (most of them of more than doubtful
character), cigars, and all sorts of compounded drinks, from
claret cup to egg flip, succeeded. The company, recruited
constantly as men came into college, was getting more and
more excited every minute. The scouts cleared away and
carried off all relics of the supper, and then left; still the
THE SCHOOLS. 261

revel went on, till, by midnight, the mey were ripe for any
mischief or folly which those among them who retained any
brains at all could suggest. The signal for breaking up was
given by the host's falling from his seat. Some of the men
rose with a shout to put him to bed, which they accom-
plished with difficulty, after dropping him several times, and
left him to snore off the effects of his debauch with one of
his boots on. Others took to doing what mischief occurred
to them in his rooms. One man, mounted on a chair with a
cigar in his mouth which had gone out, was employed in
pouring the contents of a champagne bottle with unsteady
hand into the clock on the montel-picce. Chanter was a
particular man in this sort of furniture, and his clock was
rather a speciality. It was a large bronze figure of Atlas,
supporting the globe in the shape of a time-piece. Un-
luckily, the maker, not anticipating the sort of test to which
his work would be subjected, had ingeniously left the hole
for winding up in the top of the clock, so that unusual
facilities existed for drowning the world-carrier, and he was
already almost at* his last tick. One or two men‘\were
morally aiding and abetting, and physically supporting the
experimenter on clocks, who found it difficult to stand to his
work by himself. Another knot of young gentlemen stuck
to the tables, and so continued to shout out scraps of song,
sometimes standing on their chairs, and sometimes tumbling
off them. Another set were employed on the amiable work
of pouring beer and sugar into three new pairs of polished
leather dress boots, with coloured tops to them, which they
discovered in the dressing-room. Certainly, as they remarked,
Chanter could have no possible use for so many dress boots
at once, and it was a pity the beer should be wasted ; but on
the whole, perhaps, the materials were never meant for com-
bination, and had better have been kept apart. Others had
gone away to break into the kitchen, headed by one who
had just come into college and vowed he would have some.
supper ; and others, to screw up an unpopular tutor, or to”
break into the rooms of some inoffensive freshman. The
remainder mustered on the grass in the quadrangle, and
began playing leap-frog and larking one another. Amongst
these last was our hero, who had been at Blake’s wine and
one of the quieter supper parties; and, though not so far
gone as most of his companions, was by no means in a state
in which he would have cared to meet the Dean. He lent
his hearty aid accordingly to swell the noise and tumult,
which was becoming something out of the way even for
St. Ambrose’s. As the leap-frog was flagging, Drysdale
262 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

suddenly appeared carrying some silver plates which were
used on solemn occasions in the common room, and allowed
to be issued on special application for gentlemen-commoners’
parties. A rush was made towards him.

“ Halloa, here’s Drysdale with lots of swag,” shouted one.
“What are you going to do with it?” cried another. Drys-
dale paused a moment with the peculiarly sapient look of a
tipsy man who has suddenly lost the thread of his ideas, and
then suddenly broke out with—

“Hang it! I forget. But let’s play at quoits with them.”

The proposal was received with applause, and the game
began, but Drysdale soon left it. He had evidently some
notion in his head which would not suffer him to turn to
anything else till he had carried it out. He went off accord-
ingly to Chanter’s rooms, while the quoits went on in the
front quadrangle.

About this time, however, the Dean and bursar, and the
tutors who lived in college, began to be conscious that some-
thing unusual was going on. They were quite used to distant
choses, and great noises in the men’s rooms, and to a fair
amount of shouting and skylarking in the quadrangle, and
were long-suffering men, not given to interfering ; but there
must be an end to all endurance, and the state of things
which had arrived could no longer be met by a turn in bed
and a growl at the uproars and follies of undergraduates.

Presently some of the rioters on the grass caught sight of
a figure gliding along the side of the quadrangle towards the
Dean's staircase. A shout arose that the enemy was up, but
little heed was paid to it by the greater number. Then
another figure passed from the Dean’s staircase to the porter’s
lodge. Those of the men who had any sense left saw that
it was time to quit, and, after warning the rest, went off
towards their rooms. Tom on his way to his staircase caught
sight of a figure seated in a remote corner of the inner quad-
rangle, and made for it, impelled by natural curiosity. He

Gtound Drysdale seated on the ground with several silver
tankards by his side, employed to the best of his powers
in digging a hole with one of the college carving-knives.

“Halloa, Drysdale! what are you up to?” he shouted,
laying his hand on his shoulder.

“Providing for poshterity,” replied Drysdale, gravely,
without looking up.

“What the deuce do you mean? Don’t be such an ass.
The Dean will be out in a minute. Get up and come along.”

“T tell you, old fellow,” said Drysdale, somewhat inar-
ticulately, and driving his knife into the ground again, “the
THE SCHOOLS, 263:

dons are going to spout the college plate. So J am burying
these articles for poshterity—”

“Hang posterity,” said Tom; “come along directly, or
you'll be caught and rusticated.”

“Go to bed, Brown—yow’e drunk, Brown,” replied Drys-
dale, continuing his work, and striking the carving-knife
into the ground so close to his own thigh that it made Tom
shudder. P

“ Here they are then,” he cried the next moment, seizing
Drysdale by the arm, as a rush of men came through the
passage into the back quadrangle, shouting and tumbling
along, and making in small groups for the different stair-
cases. The Dean and two of the tutors followed, and the
porter bearing a lantern. There was no time to be lost; so
Tom, after one more struggle to pull Drysdale up and hurry
him off, gave it up, and leaving him to his fate, ran across to
his own atnircnso.

Vor tho noxt half-hour the Doan and hia party patrolled
tho college, and succeeded at last in restoring order, though
not without some undignified and disagreeable passages,. The
lights on the staircases, which generally burnt all night, were
of course put out as they approached. On the first staircase
which they stormed, the porter’s lantern was knocked out of
his hand by an unseen adversary, and the light put out on
the bottom stairs. On the first landing the bursar trod on
a small terrier belonging to a fast freshman, and the dog
naturally thereupon bit the bursar’s leg; while his master
and other enfants perdus, taking advantage of the diversion,
rushed down the dark stairs, past the party of order, and
into the quadrangle, where they scattered amidst a shout of
laughter. While the porter was gone for a light, the Dean
and his party rashly ventured on a second ascent. Here an
unexpected catastrophe awaited them. On the top landing
lived one of the steadiest men in college, whose door had
been tried shortly before. He had been roused out of his
first sleep, and, vowing vengeance on the next comers, stood
behind his oak, holding his brown George, or huge earthen-
ware receptacle, half full of dirty water, in which his bed-
maker had been washing up his tea-things. Hearing stealthy
steps and whisperings on the stairs below, he suddenly threw
open his oak, discharging ‘the whole contents of his brown
George on the approaching authorities, with a shout of,
“Take that for your skulking.”

’ The exasperated Dean and tutors rushing on, seized their
astonished and innocent assailant, and after receiving ex-
planations, and the offer of clean towels, hurried off again
264 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

after the real enemy. And now the porter appeared again
with a light, and, continuing their rounds, they apprehended
and disarmed Drysdale, collected the college plate, marked
down others of the rioters, visited Chanter’s rooms, held a
parley with the one of their number who was screwed up in
his rooms, and discovered that the bars had been wrenched
out of the kitchen window. After which they retired to
sleep on their indignation, and quiet settled down again on
the ancient and venerable college.

The next morning at chapel many of the revellers met ; in
fact, there was a fuller attendance than usual, for every one
felt that something serious must be impending. After such
a night the dons must make a stand, or give up altogether.
The most reckless only of the fast set were absent. St. Cloud
was there, dressed even more precisely than usual, and looking
as if he were in the habit of going to bed at ten, and had
never heard of milk punch, Tom turned out not much the
worse himself, but in his heart feeling not a little ashamed of
the whole business ; of the party, the men, but, above all, of
himself. He thrust the shame back, however, as well as he
could, and: put a cool face on it. Probably most of the men
were in much the same state of mind. Even in St. Ambrose’s,
reckless and vicious as the college had become, by far the
greater part of the undergraduates would gladly have seen a
change in the direction of order and decency, and were sick
of the wretched licence of doing right in their own eyes, and
wrong in every other person’s.

As the men trooped out of chapel, they formed in corners
of the quadrangle, except the reading set, who went off
quictly to their rooms. There was a pause of a minute or
two. Neither principal, dean, tutor, nor fellow followed as
on ordinary occasions. “They're hatching something in the
outer chapel,” said one.

“Tt'll be a coarse time for Chanter, I take it,” said another.

“Was your name sent to the buttery for his supper?”

“No, I took d—d good care of that,” said St. Cloud, who
was addressed.

“Drysdale was caught, wasn’t he?”

“So I hear, and nearly frightened the Dean and the porter
out of their wits by staggering after them with a carving-
knife.”

“He'll be sacked, of course.”

“ Much he'll care for that.”

“Here they come, then ; by Jove, how black they look!”

The authorities now came out of the antechapel door, and
walked slowly across towards the Principal’s house in a body.
THE SOHOOLS, 265

At this moment, as ill-luck would have it, Jack trotted
into the front quadrangle, dragging after him the light steel
chain with which he was usually fastened up in Drysdale’s
scout’s room at night. He came innocently towards one and
another of the groups, and retired from each much astonished
at the low growl with which his acquaintance was repudiated
on all sides.

“Porter, whose dog is that?” said the Dean, catching
sight of him.

“Mr. Drysdale’s dog, sir, I think, sir,” answered the

rter.

“Probably the animal who bit me last night,” said the
bursar. His knowledge of dogs was small; if Jack had
fastened on him he would probably have been in bed from
the effects. .

“Turn the dog out of college,” said the Dean.

“Please, sir, he’s a very savage dog, sir,” said tho portor,
whoso respect for Jack was unbounded.

“Turn him out immediately,” replied the Dean.

The wretched porter, arming himself with a broom, ap-
proached Jack, and after some coaxing managed to catch hold
of the end of his chain, and began to lead him towards the
gates, carefully holding out the broom towards Jack’s nose
with his other hand, to protect himself. Jack at first hauled
away at his chain, and then began circling round the porter
at the full extent of it, evidently meditating an attack. Not-
withstanding the seriousness of the situation the ludicrous
alarm of the porter set the men laughing.

“Come along, or Jack will be pinning the wretched
Copas,” said Jervis; and he and Tom stepped up to the
terrified little man, and, releasing him, led Jack, who knew
them both well, out of college. ;

“Were you at that supper party?” said Jervis, as they
deposited Jack with an ostler, who was lounging outside the
gates, to be taken to Drysdale’s stables.

“No,” said Tom.

“Tm glad to hear it; there will be a pretty clean sweep
after last night’s doings.”

“ But I was in the quadrangle when they came out.”

“Not caught, eh?” said Jervis.

“No, luckily, I got to my own rooms at once.”

“Were any of the crew caught?” *

“ Not that I know of.”

“Well, we shall hear enough of it before lecture-time.”

Jervis was right. There was a meeting in the common
room directly after breakfast. Drysdale, anticipating his

ey
266 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

fate, took his name off before they sent for him. Chanter
and three or four others were rusticated for a year, and
Blake was ordered to go down at once. He was a scholar,
and what was to be done in his case would be settled at the
meoting at the end of term.

For twenty-four hours it was supposed that St. Cloud had
escaped altogether ; but at the end of that time he was
summoned before a meeting in the common room. The
tutor whose door had been so effectually screwed up that he
had been obliged to get out of his window by a ladder to
attend morning chapel, proved wholly unable to appreciate
the joke, and set himself to work to discover the perpetrators
of it. The door was fastened with long gimlets, which had
been screwed firmly in, and when driven well home, their
heads knocked off. The tutor collected the shafts of the
gimlets from the carpenter, who came to effect an entry for
him ; and, after careful examination, discovered the trade
mark, So, putting them in his pocket, he walked off into the
town, and soon came back with the information ho required,
which resulted in the rustication of St. Cloud, an event
which was borne by the college with the greatest equanimity.

Shortly afterwards Tom attended in the schools’ quad-
rangle again, to be present at the posting of the class list.
This time there were plenty of anxious faces; the quadrangle
was full of them. He folt almost as nervous himself as if
he were waiting for the third gun. He thrust himself
forward, and was amongst the first who caught sight of the
document. One look was enough for him, and the next
moment he was off at full speed to St. Ambrose, and, rushing
headlong into Hardy’s rooms, seized him by the hand, and
shook it vehemently.

“Tt’s all right, old fellow,” he cried, as soon as he could
catch his breath ; “it’s all right. Four firsts; you’re one of
them : well done!”

“ And Grey, where’s he ; is he all right?”

“Bless me, I forgot to look,” said Tom ; “I only read the
firsts, and then came off as hard as I could.”

“Then he is not a first.”

“No; I’m sure of that.”

“T must go and see him ; he deserved it far more than I.”

“No, by Jove, old boy,” said Tom, seizing him again by
the hand, “ that he didn’t ; nor any man that ever went into
the schools.”

“Thank you, Brown,” said Hardy, returning his warm
grip. “You do one good. Now to see poor Grey, and to
write to my dear old father before hall. Yancy him opening
COMMEMORATION. 267

the letter at breakfast the day after to-morrow! I only hope
it won’t hurt him.”

“Never fear. I don’t believe in people dying of joy, and
anything short of sudden death he won’t mind at the price.”

Hardy hurried off, and Tom went to his own rooms, and
smoked a cigar to allay his excitement, and thought about
his friend, and all they had felt together, and laughed and
mourned over in the short months of their friendship. A
pleasant dreamy half-hour he spent thus, till the hall bell
roused him, and he made his toilette and went to his dinner.

It was with very mixed feelings that Hardy walked by
the servitors’ table and took his seat with the bachelors, an
equal at last amongst equals. No man who is worth his salt
can leave a place where he has gone through hard and
searching discipline, and been tried in the very depths of his
heart, without regret, however much he may have winced
under the discipline. It is no light thing to fold up and
lay by for over a portion of onc’s life, even when it can be
laid by with honour and in thankfulness,

But it was with no mixed feelings, but with a sense of
entire triumph and joy, that Tom watched his friend taking
his new place, and the dons one after another coming up and
congratulating him, and treating him as the man who had
done honour to them and his college.

 

CHAPTER XXV.
COMMEMORATION.

Tue end of the academic year was now at hand, and Oxford
was beginning to put on her gayest clothing. The college
gardeners were in a state of unusual activity, and the lawns
and flower-beds, which form such exquisite settings to many
of the venerable grey, gabled buildings, were as neat and as
bright as hands could make them. Cooks, butlers, and their
assistants were bestirring themselves in kitchen and buttery,
under tho direction of bursars joalous of the fame of their
houses, in the preparation of the abundant and solid fare
with which Oxford is wont to entertain all comers. Every-
thing the best of its kind, no stint but no nonsense, seems to
be the wise rule which the University hands down and lives
up to in these matters. However we may differ as to her
degeneracy in other departments, all who have ever visited
her will admit that in this of hospitality she is still a great
national teacher, acknowledging and preaching by example
268 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

the fact, that eating and drinking are important parts of
man’s life, which are to be allowed their due prominence,
and not thrust into a corner, but are to be done soberly and
thankfully, in the sight of God and man. The coaches were
bringing in heavy loads of visitors; carriages of all kinds
were coming in from the neighbouring counties; and lodgings
in the High-street were going up to fabulous prices.

In one of these High-street lodgings, on the evening of.
the Saturday before Commemoration, Miss Winter and her
cousin are sitting. They have been in Oxford during the
greater part of the day, having posted up from Englebourn ;
but they have only just come in, for the younger lady is still
in her bonnet, and Miss Winter’s lies on the table. The
windows are wide open, and Miss Winter is sitting at one of
them ; while her cousin is busied in examining the furniture
and decorations of their temporary home, now commenting
upon these, now pouring out praises of Oxford.

“Tsn’t it too charming? I never dreamt that any town
could be so beautiful. Don’t you feel wild about it, Katie?”

“Tt is the queen of towns, dear. But I know it well, you
see, so that I can’t be quite so enthusiastic as you.”

“Oh, those dear gardens! what was the name of those
ones with the targets up, where they were shooting? Don’t
you remember ?”

“New College Gardens, on the old city wall, you mean?”

“No, no. They were very nice and sentimental I should
like to go and sit and read poetry there. But I mean the
big ones, the gorgeous, princely ones, with wicked old Bishop
Laud’s gallery looking into them.”

“Oh! St. John’s, of course.”

“Yes, St. John’s. Why do you hate Laud so, Katie?”

“‘T don’t hate him, dear. He was a Berkshire man, you
know. But I think he did a great deal of harm to the
Church.”

“How did you think my new silk looked in the gardens #
How lucky I brought it, wasn’t it? I shouldn’t have liked to
have been in nothing but muslins. They don’t suit here ;
you want something richer amongst the old buildings, and on
the beautiful velvety turf of the gardens. How do you think
T looked 4”

“You looked like a queen, dear; or a lady-in-waiting at
least.”

“Yes, a lady-in-waiting on Henrietta Maria, Didn’t you
hear one of the gentlemen say that she was lodged in St.
John’s when Charles marched to relieve Gloucester? Ah!
can’t you fancy her sweeping about the gardens, with her
COMMEMORATION. 269

ladies following her, and Bishop Laud walking just a little
behind her, and talking in a low voice about—let me see—
something very important }”

“Ob, Mary, where has your history gone? He was Arch-
bishop, and was safely locked up in the Tower.”

“Well, perhaps he was ; then he couldn’t be with her, of
course. How stupid of you to remember, Katie. Why can’t
you make up your mind to enjoy yourself when you come out
for a holiday ?”

“TI shouldn't enjoy myself any the more for forgetting
dates,” said Katie, laughing.

“Oh, you would though; only try. But let me see, it can’t
be Laud. Then it shall be that cruel drinking old man, with
the wooden leg made of gold, who was governor of Oxford
when the king was away. He must be hobbling along after
the queen in a buff coat and breast-plate, holding his hat with
a long drooping white feather in his hand.”

“But you wouldn't like it at all, Mary; it would be too
serious for you. The poor queen would be too anxious for
gossip, and you ladies-in-waiting would be obliged to walk
after her without saying a word.”

“Yes, that would be stupid. But then she would have to
go away with the old governor to write despatches ; and some
of the young officers with long hair and beautiful lace sleeves,
and large boots, whom the king had left behind, wounded,
might come and walk perhaps, or sit in the sun in the quiet
gardens.”

Mary looked over her shoulder with the merriest twinkle
in her eye, to see how her steady cousin would take this last
picture. ‘The college authorities would never allow that,”
she said quietly, still looking out of window; “if you wanted
beaus, you must have had them in black gowns.”

“They would have been jealous of the soldiers, you think ?
Well, I don’t mind ; the black gowns are very pleasant, only
a little stiff. But how do you think my bonnet looked ?”

“Charmingly. But when are you going to have done
looking in the glass? You don’t care for the buildings, I
believe, a bit. Come and look at St. Mary’s; there is such
a lovely light on the steeple !”

“Tl come directly, but I must get these flowers right.
I’m sure there are too many in this trimming.”

Mary was trying her new bonnet on over and over again
before the mantel-glass, and pulling out and changing the
places of the blush-rose buds with which it was trimmed.
Just then a noise of wheels, accompanied by a merry tune
on a cornopean, came in from the street.
270 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“What's that, Katie?” she cried, stopping her work for
a moment.

“A coach coming up from Magdalen Bridge. I think it
is a cricketing party coming home.” :

“Oh, let me see,” and she tripped across to the window,
bonnet in hand, and‘ stood beside her cousin. And, then,
sure enough, a coach covered with cricketers returning from
a match, drove past the window. The young ladies looked
out at first with great curiosity ; but, suddenly finding them-
selves the mark for a whole coach-load of male eyes, shrank
back a little before the cricketers had passed on towards the
“Mitre.” As the coach passed out of sight, Mary gave a
pretty toss of her head, and said,—

“Well, they don’t want for assurance, at any rate. I
think they needn’t have stared so.”

“Tt was our fault,” said Katie ; “we shouldn't have been
at the window. Besides, you know you are to bo a lady-in-
waiting on Henrietta Maria up here, and of course you must
get used to being stared at.”

“Oh yes, but that was to be by young gontlemen wounded
in the wars, in lace ruffles, as one sees them in pictures,
That’s a very different thing from young gentlemen in flan-
nel trousers and straw hats, driving up the High Street on
coaches. I declare one of them had the impudence to bow
as if he knew you.”

“So he does. That was my cousin.”

“Your cousin! Ah, I remember. Then he must be my
cousin too.”

“No, not at all. He is no relation of yours.”

“Well, I sha’n’t break my heart. But is he a good
partner 1”

“JT should say, yes. But I hardly know. We used to be
a great deal together as children, but papa has been such an
invalid lately.”

“ Ah, I wonder how uncle is getting on at the Vice-Chan-
cellor’s. Look, it is past eight by St. Mary’s. When were
we to go?”

“We were asked for nine.” :

“Then we must go and dress. ‘Will it be very slow and
stiff, Katie? I wish we were going to something not quite
so grand.”

“You'll find it very pleasant, I dare say.”

“There won't be any dancing, though, I know; will
there 7” ,

“No; I should think certainly not.”

“Dear me! I hope there will be some young men there
COMMEMORATION, 271

—I shall be so shy, I know, if there are nothing but wise
people. How do you talk to a Regius Professor, Katie? It
must be awful.”

“He will probably be at least as uncomfortable as you,
dear,” said Miss Winter, laughing, and rising from the
window ; “let us go and dress.”

i Pa ag T wear my best gown 1—What shall I put in my
air

At this moment the door opened, and the maid-servant
introduced Mr. Brown.

It was the St. Ambrose drag which hod passed along
shortly before, bearing the eleven home from a triumphant
match. As they came over Magdalen Bridge, Drysdale, who
had returned to Oxford as a private gentleman after his late
catastrophe, which he had managed to keep a secret from
his guardian, and was occupying his usual place on the box,
called out—

“Now, boys, keep your eyes open, there must be plenty of
lionesses about ;” and thus warned, the whole load, including
the cornopean player, were on the look-out for lady visitors,
profanely called lionesses, all the way up the street. They
had been gratified by the sight of several walking in the
High Street or looking out of the windows, before they
caught sight of Miss Winter and her cousin. The appear-
ance of these young ladies created a sensation.

*T say, look! up there in that first floor.”

“By George, they’re something like.”

“The sitter for choice.”

“No, no, the standing-up one; sho looks so saucy.”

“ Hullo, Brown! do you know them ?”

“One of them is my cousin,” sdid Tom, who had just
been guilty of the salutation which, as we saw, excited the
indignation of the younger lady.

“What luck!—You'll ask me to meet them—when shall
it be? To-morrow at breakfast, I vote.”

“TI say, you'll introduce me before the ball on Monday ?
promise now,” said another.

“T don’t know that I shall see anything of them,” said
Tom; “I shell just leave a pasteboard, but I’m not in the
humour to be dancing about lionizing.”

A storm of indignation arose at this speech: the notion
that any of the fraternity who had any hold on lioneases,
particularly if they were pretty, should not use it to the
utmost for the benefit of the rest, and the glory and honour
of the college, was revolting to the undergraduate mind. So
the whole body escorted Tom to the door of the lodgings,
272 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

impressing upon him the necessity of engaging both his
lionesses for every hour of every day in St. Ambrose’s, and
left him not till they had heard him ask for the young ladies,
and seen him fairly on his way upstairs. They need not
have taken so much trouble, for in his secret soul he was no
little pleased at the appearance of creditable ladies, more or
less belonging to him, and would have found his way to see
them quickly and surely enough without any urging. More-
over, he had been really fond of his cousin, years before,
when they had been boy and girl together,

So they greeted one another very cordially, and looked one
snother over as they shook hands, to see what changes time
had made. He makes his changes rapidly enough at that
age, and mostly for the better, as the two cousins thought.
It was nearly three years since they had met, and then he
was a fifth-form boy and she a girl in the school-room. They
were both conscious of a strange pleasure in meeting again,
mixed with a feeling of shyness and wonder whether they
should be able to step back into their old rolations.

Mary looked on demurely, really watching them, but osten-
sibly engaged on the rosebud trimming. Presently Miss
Winter turned to her and said, “I don’t think you two ever
met before ; I must introduce you, I suppose ;—my cousin
Tom, my cousin Mary.”

“Then we must be cousins too,” said Tom, holding out his
hand.

“No, Katie says not,” she answered.

“TI don’t mean to believe her, then,” said Tom ; “but what
are you going to do now, to-night? Why didn’t you write
and tell me you were coming?”

. “We have been so shut up lately, owing to papa’s bad
health, that Ireally had almost forgotten you were at Oxford.”

“ By the bye,” said Tom, ‘where is uncle?”

“Oh, he is dining at the Vice-Chancellor’s, who is an old
college friend of his. We have only been up here three or
four hours, and it has done him so much good. I am so glad
we spirited him up to coming.”

’ You haven’t made any engagements yet, I hope ?”

“Indeed we have ; I can’t tell how many. We came in
time for luncheon in Balliol. Mary and I made it our dinner,
and we have been seeing sights ever since, and have been
asked to go to I don’t know how many luncheons and
breakfasts.”

“What, with a lot of dons, I suppose?” said Tom, spite-
Pas 3; “you won’t enjoy Oxford, then; they'll bore you to

eath,”
COMMEMORATION. 273

“There now, Katie; that is just what I was afraid of,”
joined in Mary; “you remember we didn’t hear a word abou
balls all the afternoon.” ,

“You haven’t got your tickets for the balls, then?” said
Tom, brightening up.

“No, how shall we get them 1”

“Oh, I can manage that, I’ve no doubt.”

“Stop; how are we to go? Papa will never take us.”

“You needn’t think about that ; anybody will chaperone
you. Nobody cares about that sort of thing at Commemo-
ration.”

“Indeod I think you had better wait till I have talked to
papa.”

“Then all the tickets will be gone,” said Tom. “ You
must go. Why shouldn’t I chaperone you? I know several
men whose sisters are going with them.”

“No, that will scarcely do, I’m afraid. But really, Mary,
we must go and dress.”

“ Where are you going, then?” said Tom.

“To an evening party at the Vice-Chancellor’s ; we are
asked for nine o’clock, and the half-hour has struck.”

“ Hang the dons; how unlucky that I didn’t know before!
Have you any flowers, by the way?”

“Not one.”

“Then I will try to get you some by the time you are
ready. May I?”

“Oh yes, pray do,” said Mary. “ That’s capital, Katie, isn’t
it? Now I shall have something to put in my hair; I
couldn’t think what I was to wear.”

Tom took a look at the hair in question, and then left
them and hastened out to scour the town for flowers, as if
his life depended on success. In the morning, he would
probably have resented as insulting, or laughed at as wildly
improbable, the suggestion that he would be so employed
before night.

A double chair was drawn up opposite the door when he:
came back, and the ladies were coming down into the sitting-.
room.

“Oh look, Katie! What lovely flowers! How very kind
of you.”

Tom surrendered as much of his burden as that young.
lady’s little round white hands could clasp, to her, and
deposited the rest on the table.

“Now, Katie, which shall I wear—this beautiful white.
rose all by itself, or a wreath of these pansies? Here, I
have a wire: I can make them up in a minute.” She turned

T
274 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

to the glass, and held the rich cream-white rose against
her hair, and then turning on Tom, added, ‘“ What do you
think ?”

“T thought fern would suit your hair better than anything
elso,” said Tom ; “and so I got these leaves,” and he picked
out two slender fern-leaves.

“ How very kind of you! Let me see, how do you mean ?
Ah! I see; it will be charming ;” and so saying, she held
the leaves one in each hand to the sides of her head, and
then floated about the room for needle and thread, and with
a few nimble stitches fastened together the, simple green
crown, which her cousin put on for her, making the points
meet above her forehead. Mary was wild with delight at
the effect, and full of thanks to Tom as he helped them
hastily to tie up bouquets, and then, amidst much laughing,
they squeezed into the wheel chair together (as the fashions
of that day allowed two young ladies to do), and went off to
their party, leaving a last injunction on him to go up and
put the rest of the flowers in water, and to call directly after
breakfast the next day.

He obeyed his orders, and pensively arranged the rest of
the flowers in the china ornaments on the mantel-piece, and
in a soup plate which he got and placed in the middle of the
table, and then spent some minutes examining a pair of
gloves and other small articles of women’s gear which lay
scattered about the room. The gloves particularly attracted
him, and he flattened them out and laid them on his own
large brown hand, and smiled at the contrast, and took other
unjustifiable liberties with them ; after which he returned to
college and endurod much banter as to the time his call had
lasted, and promisod to ongage his cousins, as ho called
them, to graco some festivitics in St. Ambroso’s at their first
spare moment,

The next day, being Show Sunday, was spent by the
young ladies in a ferment of spiritual and other dissipation.
They attended morning service at eight at the cathedral ;
breakfasted at a Merton fellow’s, from whence they adjourned
to University sermon. Here Mary, after two or three utterly
ineffectual attempts to understand what the preacher was
meaning, soon relapsed into an examination of the bonnets
present, and the doctors and proctors on the floor, and the

_ undergraduates in the gallery. On the whole, she was, per-
haps, better employed than her cousin, who knew enough
of religious party strife to follow the preacher, and was made
very uncomfortable by his discourse, which consisted of an
attack upon the recent publications of the most eminent and
COMMEMORATION. 275

best men in the University. Poor Miss Winter camo away
with a vague impression of the wickedness of all persons
who dare to travel out of beaten tracks, and that the most
unsafe state of mind in the world is that which inquires and
aspires, and cannot be satisfied with the regulation draught
of spiritual doctors in high places. Being naturally of a
reverent turn of mind, she tried to think that the discourse
had done her good. At tho samo time she was somewhat
troubled by the thought that somehow the best men in all
times of which she had read scomed to hor to bo just those
whom tho preacher was in fact denouncing, although in
words ho had. praised them as tho great lights of tho Church.
The words which she had heard in one of the lessons kept
running in her head, “‘ Truly ye bear witness that ye do allow
the deeds of your fathers, for they indeed killed them, but
ye build their sepulchres.” But she had little leisure to
think on the subject, and, as hor father praised the sermon
as a noblo protest against tho fearful tendoncios of the day to
Popery and Pantheism, smothered the questionings of hor
own heart as well as she could, and went off to luncheon in
@ common room; after which her father retired to their
lodgings, and she and her cousin were escorted to afternoon
service at Magdalen, in achieving which last feat they had to
encounter a crush only to be equalled by that at the pit
entrance to the opera on a Jenny Lind night. But what will
not a delicately nurtured British lady go through when her
mind is bent either on pleasure or duty? ?

Poor Tom’s feelings throughout the day may be more
easily conceived than described. He had called according to
order, and waited at their lodgings after breakfast. Of course
they did not arrive. Hoe had caught a distant glimpse: of
them in St. Mary’s, but had not been able to approach. He
had called again in the afternoon unsuccessfully, so far as
seeing them was concerned ; but he had found his uncle at
‘home, lying upon the sofa. At first he was much dismayed
by this rencontre, but, recovering his presence of mind he
proceeded, I regret to say, to take the length of the old
gentleman’s foot, by entering into a minute and sympathizing
inquiry into the stato of his health. Tom had no faith what-
ever in hig uncle’s ill-health, and believed—as many persons
of robust constitution are too apt to do when brought face to
face with nervous patients—that he might shake off the
whole of his maladies at any time by a resolute effort, so that
his sympathy was all a sham, though, perhaps, one may
pardon it, considering the end in view, which was that of
persuading the old gentleman to entrust the young ladies to

T2
276 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

his nephew’s care for that evening in the Long Walk; and
generally to look upon his nephew, Thomas Brown, as his
natural prop and supporter in the University, whose one
object in life just now would be to take trouble off his hands,
and who was of that rare and precocious steadiness of character
that he might be as safely trusted as a Spanish duenna, To
a very considerable extent the victim fell into the toils. He
had many old friends at the colleges, and was very fond of
good dinners, and long sittings afterwards. This very evening
he was going to dine at St. John’s, and had been much
troubled at the idea of having to leave the unrivalled old
port of that learned house to escort his daughter and niece to
the Long Walk. Still he was too easy and good-natured not
to wish that they might get there, and did not like the notion
of their going with perfect strangers. Here was a com- .
promise. His nephew was young, but still he was a near
relation, and in fact it gave the poor old man a plausible
excuse for not exerting himself as he felt he ought to do,
which was all he ever required for shifting his responsibilities
and duties upon other shoulders.

So Tom waited quietly till the young ladies came home,
which they did just before hall-time. Mr. Winter was
getting impatient. As soon as they arrived he started for
St. John’s, after advising them to remain at home for the
rest of the evening, as they looked quite tired and knocked
up ; but if they were resolved to go to the Long Walk, his
nephew would escort them.

“How can Uncle Robert say we look so tired?” said
Mary, consulting the glass on the subject ; “I feel quite fresh.
Of course, Katic, you mean to go to the Long Walk ?”

“T hope you will go,” said ‘Tom; “T think you owo me
some amends. I came here according to order this morning,
and you were not in, and I have been trying to catch you
ever since.”

“We couldn’t help it,” said Miss Winter; “indeed we
have not had a minute to ourselves all day. I was very sorry
to think that we should have brought you here for nothing
this morning.”

“ But about the Long Walk, Katie?”

“ Well, don’t you think we have done enough for to-day ?
I should like to have tea and sit quietly at home, as papa
suggested.”

“ Do you feel very tired, dear?” said Mary, seating herself
by her cousin on the sofa, and taking her hand.

“No, dear; I only want a little quiet and a cup of
tea.”
COMMEMORATION. 277

‘Then let us stay here quictly till it is time to start.
When ought we to get to the Long Walk 1”

“ About half-past seven,” said Tom; “ you shouldn’t be
much later than that.”

“There you see, Katie, we shall have two hours’ perfect
rest. You shall lie upon the sofa, and I will read to you, and
then we shall go on all fresh again.”

Miss Winter smiled and said, “ Very well.” She saw
that her cousin was bent on going, and she could deny her
nothing.

“« May I send you in anything from college?” said Tom;
“ you ought to have something more than tea, I’m sure.”

“ Oh no, thank you. We dined in the middle of the day.”

“ Then I may call for you about seven o'clock,” said Tom,
who had come unwillingly to the conclusion that he had
better leave them for the present.

“ Yes, and mind you come in good time ; wo moan to see
the who!o sight, romembor. Wo are country cousins.”

“ You must let me call you cousin then, just for the look
of the thing.”

“ Certainly, just for the look of the thing, we will be
cousins till further notice.”

“ Well, you and Tom seem to get on together, Mary,” said
Miss Winter, as they heard the front door close. “ I’m
learning a lesson from you, though I doubt whether I shall
ever be able to put it in practice. What a blessing it must
be not to be shy |”

“ Are you shy, then?” said Mary, looking at her cousin
with a playful loving smile.

“ Yes, dreadfully. It is positive pain to me to walk into
a room where there are people I do not know.”

“ But I feel that too. I’m sure, now, you were much less
embarrassed than I last night at the Vice Chancellor’s. I
quite envied you, you seemed so much at your ease.”

“Did 1? I-would have given anything to be back hero
quietly. But it is not the same thing with you. You have
no real shyness, or you would never have got on so fast with
my cousin.”

“Oh! I don’t feel at all shy with him,” said Mary,
laughing. “ How lucky it is that he found us out so svon.
I like him so much. There is a sort of way about him as if
he couldn’t help himself. I am sure one could turn him
round one’s finger. Don’t you think so?”

“ T'm not so sure of that. But he always was soft-hearted,
poor boy. But he isn’t a boy any longer. You must take
care, Mary. Shall we ring for tea?”
278 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

CHAPTER XXVI.
TUN LONG WALK IN CHRISTCHURCH MEADOWS.

“ Do well unto thysclf and men will speak good of thoo,” is
a maxim as old as King David's time, and just as true now as
it was then. Hardy had found it so since the publication of
the class list. Within a few days of that event, it was known
that his was a very good first. His collego tutor had mado
lis own inquiries, and repeated on several occasions in a con-
fidential way the statement that, “ with the exception of a
want of polish in his Latin and Greek verses, which we
seldom get except in the most finished public-school men—
Etonians in particular—there has been no better examination
in the schools for several years.” The worthy tutor went on
to take glory to the college, and in a lower degree to himself.
He called attention, in more than one common room, to the
fact that Hardy had never had any private tuition, but had
attained his intellectual development solely in the curriculum
provided by St. Ambrose’s College for the training of the
youth intrusted to her. “He himself, indeed,” he would
add, “ bad always taken much interest in Hardy, and had,
perhaps, done more for him than would be possible in every
case, but only with direct reference to, and in supplement of
the college course.”

The Principal had taken marked and somewhat pompous
notice of him, and had graciously intimated his wish, or,
perhaps I should say, his will (for he would have been much
astonished to be told that a wish of his could count for less
thin a voyal mandate to any man who had been ono of his
servitors), that Hardy should stand for a fellowship which
had lately fallen vacant. A few weeks before, this excessive
affability and condescension of the great man would have
wounded Hardy ; but, somehow, the sudden rush of sunshine
and prosperity, though it had not thrown him off his balance,
or changed his estimate of men and things, had pulled a sort
of comfortable sheath over his sensitiveness, and gave him a
second skin, as it were, from which the Principal’s shafts
bounded off innocuous, instead of piercing and vankling, At
first, the idea of standing for a fellowship at St. Ambrose’s
was not pleasant to him. He felt inclined to open up entirely
new ground for himself, and stand at some other college,
where he had neither acquaintance nor association. But on
second thoughts, he resolved to stick to his old college, moved
thereto partly by the lamentations of Tom, when he heard of
his friend’s meditated emigration, but chiefly by the unwilling-
THE LONG WALK IN CHRISTOHURCH MEADOWS. 279

ness to quit a hard post for an easier one, which besets natures
like his to their own discomfort, but, may one hope, to the
signal benefit of the world at large. Such men may see clearly
enough all the advantages of a move of this kind—may quite
appreciate the ease which it would bring them—may be im-
patient with themselves for not making it at once—but, when
it comes to the actual leaving the old post, even though it may
be a march out with all the honours of war, drums beating
and colours flying, as it would have been in Hardy’s case,
somehow or another, nine times out of ten, they throw up the
chance at the last moment, if not earlier; pick up their old
arms—growling perhaps at the price they are paying to keep
their own self-respect—and shoulder back into the press to
face their old work, muttering, “We are asses; we don’t
know what’s good for us; but we must see this job through
somehow, come what may.”

So Hardy stayod on at St. Ambrose, waiting for the fellow-
ship oxamination, and cortainly, I an froo to confoss, not a
little enjoying the change in his position and affairs.

He had given up his low dark back rooms to the new
servitor, his successor, to whom he had presented all tho
rickety furniture, except his two Windsor chairs and Oxford
reading-table. The ‘intrinsic value of the gift was not great,
certainly, but was of importance to the poor raw boy who was
taking his place; and it was made with the delicacy of one
who knew the situation. Hardy’s good offices did not stop
here. Having tried the bed himself for upwards of three
long years, he knew all the hard places, and was resolved
while he stayed up that they should never chafe another
occupant as they had him. So he set himself to provide
stuffing, and took the lad about with him, and cast a skirt of
his newly-acquired mantle of respectability over him, and put
him in the way of making himself as comfortable as circum-
stances would allow ; never disguising from him all the while
that the bed was not to be a bed of roses. In which pursuit,
though not yet a fellow, perhaps he was qualifying himself
better for a fellowship than he could have done by any amount
of cramming for polish in his versification, Not that the
electors of St. Ambrose would bo likely to hear of or appreciate
this kind of training. Polished versification would no doubt
have told more in that quarter. But we who are behind the
scenes may disagreo with them, and hold that ho who is thus
acting out and learning to undorstand tho meaning of the
word “fellowship,” is tho man for our votes.

So Hardy had left his rooms and gone out of college, into
lodgings near at hand. The sword, epaulettes, and picture of
280 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

his father’s old ship—his tutelary divinities, as Tom called ,
them—occupied their accustomed place in his new rooms,
except that there was a looking-glass over the mantel-piece
here, by the side of which the sword hung, instead of in the
centre, as it had done while he had no such luxury. His
Windsor chairs occupied each side of the pleasant window of
his sitting-room, and already the taste for luxuries of which
he had so often accused himself to Tom began to peep out in
the shape of ono or two fine engravings. Altogether Fortune
was smiling on Hardy, and he was making the most of her,
like a wise man, having brought her round by proving that
he could get on without her, and was not going out of his way
to gain her smiles. Several men came at once, even before
he had taken his B.A. degree, to read with him, and others
applied to know whether he would take a reading party in the
long vacation. In short, all things went well with Hardy,
and the Oxford world recognised the fact, and tradesmon and
college servants became obsequious, and began to bow beforo
him, and recognise him as one of their lords and masters.

Tt was to Hardy's lodgings that Tom repaired straightway,
when he left his cousin by blood, and cousin by courtesy, at
the end of the last chapter. For, running over in his mind
all his acquaintance, he at once fixed upon Hardy as the man
to accompany him in escorting the ladies to the Long Walk.
Besides being his own most intimate friend, Hardy was the man
whom he would prefer to all others to introduce to ladies now.
“A month ago it might have been different,” Tom thought;
“he was such an old guy inhisdress. But he has smartencd
up, and wears as good a coat as I do, and looks well enough
for anybody, though ho never will be much of a dresscr.
Then he will be in a bachelor’s gown too, which will look
respectable.”

“ Here you are; that’s all right ; I’m so glad you're in,” he
said as he entered the room. “Now I want you to come to
the Long Walk with me to-night.”

“Very well—will you call for me 1”

“ Yes, and mind you come in your best get-up, old fellow:
we shall have two of the prettiest girls who are up, with us.”

“You won’t want me then; they will have plenty of escort.”

“Not a bit of it. They are desorted by their natural
guardian, my old uncle, who has gone out to dinner. Oh,
it’s all right; they are my cousins, more like sisters, and my

uncle knows we are going. In fact it was he who settled that
I should take them.”

* Yes, but you see I don’t know them.”
“That doesn’t matter. I can’t take them both myself—I

”
THE LONG WALK IN CHRISTCHURCH MEADOWS. 28].

must have somebody with me, and I’m so glad to get the
chance of introducing you to some of my people. You'll know
them all, I hope, before long.”

“ Of course I should like it very much, if you are sure it’s
all right.”

Tom was as perfectly sure as usual, and so tho matter was
arranged. Hardy was very much pleased and gratified at this
proof of his friend’s confidence; and I am not going to say
that he did not shave again, and pay most unwonted attention.
to his toilet before the hour fixed for Tom’s return. The fame
of Brown’s lionesses had spread through St. Ambrose's already,
and Hardy had heard of them as well as other men. There
was something so unusual to him in being selected on such an
occasion, when the smartest men in the college were wishing
and plotting for that which came to him unasked, that he may
be pardoned for feeling something a little like vanity, whilo
ho adjusted tho coat which Tom had recently thought of with
such complaconcy, and looked in tho glass to sco that his
gown hung gracefully. The effect on the whole was so good,
that Tom was above measure astonished, when he came back,
and could not help indulging in some gentle chaff as they
walked towards the High-street arm in arm.

The young ladies were quite rested, and sitting dressed and
ready for their walk, when Tom and Hardy were announced,
and entered the room. Miss Winter rose up, surprised and a
little embarrassed at the introduction of a total stranger in her
father’s absence. But she put a good face on the matter, as
became a well-bred young woman, though she secretly resolved
to lecture Tom in private, as he introduced “ My great friend,
Mr. Hardy, of our college. My cousins.” Mary dropped a
pretty little demure courtesy, lifting her eyes for one moment
for a glance at Tom, which said as plain as look could speak,
“Well, I must say you are making the most of your new-
found relationship.” He was a little put out for a moment,
but then recovered himself, and said apologetically,

“Mr. Hardy is a bachelor, Katie—I mean a Bachelor of
Arts, and he knows all the people by sight up here. Wo
couldn’t havo gone to the Walk without somo one to show us
the lions.”

“Indeed, I’m afraid you give me too much credit,” said
Hardy. “I know most of our dons by sight, certainly, but
scarcely any of the visitors.”

The awkwardness of Tom’s attempted explanation set every-
thing wrong again.

Then came one of those awkward pauses which will occur
so very provokingly at the most inopportune times. Miss
282 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

‘Winter was seized with one of the uncontrollable fits of shy-
ness, her bondage to which she had so lately been grieving
over to Mary ; and in self-defence, and without meaning in
the least to do so, drew herself up, and looked as proud as
you please.

Hardy, whose sensitiveness was almost as keen as a woman’s,
felt in a moment the awkwardness of the situation, and
became as shy as Miss Winter herself. If the floor would
have suddenly opened, and let him through into the dark
shop, he would have been thankful; but, as it would not,
there he stood, meditating a sudden retreat from the room,
and a tremendous onslaught on Tom, as soon as he could catch
him alone, for getting him into such a scrape. Tom was
provoked with them all for not at once feeling at ease with
one another, and stood twirling his cap by the tassel, and
looking fiercely at it, resolved not to break the silence. He
had been at all the trouble of bringing about this charming
situation, and now nobody seemed to like it, or to know what
to say or do. They might get themselves out of it as they
could, for anything he cared ; he was not going to bother
himself any more.

Mary looked in the glass, to see that her bonnet was quite
right, and then from one to another of her companions, in a
little wonder at their unaccountable behaviour, and a little
pique that two young men should be standing there like
unpleasant images, and not availing themselves of the privilege
of trying, at least, to make themselves agreeable to her.
Luckily, however, for the party, the humorous side of the
tableau struck her with great force, so that when Tom lifted
his misanthropic eyes for a moment, and caught hers, thoy
wore so full of fun that he had nothing to do but to allow
himself, not without a struggle, to break first into a smile,
and then into a laugh. This brought all eyes to bear on him,
and the ice, being once broken, dissolved as quickly as it had
gathered.

“TI really can’t see what there is to laugh at, Tom,” said
Miss Winter, smiling herself, nevertheless, and blushing a
little, as she worked or pretended to work at buttoning ono
of her gloves.

“Can't you, Katie? ‘Well, then, isn’t it very ridiculous,
and enough to make one laugh, that we four should be standing
here in a sort of Quakers’ meeting, when we ought to be half-
way to the Long Walk by this time ?”

“Oh, do let us start,” said Mary ; “I know we shall be
missing all the best of the sight.”

“Come along, then,” said Tom, leading the way down
THE LONG WALK IN CHRISTCHURCH MEADOWS. 283

stairs, and Hardy and the ladies followed, and they descended
into the High Street, walking all abreast, the two ladies
together, with a gentleman on either flank, This formation
answered well enough in High Street, the broad pavement of
that celebrated thoroughfare being favourable to an advance
in line. But when they had wheeled into Oriel Lane the
narrow pavement at once threw the line into confusion, and
after one or two fruitless attempts to take up the dressing
they settled down into the more natural formation of close
column of couples, the leading couple consisting of Mary and
Tom, and the remaining couple of Miss Winter and Hardy.
It was a lovely midsummer evening, and Oxford was looking
her best under the genial cloudless sky, so that, what with
the usual congratulations on the weather, and explanatory
remarks on the buildings as they passed along, Hardy
manngod to keop up a conversaticn with his companion with-
out much difficulty. Miss Winter was pleascd with his quiot
doferontial mannor, and goon lost hor feoling of shynoss ; and,
before Hardy had come to the end of such remarks as it
occurred to him to make, she was taking her fair share in
the talk. In describing their day’s doings she spoke with
enthusiasm of the beauty of Magdalen Chapel, and betrayed
a little knowledge of traceries and mouldings, which gave an
opening to her companion to travel out of the weather and
the names of colleges. Church architecture was just one of
the subjects which was sure at that time to take more or less
hold on every man at Oxford whose mind was open to the
influences of the place. Hardy had read the usual text-
books, and kept his eyes open as he walked about the town
and neighbourhood. To Miss Winter he seemed so learned
on the subject, that she began to doubt his tendencies, and
was glad to be reassured by some remarks which fell from
him as to the University sermon which she had heard.
She was glad to find that her cousin’s most intimate friend
was not likely to lead him into the errors of Tractarianism.

Meantime the leading couple were getting on satisfactorily
in their own way.

“Tsn’t it good of Uncle Robert? he says that ho shall feel
quite comfortable as long as you and Katie are with mo, In
fact, I feel quite responsible already, like an old dragon in a
story-book watching a treasure.”

“Yes, but what does Katie say to being made a treasure
of? Sho has to think a good deal for herself; and f am
afraid you are not quite certain of being our solo knight and
guardian becarise Uncle Robert wants to get rid of us. Poor
old uncle !”
284 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“ But you wouldn’t object, then?”

“Oh, dear, no—at least, not unless you take to looking as
cross as you did just now in our lodgings. Of course, I’m all
for dragons who are mad about dancing, and never think of
leaving a ball-room till the band packs up and the old man
shufiles in to put out the lights.”

“Then I shall be a model dragon,” said Tom. Twenty-
four hours earlier he had declared that nothing should induce
him to go to the balls; but his views on the subject had
been greatly modified, and he had been worrying all his
acquaintance, not unsuccessfully, for the necessary tickets,
ever since his talk with his cousins on the preceding evening,

The scene became more and more gay and lively as they
passed out of Christchurch towards the Long Walk. The
town turned out to take its share in the show; and citizens
of all ranks, the poorer ones accompanied by children of all
ages, trooped along cheek by jowl with members of the
University, of all degrees, and their visitors, somewhat indeed
to the disgust of certain of these latter, many of whom
declared that the whole thing was spoilt by the miscellaneous-
ness of the crowd, and that “those sort of people” ought not
to be allowed to come to the Long Walk on Show Sunday.
However, “those sort of people” abounded nevertheless, and
seemed to enjoy very much, in sober fashion, the solemn
march up and down beneath the grand avenue of elms in the
midst of their betters.

The University was there in strength, from the Vice-
Chancellor downwards. Somehow or another, though it might
seem an unreasonable thing at first sight for grave and
reverend persons to do, yet most of the gravest of them found
some reason for taking a turn in the Long Walk, As for the
undergraduates, they turned out almost to a man, and none of
them more certainly than the young gentlemen, elaborately
dressed, who had sneered at the whole ceremony as snobbish
an hour or two before,

As for our hero, he sailed into the meadows thoroughly
satisfied for the moment with himsclf and his convoy. He
had every reason to be so, for though there were many gayer
and iore fashionably dressed ladies present than his cousin,
and cousin by courtesy, there were none there whose faces,
figures, and dresses carried more unmistakably the marks of
that thorough quiet high breeding, that refinement which is
no mere surface polish, and that fearless unconsciousness
which looks out from pure hearts, which are still, thank God,
to be found in so many homes of the English gentry.

The Long Walk was filling rapidly, and at every half-dozen
THE LONG WALK IN CHRISTCHURCH MEADOWS. 285

paces Tom was greeted by some of his friends or acquaintance,
and exchanged a word or two with them. But he allowed
them one after another to pass by without effecting any
introduction.

“You seem to have a great many acquaintances,” said his
companion, upon whom none of these salutations were
lost.

‘ “Yes, of course; one gets to know a great many men up
ere.”

“Tt must be very pleasant. But does it not interfere a
great deal with your reading ?”

“No; because one mects them at lectures, and in hall and
chapel. Besides,” he added in a sudden fit of honesty, “it is
my first year. One doesn’t read much in one’s first year. It
is a much harder thing than people think to take to reading,
except just before an examination.”

“ Bub your groat friond who is walking with Katic—what
did you say his name is?”

“ Hardy.”

“Well, he isa great scholar, didn’t you say ?”

“Yes, he has just taken a first class. He is the best man
of his year.”

“How proud you must be of him! I suppose, now, he is a
great reader ?”

“Yes, ho is great at everything. He is nearly the best
oar in our boat. By the way, you will come to the procession
of boats to-morrow night? We are the head boat on the
river.”

“Oh, Ihope so. Is it a protly sight? Lot us ask Katio
about it.”

“Tt is the finest sight in the world,” said Tom, who had
never seen it; “twenty-four eight oars, with their flags
flying, and all the crews in uniform. You see the barges over
there, moored along the side of the river? You will sit on
one of them as we pass.”

“Yes, I think I do,” said Mary, looking across the meadow
in the direction in which he pointed ; ‘ you mean those great
gilded things. But I don’t sce the river.”

“Shall we walk round there? It won’t take us ten
minutes.”

“But we must not leave the Walk and all the people. It
is so amusing here.”

“Then you will wear our colours at the procession to-
morrow 4?”

“Yes, if Katie doesn’t mind, At least if they are pretty.
What are your colours ?”
286 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“Blue and white. I will get you some rilibons to-morrow
morning.”

“Very well, and I will make them up into rosettes.”

“Why, do you know them?” asked Tom, as she bowed to
two gentlemen in masters’ caps and gowns, whom they met in
the crowd.

“ Yes ; at least we met them last night.”

“ But do you know who they are?”

“Oh yes; they were introduced to us, and I talked a great
deal to them. And Katie scolded me for it when we got
home. No; I won’t say scolded me, but looked very grave
over it.”

“They are two of the leaders of the Tractarians.”

“Yes. That was the fun of it. Katie was so pleased and
interested with them at first; much more than I was. But
when she found out who they were she fairly ran away, and
I stayed and talked on. I don’t think they said anything
vory dangerous. Perhaps ono of them wrote No. 90. Do
you know ?”

“T dare say. But I don’t know much about it. Towever,
thoy must have a bad timo of it, L should think, up here with
the old dons.”

“ But don’t you think one likes people who are persecuted ?
I declare I would listen to them for an hour, though I didn’t
understand a word, just to show them that I wasn’t afraid of
them, and sympathized with them. How can people be so
ill-natured ? I’m sure they only write what they believe and
think will do good.”

“That’s just what most of us feel,” said Tom ; “we hate to
see them put down because they don’t agree with the swells
up here. You'll see how they will be cheered in the Theatre.”

“Then they are not unpopular and persecuted after all?”

“Oh yes, by the dons. And that’s why we all like them.
From fellow-feeling you see, because the dons bully them and
us equally.”

“ But I thought they were dons too?”

“Well, so they are, but not regular dons, you know, like
the proctors, and deans, and that sort.”

ILis companion did not undorstand this dolicato distinction,
but was tov much interosted in watching the crowd to inquire
further.

Presently they met two of the heads of houses walking with
several strangers. Every one was noticing them as they.
passed, and of course Tom was questioned as to who they
were. Not being prepared with an answer he appealed to
Hardy, who was just behind them talking to Miss Winter.
 

 

287.

Pp

Broad Walk.

"an the

Show Sunday
THE LONG WALK IN CHRISTCHURCH MEADOWS. 287

They were some of the celebrities on whom honotary degrees
were to be conferred, Hardy said ; a famous American author,
a foreign ambassador, a well-known Indian soldier, and others.
Then came some more M.A.’s, one of whom this time powed
to Miss Winter.

“Who was that, Katie ?”

“ One of the gentlemen we met last night. I did not catch
his name, but he was very agreeable.”

“Oh, I remember. You were talking to him for a long
timo after you ran away from mo. I was very curious to
know what you were saying, you scemed so interested.”

“Well, you seem to have made the most of your time
last night,” said Tom; “I should have thought, Katie, you
would hardly have approved of him either.”

“ But who is he?”

“Why, the most dangerous man in Oxford. What do they
call him—-a Germanizer and a rationalist, isn’t it, Hardy 1”

“Yes, I believe so,” said Hardy.

“Oh, think of that! There, Katie; you had much better
have stayed by me after all. A Germanizer, didn’t you say ?
What a hard word. It must be much worse than Tractarian.
Isn’t it, now ?” ;

a Mary dear, pray také care ; 5; everybody will hear you,” said
Miss Winter.

“Twish I thought that everybody would listen to me,”
replied Miss Mary. “But I really will be very quiet, Katie,
—only I must know which is the worst, my Tractarians or
your Gormanizer ?”

“Oh, the Germanizer, of course,” ’ said Tom.

«But why ?” said Hardy, who could do no less than break
a lance for his companion. Moreover he happened to have
strong convictions on these subjects.

“Why? Because one knows the worst of where the Trac-
tarians are going. They may go to Rome and there’s an end
of it. But the Germanizers are going into the abysses, or no
one knows where.”

“There, Katie, you hear, I hope,” interrupted Miss Mary,
coming to her companion’s rescue before Hardy could bring
his artillery to bear, “but what a terrible place Oxford must
be. I declare it seems quite full of people whom it is unsafe
to talk with.

“T wish it were, if they were all like Miss Winter's friend,”
said Hardy. And then the crowd thickonod and they dropped
behind again. Tom was getting to think more of his com-
panion and less of himself every minute, when he was
suddenly confronted in the walk by Benjamin, the Jew money-
288 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

lender, smoking a cigar, and dressed in a gaudy figured satin
waistcoat and waterfall of the same material, and resplendent
with jewellery. He had business to attend to in Oxford at
this time of the year. Nothing escaped the eyes of Tom’s
companion.

“Who was that?” sho said; “what a dreadful-looking
man! Surely he bowed as if he knew you ?”

“T dare say. He is impudent enough for anything,” said
Tom.

“ But who is he ¢”

“Oh, a rascally fellow who sells bad cigars and worse wine.”

Tom’s equanimity was much shaken by the apparition of
the Jew. The remembrance of the bill scene at the public
house in the Corn-market, and the unsatisfactory prospect in
that matter, with Blake plucked and Drysdale no longer a
member of the University, and utterly careless as to his
liabilities, came across him, and made him silent and absent.

He answered at hazard to -his companion’s remarks for
the next minute or two, until, after some particularly inap-
propriate reply, she turned her head and looked at him for a
moment with steady wide open eyes, which brought him to
himself, or rather drove him into himself, in no time.

“T really beg your pardon,” he said ; “I was very rude, I
fear. It is so strange to me to be walking here with ladies.
‘What were you saying ?”

“Nothing of any consequence—I really forget. But is it
a very strange thing for you to walk with ladies here ?”

“Strange! I should think it was! I have never seen a
lady that I knew up here, till you came.”

“Indeed! but there must be plenty of ladies living in
Oxford 1”

“T don’t believe there are. At least, we never see them.”

“Then you ought to be on your best behaviour when we
do come. I shall expect you now to listen to everything
I say, and to answer my silliest questions.”

“Oh, you ought not to be so hard on us.”

“You mean that you find it hard to answer silly questions ?
How wise you must all grow, living up here together |”

“Perhaps. But the wisdom doesn’t como down to the
first-year men ; and so—”

“ Well, why do you stop 7”
jes Because I was going to say something you might not

“Then I insist on hearing it. Now, I shall not let you off.
You were saying that wisdom does not come so low as first-
year men; and so—what?”
THE LONG WALK IN CHRISTCHURCH MEADOWS. 289

“ And so—and so, they are not wise.”

“Yes, of course; but that was not what you were going to
say ; and so—”

“And so they are generally agreeable, for wise people are
always dull ; and so—ladies ought to avoid the dons.”

“And not avoid first-year men ?”

“ Exactly so.”

“ Because they are foolish, and therefore fit company for
ladies. Now, really—”

“No, no; because they are foolish, and, therefore, they
ought to be made wise ; and ladies are wiser than dons.”

“ And therefore, duller, for all wise people, you said, wero
dull.”

“ Not all wise people ; only people who are wise by cram-
ming,—as dons ; but ladies are wise by inspiration.”

“ And first-year men, are they foolish by inspiration and
agreeable by cramming, or agreeable by inspiration and foolish
by cramming ?”

“ They are agreeable by inspiration in the society of ladies.”

“ Then they can never be agreeable, for you say they never
see ladies.”

“ Not with the bodily eye, but with the eye of fancy.”

“Then their agreeableness must be all fancy.”

“But it is better to be agreeable in fancy than dull in
reality.”

“That depends upon whose fancy it is. To be agreeable
in your own fancy is compatible with being as dull in reality
as—”

“How you play with words! I see you won’t leave me
a shred either of fancy or agreeableness to stand on.”

“Then I shall do you good service. I shall destroy your
illusions ; you cannot stand on illusions.”

“But remember what my illusions were—fancy and agree-
ableness.”

“But your agreeableness stood on fancy, and your fancy on
nothing. You had better settle down at once on the solid
basis of dulness, like the dons.”

“Then I am to found myself on fact, and try to be dull ?
What a conclusion! But perhaps dulness is no more a fact
than fancy ; what is dulness ?”

“Oh, Ido not undertake to define; you are the best
judge.”

“How severe you are! Now, see how generous I am.
Dulness in society is the absence of ladies.”

“ Alas, poor Oxford! Who is that in the velvet sleeves
Why do you touch your cap ?”

U
290 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“That is the Proctor. He is our Cerberus; he has to
keep all undergraduates in good order.”

“ What a task! He ought to have three heads.”

“He has only one head, but it is a very long one. And he
has a tail like any Basha, composed of pro-proctors, marshals,
and bull-dogs, and I don’t know what all. But to go back
to what we were saying—”

“No, don’t let us go back. I’m tired of it; besides you
were just beginning about dulness. How can you expect me
to liston now 7”

“Oh, but do listen, just for two minutes. ‘Will you be
serious? I do want to know what you really think when
you hear the case.”

“ Well, I will try—for two minutes, mind.”

Upon gaining which permission Tom went off into an
interesting discourse on the unnaturalness of men’s lives at
Oxford, which it is by no means necessary to inflict on
readers.

As he was waxing eloquent and sentimental, he chancéd to
look from hig companion’s face for a moment in scarch of a
simile, when his oyes alighted on that virtuous member of
society, Dick, the factotum of “The Choughs,” who was
taking his turn in the Long Walk with his betters. Dick’s
face was twisted into an uncomfortable grin: his eyes were
fixed on Tom and his companion; and he made a sort of
half motion towards touching his hat, but couldn’t quite
carry it through, and su passed by.

“ Ah! ain’t he a going of it again,” he muttered to him-
self; “jest like ’em all.”

Tom didn’t hear the words, but the look had been quite
enough for him, and he broko off short in his speech, and
turned his head away, and, aficr two or three flounderings
which Mary seemed not to notice, stopped short, aud let Miss
Winter and Hardy join them.

“Tt’s getting dark,” he said, as they came up; “the Walk
is thinning ; ought we not to be going? Remember, I am in
charye.”

“Yes, I think it is time.”

At this moment tho great Christchurch bell—Tom by
name—hegan to toll.

“Surely that can’t be Tom?” Miss Winter said, who had
heard the one hundred and one strokes on former occasions.

“ Tndeed it is, though.”

“ But how very light it is.”

“Tt is almost the longest day in the year, and there hasn’t
been a cloud all day.”
THE LONG WALK IN CHRISTCHURCH MEADOWS. 291

They started to walk home all together, and Tom gradually
recovered himself, but left the labouring oar to Hardy, who
did his work very well, and persuaded the ladies to go on
and see the Ratcliffe by moonlight—the only time to see it,
as he said, because of the shadows—and just to look in at
the old quadrangle of St. Ambrose.

It was almost ten o’clock when they stopped at the lodgings
in High-street. While they were waiting for the door to be
opened, Hardy said—

“JT really must apologize, Miss Winter, to you, for my
intrusion to-night. I hope your father will allow me to call
on him.”

“Qh yes! pray do; he will be-so glad to see any friend of
my cousin’s.”

“ And if I can be of any use to him; or to you, or your
sistor—”

“My sistor! Oh, you mean Mary? Sho is not my sistor.”

“T beg your pardon, Bub I hope you will lot me know if
there is anything I can do for you.”

“Indeed we will Now, Mary, papa will be worrying
about us.” And so the young ladies said their adieus and
disappeared.

“Surely you told me they were sisters,” said Hardy, as the
two walked away towards college.

“No, did I? I don’t remember.”

* But they are your cousins ?”

“Yes; at least Katie is. Don’t you liko hor?”

“OF courso; ono can’t help liking her, But she says you
have not met for two years or more.”

“No more we have.”

Then I suppose you have seen more of her companion
lately ?”

“ Well, if you must know, I never saw her before yester-
day.”
% You don’t mean to say that you took me in there to-night
when you had never scen one of tho young ladies before, and
the other not for two years! Well, upon my word, Brown—”

“ Now don’t blow me up, old [ellow, to-night—please don’t.
There, I give in. Don’t hit a fellow when he’s down, I'm
so low.” Tom spoke in such a deprecating tone, that Ilardy’s
wrath passed away.

“Why, what’s the matter?” he said. ‘“ You seemed to
be full of talk. I was onvying your fluency, I know, often.”

“Talk! yes, so I was. But didn’t you sce Dick in the
Walk? You have never heard anything more ?”

“No; but no news is good news.”

u2
292 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“Heigho! DT’m awfully down. I want to talk to you.
Let me come up.”

“ Come along then.” And so they disappeared into Hardy’s
lodgings.

The two young ladies, meanwhile, soothed old Mr. Winter,
who had eaten and drank more than was good for him, and
was naturally put out thereby. They soon managed to per-
suade him to retire, and then followed themselves—first to
Mary’s room, where that young lady burst out at once, “ What
a charming place it is! Oh! didn’t you enjoy your evening,
Katie?”

“Yes; but I felt a little awkward without a chaperone.
You seemed to get on very well with my cousin. You
scarcely spoke to us in the Long Walk till just before we
came away. What were you talking about?”

Mary burst into a gay laugh. “All sorts of nonsense,” she
said. “I don’t think I ever talked so much nonsense in my
life. I hope he isn’t shocked. I don’t think he is. But I
said anything that came into my head. I couldn’t help it.
You don’t think it wrong ?”

“Wrong, dear? No I’m sure you could say nothing
wrong.”

“Tm not so sure of that. But, Katie dear, I know there
is something on his mind.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Oh, because he stopped short twice, and became quite
absent, and seemed not to hear anything I said.”

“How odd! I never knew him do so. Did you see any
reason for it?”

“No; unless it was two men we passed in the crowd. One
was a vulgar-looking wrotch, who was smoking—a fat black
thing, with such a thick nose, covered with jewellery—”

“ Not his nose, dear?”

“No, but his dress ; and the other was a homely, dried-up
little man, like one of your Englebourn troubles. I’m sure
there is some mystery about them, and I shall find it out,
But how did you like his friend, Katie?”

“Very much indeed. I was rather uncomfortable at walking
so long with a stranger. But he was very pleasant, and is so
fond of Tom. I am sure he is a very good friend for him.”

. “ He looks a good man ; but how ugly !”

“Do you think so? We shall have a hard day to-morrow.
Good night, dear.”

“Good night, Katie. But I don’t feel a bit sleepy.” And

so the cousins kissed one another, and Miss Winter went to
her own room,
LECTURING A LIONESS. 293

CHAPTER XXVII.
LECTURING A LIONESS.

Tue evening of Show Sunday may serve as a fair sample of
what this eventful Commemoration was to our hero. The
constant intercourse with ladies—with such ladies as Miss
Winter and Mary—young, good-looking, well spoken, and
creditable in all ways, was very delightful, and the more
fascinating, from the sudden change which their presence
wrought in the ordinary mode of life of the place. They
would have been charming in any room, but were quite
irresistible in his den, which no female presence, except that
of his blowsy old bed-maker, had lightened since he had been
in possession. All the associations of the freshman’s rooms
woro raised ab onco. Whon ho camo in at night now, ho
could look sontimontally at his arm-chair (christonod ‘Tho
Captain,” aftor Captain Hardy), on which Katio had sat to
make breakfast; or at the brass peg on the door, on which
Mary had hung her bonnet and shawl, after displacing his
gown. His very teacups and saucers, which were already a
miscellaneous set of several different patterns, had made a
move almost into his affections ; at least, the two—one brown
one blue—which the young ladies had used. A human interest
belonged to them now, and they were no longer mere crockery.
He thought of buying two very pretty china ones, the most
expensive he could find in Oxford, and getting them to use
these for the first time, but rejected the idea. The fine new
ones, he felt, would never be the same to him. They had
come in and used his own rubbish ; that was the great charm.
If he had been going to give them cups, no material would
have been beautiful enough ; but for his own use after them,
the commoner the better. The material was nothing, the
association everything. It is marvellous the amount of healthy
sentiment of which a naturally soft-hearted undergraduate is
capable by the end of the summer term. But sentiment
is not.all one-sided. Tho delights which spring from sudden
intimacy with the fairest and best part of the creation, are as
far above those of the ordinary, unmitigated, undergraduate
life, as the British citizen of 1860 is above the rudimentary
personage in prehistoric times from whom he has been gradu-
ally improved up to his present state of enlightonment and
perfection. But each state has also its own troubles as well
as its pleasures ; and, though the former are a price which no
decent fellow would boggle at for a moment, it is useless to
pretend that paying them is pleasant.
294 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

Now, at Commemoration, as elsewhere, where men do con-
gregate, if your lady-visitors are not pretty or agreeable enough
to make your friends and acquaintance eager to know them,
and to cater for their enjoyment, and try in all ways to win
their favour and cut you out, you have the satisfaction at
any rate of keeping them to yourself, though you lose tho
pleasures which arise from being sought after, and made
much of for their sakes, and feeling raised above the ruck
of your neighbours. On the other hand, if they are all this,
you might as well try to keep the sunshine aud air to your-
self. Universal human nature rises up against you; and
besides, they will not stand it themselves. And, indeed,
why should they? Women, to be very attractive to all sorts
of different people, must have great readiness of sympathy.
Many have it naturally, and many work hard in acquiring a
good imitation of it. In the first case it is against the nature
of such persons to be monopolized for more than a very short
time ; in the second, all their trouble would be thrown away
if they allowed themselves to be monopolized. Once in their
lives, indeed, they will bo, and ought to be, and that monopoly
lasts, or should last, for ever; but instead of destroying in
them that which was their great charm, it only deepens and
widens it, and the sympathy which was before fitful, and,
perhaps, wayward, flows on in a calm and healthy stream,
blessing and cheering all who come within reach of its ex-
hilarating and life-giving waters.

But man of all ages is a selfish animal, and unreasonable
in his selfishness. It takes every one of us in turn many a
shrewd fall in our wrestlings with the world to convince us
that we are not to have everything our own way. We are
conscious in our inmost souls that man is the rightful Jord
of creation; and, starting from this eternal principle, and
ignoring, each man-child of us in turn, the qualifying truth
that it is to man in general, including women, and not to
Thomas Brown in particular, that the earth has been given,
we set about asserting our kingships each in his own way,
and proclaiming ourselves kings from our own little ant-hills
of thrones. And then come the strugglings and the down-
fallings, and some of us learn our lesson, and some learn it
not. But what lesson? That we have been dreaming in the
golden hours when the vision of a kingdom rose before us 4
That there is in short no kingdom at all, or that, if there
be, we are no heirs of it?

No—I take it that, while we make nothing better than
that out of our lesson, we shall have to go on spelling at it
and stumbling over it, through all the days of our life, till
LECTURING A LIONESS. 295

we wake our last stumble, and take our final header out of
this riddle of a world, which we onco dreamed we were to
tule over, exclaiming “vanitas vanitatum” to the end. But
man’s spirit will never be satisfied without a kingdom, and
was never intended to be satisfied so; and a wiscr than
Solomon tells us day by day that our kingdom is about us
here, and that we may rise up and pass in when we will at
the shining gates which Ho holds open, for that it is His,
ancl we aro joint heirs of it with Tim.

On the whole, however, making allowances forall draw-
backs, those Commemoration days were the pleasantest days
Tom had ever known at Oxford. He was with his uncle and
cousins early and late, devising all sorts of pleasant entertain-
ments and excursions for them, introducing all the pleasantest
men of his acquaintance, and taxing all the resources of the
college, which at such times were available for undergraduates
as well as their betters, to minister to their comfort and
enjoyment. And he was well repaid. There was something
perfectly new to tho ladies, and very piquant, in the life and
habits of the place. They found it very diverting to be
receiving in Tom’s rooms, presiding over his breakfasts and
luncheons, altering the position of his furniture, and making
the place look as pretty as circumstances would allow. Then
there was pleasant occupation for every spare hour, and the
fétes and amusements were all unlike everything but them-
selves, Of course the ladies at once became enthusiastic St.
Ambrosians, and managed in spite of all distractions to find
timo for making up roscties and bows of bluo and white, in
which to appear at the procession of the boats, which was
the great event of the Monday. Fortunately, Mr. Winter
had been a good oar in his day, and had pulled in one of the
first four-oars in which the University races had commenced
some thirty-five years before; and Tom, who had set his
mind on managing his uncle, worked him up almost into
enthusiasm and forgetfulness of his maladies, so that he
raised no objection to a five o’clock dinner, and an adjourn-
ment to the river almost immediately afterwards. Jervis,
who was all-powerful on the river, at Tom’s instigation got an
arm-chair for him in the best part of the University bargo,
while the ladies, after walking along the bank with Tom and
others of the crew, and being instructed in the colours of the
different boats, and tho meaning of the ceremony, took thoir
places in tho front row on tho top of the bargo, bencath tho
awning and the flags, and looked down with bundrods of
other fair strangers on the scene, which certainly merited all
that Tom had said of it on faith.
296 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

The barges above and below the University barge, which
occupied the post of honour, were also covered with ladies,
and Christchurch Meadow swarmed with gay dresses and caps
and gowns. On the opposite side the bank was lined with a
crowd in holiday clothes, and the punts plied across without
intermission loaded with people, till the groups stretched
away down the towing path in an almost continuous line to
the starting place. Then one after another the racing-boats,
all painted and polished up for the occasion, with the college
flags drooping at their sterns, put out and passed down to
their stations, and the bands played, and the sun shone his
best. And then after a short pause of expectation the distant
bank became all alive, and the groups all turned one way, and
came up the towing path again, and the foremost boat with
the blue and white flag shot through the Gut and came up
the reach, followed by another, and another, and another, till
they were tired of counting, and the leading boat was already
close to them before the last had come within sight. And
tho bands played up all together, and the crowd on both
sides cheered as the St, Ambrose boat spurted from the
Cherwell, and took the place of honour at the winning-post,
opposite the University barge, and close under where they
were sitting.

“Oh, look, Katie dear; here they are. There’s Tom, and
Mr. Hardy, and Mr. Jervis ;” and Mary waved her handker-
chief and clapped her hands, and was in an ecstasy of enthu-
siasm, in which her cousin was no whit behind her. The
gallant crew of St. Ambrose were by no means unconscious
of, and fully appreciated, the compliment.

Then the boats passed up one by one ; and, as each came
opposite to the St. Ambrose boat, the crews tossed their oars
and cheered, and the St. Ambrose crew tossed their oars and
cheered in return; and the whole ceremony went off in
triumph, notwithstanding the casualty which occurred to one
of the torpids. The torpids being filled with the refuse of
the rowing men—generally awkward or very young oarsmen
—find somo difficully in tho act of tossing; no very safo
oporation for an unsteady crew. Accordingly, tho torpid in
question, having sustained her crew gallantly till the saluting
point, and allowed them to get their oars fairly into the air,
proceeded gravely to turn over on her side, and shoot them
out into the stream,

A thrill ran along the top of the barges, and a little scream
or two might have been heard even through the notes of
Annie Laurie, which were filling the air at the moment ; but
the band played on, and the crew swam ashore, and two of
LECTURING A LIONESS. 297

the punt-men laid hold of the boat and collected the oars,
and nobody seemed to think anything of it.

Katie drew a long breath.

“Are they all out, dear?” she said; “can you see? I
can only count ¢ight.”

“Oh, I was too frightened to look. Let me see; yes, there
are nine ; there’s one by himself, the little man pulling the
weeds off his trousers.”

And so they regained their equanimity, and soon after left
the barge, and were escorted to the hall of St. Ambrose by
the crew, who gave an entertainment there to celebrate. the
occasion, which Mr. Winter was induced to attend and pleased
to approve, and which lasted till it was time to dress for the
ball, for which a proper chaperone had been providentially
found. And so they passed the days and nights of Com-
momoration.

But it is not within the scope of this work to chronicle all
their doings—how, notwithstanding balls at night, they were
up to chapel in the morning, and attended flower-shows at
Worcester and musical promenades in New College, and
managed to get down the river for a pic-nic at Nuneham,
besides seeing everything that was worth seeing in all the
colleges. How it was done, no man can tell; but done it
was, and they seemed only the better for it all They were
waiting at the gates of the Theatre amongst the first, tickets
in hand, and witnessed the whole scene, wondering no little
at the strange mixture of solemnity and licence, the rush and
crowding of the undergraduates into their gallery, and their
free and easy way of taking the whole proceedings under
their patronage, watching every movement in the amphitheatre
and on the floor, and shouting approval and disapproval of the
heads of their republic of learning, or of the most illustrious
visitors, or cheering with equal vigour, the ladies, Her
Majesty’s ministers, or the prize poems.

It is a strange scene certainly, and has probably puzzled
many persons besides young ladies. One can well fancy the
astonishment of the learned foreigner, for instance, when he
sees the head of the University, which he has reverenced at
a distance from his youth up, rise in his robes in solemn con-
vocation to exercise one of the highest of University functions,
and hears his sonorous Latin periods interrupted by “three
cheers for the ladies in pink bonnets !” or, when some man is
introduced for an honorary degree, whose name may be known
throughout the civilized world, and the Vice-Chancellor,
turning to his compeers, inquires, “ Placetne vobis, domini
doctores ? placetne vobis, magistri?” and he hears the voices
298 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

of doctors and masters drowned in contradictory shouts from
the young demus in the gallery, “Who is he?” “Non
placet!” “Placet!” ‘“ Why does he carry an umbrella?”
It is thoroughly English, and that is just all that need, or
indeed can, be said for it all; but not one in a hundred of us
would alter it if we could, beyond suppressing some of the
personalities, which of late years have gone somewhat too far.

After the Theatre there was a sumptuous lunch in All
Souls’, and then a féte in St. John’s Gardens. Now, at the
aforesaid luncheon, Tom’s feelings had been severely tried ; in
fact, the little troubles, which, as has been before hinted, are
incident to persons, especially young men in his fortunate
predicament, had here come to a head.

He was separated from his cousins a little way. Being a
guest, and not an important one in the eyes of the All Souls’
fellows, he had to find his level, which was very much below
that allotted to his uncle and cousins. In short, he felt that
they were taking him about, instead of he them—which
change of position was in itself trying; and Mary’s conduct
fanned his slumbering discontent into a flamo. There she
was, sitting between a fellow of All Souls’, who was a collector
of pictures and an authority in fine-art matters, and the Indian
officer who had been so recently promoted to the degree of:
D.C.L. in the Theatre. There she sat, so absorbed in their
conversation that she did not even hear a remark: which he
was pleased to address to her.

Whereupon he began to brood on his wrongs, and to take
umbrage at the catholicity of her enjoyment and enthusiasm.
So long as he had been the medium through which she was
brought in contact with others, he had been well enough
content that they should amuse and interest hor ; but it was
a very different thing now.

So he watched her jealously, and raked up former conver-
sations, and came to the conclusion that it was his duty to
remonstrate with her. He had remarked, too, that she never
could talk with him now without breaking away after a short
time into badinago, Ter badinago certainly was very charming
and pleasant, and kopt him on tho stretch ; but why should
she not let him be serious and sentimental when he pleased ?
She did not break out in this manner with other people. So
he really felt it to be his duty to speak to her on the subject
—not in the least for his own sake, but for hers.

Accordingly, when the party broke up, and they started
for the féte at St. John’s, he resolved to carry out his inten-
tions. At first he could not get an opportunity while they
were walking about on the beautiful lawn of the great garden,
LECTURING A LIONESS. 299

seeing and being seen, and listening to music, and looking
at choice flowers. But soon a chance offered. She stayed
behind the rest without noticing it, to examine some specially
beautiful plant, and he was by her side in a moment, and
proposed to show her the smaller garden, which lies beyond,
to which she innocently consented ; and they were soon out
of the crowd, and in comparative solitude.

She remarked that he was somewhat silent and grave, but
thought nothing of it, and chatted on as usual, remarking
upon the pleasant company she had been in at luncheon.

This opened the way for Tom’s lecture.

“How easily you seem to get interested with new people!”
he began.

“Do I?” she said. “Well, don’t you think it very
natural ?”

“Wouldn't it bo a blossing if poople would always say
just what thoy think and mean, though?”

“Yes, and a great many do,” sho replied, looking at him
in some wonder, and not quite pleased with the turn things
wero taking.

“ Any ladies, do you think? You know we haven’t many
opportunities of observing.”

“ Yes, I think quite as many ladies as men. More, indeed,
as far as my small experience goes.”

“You really maintain deliberately that you have met people
—men and women—who can talk to you or any one else for
a quarter of an hour quite honestly, and say nothing at all
which they don’t mean—nothing for tho sake of flattery, or
effect, for instance ?”

“Oh dear me, yes, often.”

“Who, for example?”

“Our cousin Katie. Why are you so suspicious and mis-
anthropical? There is your friend Mr. Hardy again ; what
do you say to him?”

“Well, I think you may have hit on an exception. But
I maintain the rule.”

“ You look as if I ought to object. But I shan’t. It is
no business of mine if you choose to believe any such dis-
agreeable thing about your fellow-creatures,”

“TJ don’t believe anything worse about them than I do
about myself. I know that I can’t do it.”

“Woll, I am very sorry for you.”

“ But I don’t think I am any worse than my neighbours.”

“T don’t suppose you do. Who are your neighbours ?”

“ Shall I include you in the number?”

“Oh, by all means, if you like.”
300 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“But I may not mean that you are like the rest. The
man who fell among thieves, you know, had one good neigh-
bour.”

“Now, Cousin Tom,” she said, looking up with sparkling
eyes, “I can’t return the compliment. You meant to make
me feel that I was like the rest—at least like what you say
they are. You know you did. And now you are just turning
round, and trying to slip out of it by saying what you don’t
mean.”

“Well, cousin Mary, perhaps I was. At any rate, I was
a great fool for my pains. I might have known by this time
that you would catch me out fast enough.”

“Perhaps you might. I didn’t challenge you to set up
your Palace of Truth. But, if we are to live in it, you are
not to say all the disagreeable things and hear none of
them.”

“TJ hope not, if they must be disagreeable. But why
should they be? I can’t see why you and I, for instance,
should not say exactly what we are thinking to ono another
without being disagreeable.”

“Well, I don’t think you made a happy beginning just
now.” i ;

“But I am sure we should all like one another the better
for speaking the truth.”

“Yes; but I don’t admit that I haven’t been speaking the
truth.”

“You won’t understand me. Have I said that you don’t
speak the truth?”

“ Yes, you said just now that I don’t say what I think and
mean. Well, perhaps you didn’t oxactly say that, but that is
what you meant.”

“You are very angry, Cousin Mary. Let us wait till—”

“No, no. It was you who began, and I will not let you
off now.”

“Very well, then. I did mean something of the sort. It
is better to tell you than to keep it to myself.”

“Yes, and now tell me your reasons,” said Mary, look-
ing down and biting her lip. Tom was ready to bite his
tongue off, but there was nothing now but to go through
with it.

“You make everybody that comes near you think that you
are deeply interested in them and their doings. Poor Grey
believes that you are as mad as he is about rituals and rubrics.
And the boating men declare that you would sdoner see a race
than go to the best ball in the world. And you listened to
the Dean’s stale old stories about the schools, and went into
LECTURING A LIONESS. 301

raptures in the Bodleian about pictures and art with that
fellow of Allsouls’. Even our old butler and the cook—

Here Mary, despite her vexation, after a severe struggle to
control it, burst into a laugh, which made Tom pause.

“ Now you can’t say that I am not really fond of jellies,”
she said.

“And you can’t say that I have said anything so very
disagreeable.”

“Oh, but you have, though.”

“At any rate I have made you laugh.”

“But you didn’t mean to do it. Now, go on.”

“T have nothing more to say. You see my meaning, or
you never will.”

“If you have nothing more to say, you should not have
said so much,” said Mary. ‘ You wouldn’t have me rude to
all the people I meet, and I can’t help it if the cook thinks I
ano glubton.”

“But you could help letting Groy think that you should
like to go and see his night schools,

“ But I should like to see them of all things.”

“ And I suppose you would like to go through the manu-
scripts in the Bodleian with the Dean. I heard you talking
to him as if it was the dearest wish of your heart, and making
a half engagement to go with him this afternoon, when you
know that you are tired to death of him, and so full of other
engagements that you don’t know where to turn.”

Mary began to bite her lips again. She felt half inclined
to cry, and half inclined to get up and box his ears. How-
ever she did neither, but looked up after a moment or two,
and said— ;

“Well, have you any more unkind words to say?”

“ Unkind, Mary ?”

“Yes, they are unkind. How can I enjoy anything now
when I shall know you are watching me, and thinking all
sorts of harm of everything I say and do? However, it
doesn’t much matter, for we go to-morrow morning.”

“But you will givo me credit at least for meaning you
well.”

“ T think you are very jealous and suspicious.”

“You don’t know how you pain me when you say
that.”

“But I must say what I think.”

Mary set her little mouth, and looked down, and began
tapping her boot with her parasol. There was an awkward
silence while Tom considered within himself whether she
was not right, and whether, after all, his own jealousy had not
302 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

been the cause of the lecture he had beer delivering, much
more than any unselfish wish for Mary’s improvement.

“Tt is your turn now,” he said presently, leaning forward
with his elbows on his knees, and looking hard at the gravel.
“T may have been foolishly jealous, and I thank you for
telling me so. But you can tell me a great deal more if you
will, quite as good for me to hear.” J

‘No, I have nothing to say. I daresay you are open and
true, and have nothing to hide or disguise, not even about
cither of the men we met in the Long Walk on Sunday.”

Le winced at this random shaft as if he had been stung,
and she saw that it had gone home, and repented the next
moment. The silence became more and more embarrassing.
By good luck, however, their party suddenly appeared stroll-
ing towards them from the large garden.

“ Here are Uncle Robert and Katie, and all of them. Let
us join them.”

She rose up and he with her, and as they walked towards
the rest he said quickly in a low voice, “ Will you forgive
me if I have pained you? I was very selfish, and am very
sorry.”

“Oh yes, we were both very foolish, but we won’t do
it again.”

“Here you are at last. We have been looking for you
everywhere,” said Miss Winter, as they came up.

“T’m sure I don’t know how we missed you. We came
straight from the music tent to this seat, and have not moved.
We knew you must come by sooner or later.”

“ But it is quite out of the way. It was quite by chance
that we came round here.”

“Tsn’t Uncle Robert tired, Katie?” said Tom ; “le doosn’t
look well this afternoon.”

Katio instantly turned to her father, and My. Winter
declared himself to be much fatigued. So they wished their
hospitable entertainers good-bye, and Tom hurried off and got
a wheel chair for his uncle, and walked by his side io their
lodgings. The young ladies walked near the chair also, ac-
companied by one or two of their acquaintance ; in fact they
could not move without an escort. But Tum never once
turned his head for a glance at what was going on, and talked
steadily on to his uncle, that he might not catch a stray word
of what the rest wore saying. Despite of all which self-
denial, however, he was quite aware somehow when he made
his bow at the door that Mary had been very silent all the
way home.

Mr. Winter retired to his room to lie down, and his
LECTURING A LIONESS. 303

daughter and niece remained in the sitting-room. Mary sat
down and untied her bonnet, but did not burst into her usual
flood of comments on the events of the day. Miss Winter
looked at her and said—

“You look tired, dear, and over-excited.”

“Oh yes, soIT am. I’ve had such a quarrel with Tom.”

“ A quarrel—you’re not serious?”

“Indeed I am, though. I quite hated him for five minutes
at least.”

“ But what did he do?”

“Why, he taunted me with being too civil to everybody,
and it made me so angry. He said I pretended to take an
interest in ever so many things, just to please people, when I
didn’t really care about them. And it isn’t true now, Katie,
is it 1”

“No, dear. He never could have said that. You must
havo misunderstood him.”

“There, 1 know you would say go. And if it woro truo,
Tm suro it isn’t wrong. When people talk 1o you, it is sv
easy to seem pleased and interested in what they aro saying
—and then they like you, and it is so pleasant to be liked.
Now, Katie, do you ever snap people’s noses off, or tell them
you think them very foolish, and that you don’t care, and
that what they are saying is all of no consequence ?”

“J, dear? I couldn’t do it to save my life.”

“Oh, I was sure you couldn’t. And he may say what he
will, but I am quite sure he would not have been pleased if
we had not made ourselves pleasant to his friends.”

“That's quite true. He has told me himself half a dozen
times how delighted he was to see you so popular.”

“ And you too, Katie?”

“Oh yes. He is very well pleased with me. But it is
you who have turned all the heads in the college, Mary. You
are Queen of St. Ambrose beyond a doubt just now.”

“No, no, Katie; not more than you at any rato.”

“J say yes, yes, Mary. You will always be ten times as
popular as I ; some people have the gift of it; I wish I had.
But why do you look so grave again ?”

“Why, Katie, don’t you see you are just saying over again,
only in a different way, what your provoking cousin—I shall
call him Mr. Brown, I think, in future—was telling me for
my good in St. John’s gardens. You saw how long wo were
away from you: well, he was lecturing mo all the limo, only
think ; and now you are going to tell it mo all ovor again.
But go on, dear; I sha’n’t mind anything from you.”

She put her arm round her cousin’s waist, and looked up
304 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

playfully into her face. Miss Winter saw at once that no
great harm, perhaps some good, had been done in the passage
of arms between her relatives.

“You made it all up,” she said, smiling, “ before we found

ou.” .
: “Only just, though. He begged my pardon just at last,
almost in a whisper, when you were quite close to us.”

“ And you granted it?”

“Yes, of course: but I don’t know that I shall not
recall it.”

“T was sure you would be falling out before long, you got
on so fast. But he isn’t quite so easy to turn round your
finger as you thought, Mary.”

“Oh, I don’t know that,” said Mary, laughing ; “you saw
how humble he looked at last, and what good order he was
in,”

“Well, dear, it’s time to think whether we shall go out
again.”

“ Let me see ; there's the last ball, What do you say?”

“Why, I’m afraid poor papa is too tired to take us, and I
don’t know with whoin wo could go. We ought to begin
packing, too, I think.” cE

“Very well. Let us have tea quietly at home.”

“T will write a note to Tom to tell him. He has done his
best for us, poor fellow, and we ought to consider him a
little.”

“Oh yes, and ask him and his friend Mr. Hardy to tea, as
it is the last night.”

“Tf you wish it I should be very glad ; they will amuse
papa.”

“ Certainly, and then he will seo that I bear him no malice.
And now I will go and just do my hair.”

“Very well; and we will pack after they leave. How
strange home will seem after all this gaiety.”

“Yes ; we seem to have been here a month.”

“T do hope we shall find all quiet at Englebourn, I am
always afraid of some trouble there.”

 

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE END OF THE FRESHMAN’S YHAR

On the morning after Commemoration, Oxford was in a bustle
of departure. The play had been played, the long vaca-
tion had begun, and visitors and members seemed equally
THE END OF THE FRESHMAN’S YEAR. 305

anxious to be off At’ the gates of the colleges groups of
men in travelling dresses waited for the coaches, omnibuses,
dog-carts, and all manner of vehicles, which were to carry
them to the Great Western railway station at Steventon, or
elsewhere, to all points of the compass. Porters passed in
and out with portmanteaus, gun-cases, and baggage of all
kinds, which they piled outside the gates, or carried off to
“The Mitre” or “The Angel,” under the vigorous and not
too courteous orders of the owners. College servants flitted
round the groups to take Jast instructions, and, if so might
be, to extract the balances of extortionate bills out of their
departing masters. Dog-fanciers were there also, holding
terriers ; and scouts from the cricketing grounds, with bats
and pads under their arms; and ostlers, and men from the
boats, all on the same errand of getting the last shilling out
of their patrons—a fawning, obsequious crowd for the most
part, with here and there a sturdy Briton who felt that ho was
only thero for his due.

Through such a group, at the gate of St. Ambrose, Tom and
Hardy passed soon after breakfast time, in cap and gown,
which costume excited no small astonishment.

“Hullo, Brown, old fellow! ain’t you off this morning?”

“No, I shall be up for a day or two yet.”

“Wish you joy. I wouldn’t be staying up over to-day for
something.”

“ But you'll be at Henley to-morrow ?” said Diogenes, con-
fidently, who stood at the gate in boating coat and flannels,
a big stick and knapsack, waiting for a companion, with whom
he was going to walk to Henley.

« And at Lord’s on Friday,” said another. ‘It will be a
famous match. Come and dine somewhere afterwards, and
go to the Haymarket with us.”

“You know the Leander are to be at Henley,” put in
Diogenes; “and Cambridge is very strong. There will
be a splendid race for the cup, but Jervis thinks we are
all right.”

“Bother your eternal races; haven’t we had enough of
them?” said tho Londoner. ‘ You had much botter come
up to the little village at once, Brown, and stay there while
the coin lasts.”

“Tf I get away at all, it will be to Henley,” said Tom.

“Of course, I knew that,” said Diogenes, triumphantly ;
“our boat ought to be on for the ladics’ plate. If only Jervis
were not in the University crew! I thought you were to pull
at Henley, Hardy ?”

“T was asked to pull, but I couldn’t manage the time with

x
306 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

the schools coming on, and when the examinations were over
it was too late. The crew were picked and half trained, and
none of them have broken down.”

“What! every one of them stood putting through the
sieve? They must be a rare crew, then,” said another.

“You're right,” said Diogenes. “Oh, here you are at
last,” he added, as another man in flannels and knapsack came
out of college. ‘“‘ Well, good-bye all, and a pleasant vacation ;
we must be off, if we are to be in time to see our crew pull
over the course to-night ;” and the two marched off towards
Magdalen Bridge.

“By Jove!” remarked a fast youth, in most elaborate
toilette, looking after them, “ fancy two fellows grinding off
to Henley, five miles an hour, in this sun, when they might
drop up to the metropolis by train in half the time? Isn’t it
marvellous ?”

“T should like to be going with them,” said Tom.

“Well, there’s no accounting for tastes. Llere’s our
coach.” .

“ Good-bye, then ;” and Tom shook hands, and, leaving
the coach to get packed with portmanteaus, terricrs, and
undergraduates, he and Hardy walked off towards the High-
street.

“So yow’e not going to-day ?” Hardy said.

“No; two or three of my old schoolfellows are coming up
to stand for scholarships, and I must be here to receive them.
But it’s very unlucky ; I should have liked so to have been
at Henley.”

“ Look, their carriage is already at the door,” said Hardy,
pointing up High-street, into which they now turned. Thero
were a dozen postchaises and carriages loading in front of dif-
ferent houses in the street, and amongst them Mr. Winter’s
old-fashioned travelling barouche.

“So it is,” said Tom ; “that’s some of uncle’s fidgeti-
ness; but he will be sure to dawdle at the last. Come
along in.”

“Don’t you think I had better stay downstairs? It may
seem intrusive.”

“No, come along. Why, they asked you to como and sco
the last of them last night, didn’t thoy 9”

Hardy did not requiro any further urging to induco him to
follow his inclination ; so the two went up together. ‘The
breakfast things were still on the table, at which sat Miss
Winter, in her bonnet, employed in examining the bill, with
the assistance of Mary, who leant over her shoulder. She
looked up as they entered.
THE END OF THE FRESHMAN’S YEAR. 307

“Oh! I’m so glad you are come. Poor Katie is so
bothered, and I can’t help her. Do look at the bill ; is it all
right?”

“ Shall I, Katie?”

“Yes, please do. I don’t see anything to object to,
except, perhaps, the things I have marked. Do you think
we ought to be charged half a crown a day for the kitchen
fire?”

“Fire in Juno! and you havo never dined at home once 4”

“No, but we have had tea several times.”

“Tt is a regular swindle,” said Tom, taking tho bill and
glancing at it. ‘‘ Here, Hardy, come and help me cut down
this precious total.”

They sat down to the bill, the ladies willingly giving place.
Mary tripped off to the glass to tie her bonnet.

“Now that is all right!” sho said merrily ; “why can’t
one go on without bills or horrid money 4”

« Ah! why can’t one ?” said Tom, “ that would suit most of
our complaints. But where’s uncle ; has he seen tho bill?”

“No; papa is in his room; he must not be worried, or
the journey will be too much for him.”

Here the ladies’-maid arrived, with a message that her
father wished to see Miss Winter.

“Leave your money, Katie,” said her cousin ; “this is
gentlemen's business, and Tom and Mr. Hardy will settle it
all for us, I am sure.”

Tom professed his entire willingness to accept the charge,
delighted at finding himself reinstated in his office of pro-
tector at Mary’s suggestion. Tad the landlord been ono of
his own tradesmen, or the bill his own bill, he might not
have been so well pleased, but, as neither of these was the
case, and he had Hardy to back him, he went into the matter
with much vigour and discretion, and had the landlord up,
made the proper deductions, and got the bill settled and
receipted in a few minutes. Then he and Hardy addressed
themselves to getting the carriage comfortably packed, and
vied with ono another in settling and stowing away in the
most convenient places, the many little odds and ends which
naturally accompany young ladies and invalids on their
travels ; in the course of which employment he managed to
snatch a few words here and there with Mary, and satisfied
himself that she bore him no ill-will for the events of the
previous day.

At last all was ready for the start, and Tom reported the
fact in the sitting-room. “Then I will go and fetch papa,”
said Miss Winter.

x2
308 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

Tom’s eyes met Mary’s at the moment. He gave a slight
shrug with his shoulders, and said, as the door closed after his
cousin, “ Really I have no patience with Uncle Robert, he
leaves poor Katie to do everything.”

“Yes; and how beautifully she does it all, without a word
or, 1 believe, a thought of complaint! I could never be so
patient.”

“T think itis a pity. If Uncle Robert were obliged to
exert himself it would be much better for him. Katie is
only spoiling him and wearing herself out.”

“Yes, it is very easy for you and me to think and say so.
But he is her father ; and then he is really an invalid. So
she goes on devoting herself to him more and more, and feels
she can never do too much for him.”

“But if she believed it would be better for him to exert
himself? I’m sure it is the truth. Couldn't you try to
persuade her ?”

“No, indeed; it would only worry her, and be so cruel.
But then J am not used to give advice,” she added, after a
moment's pause, looking demurely at hor gloves; “it might
du good, perhaps, now, if you were to speak to her.”

“You think me so well qualified, I suppose, after the
specimen you had yesterday? Thank you; I have had
enough of lecturing for the present.”

“JT am very much obliged to you, really, for what you said
to me,” said Mary, still looking at her gloves.

The subject was a very distasteful one to Tom. He looked
at her for a moment to see whether she was laughing at him,
and then broke it off abruptly—

“T hope you have enjoyed your visit ?”

“Oh yes, so very much. I shall think of it all the
summer.”

‘Where shall you be all the summer?” asked Tom.

“ Not so very far from you. Papa has taken a house only
eight miles from Englebourn, and Katie says you live within
a day’s drive of them.”

“ And shall you be there all the vacation 1”

“Yes, and we hope to get Katie over often. Could not
you come and meet her? it would be so pleasant.”

“But do you think I might? I don’t know your father
or mother.”

“Oh, yes ; papa and mamma are very kind, and will ask
anybody I like. Besides, you are a cousin, you know.”

“ Only up at Oxford, I am afraid.”

“Well now, you will see. We are going to have a great
archery party next month, and you shall have an invitation.”
THE END OF THE FRESHMAN’S YEAR. 309

“Will you write it for me yourself 1”:

“Very likely ; but why ?”

i Don’t you think I shall value a note in your hand more
than—”

“Nonsense ; now, remember your lecture—Oh, here are
Uncle Robert and Katie.”

Mr. Winter was very gracious, and thanked Tom for all his
attentions. He had been very pleased, he said, to make his
nophow’s acquaintance again so pleasantly, and hoped he
would come and pass a day or two at Englebourn in the
vacation. In his sad stato of health he could not do much to
entertain a young man, but he could procure him some good
fishing and shooting in the neighbourhood. Tom assured his
uncle that nothing would please him so much as a visit
to Englebourn. ‘Perhaps the remembrance of the distance
between that parish and the place where Mary was to spend
tho summor may havo added a little to his onthusiasmn.

“T should have liked also to have thanked your friend for
his hospitality,’ Mr. Winter went on. “I understood my
daughter to say he was here.”

‘Yes, he was here just now,” said Tom; “he must be
below, I think.”

“What, that good Mr. Hardy?” said Mary, who was
looking out of the window ; “there he is in the street. He
has just helped Hopkins into the rumble, and handed her
things to her just as if she were a duchess. She has
been so cross all the morning, and now she looks quite
gracious.”

“Then I think, papa, we had better start.”

“Let me give you an arm down stairs, uncle,” said Tom,
and so he helped his uncle down to the carriage, the two
young ladies following behind, and the landlord standing with
obsequious bows at his shop door and looking as if he had
never made an overcharge in his life.

While Mr. Winter was making his acknowledgments to
Hardy, and being helped by him into the most comfortable
seat in the carriage, ‘lom was making tender adieus to the
two young ladies behind, and even succeeded in keeping a
yose-bud which Mary was carrying, when they took their
seats. She parted from it half-laughingly, and the post-boy
cracked his whip and the barouche went lumbering along
High-street. Hardy and Tom watched it until it turned down
St. Aldate’s towards Folly-bridge, the latter waving his hand
as it. disappeared, and then they turned and strolled slowly
away side by side in silence. The sight of all the other
departures increased the uncomfortable, unsatisfied feeling
310 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

which that of his own relatives had already produced in Toms
mind.

“Well, it isn’t lively stopping up here when everybody is
going, is it? What is one to do?”

“Oughtn’t you to be looking after your friends who are
coming up to try for the scholarships ?”

“No, they won't be up till the afternoon, by coach.”

“Shall we go down to the river, then ?”

‘“No, it would be miserable. Hullo, look here, what’s
up?”

Phe cause of Tom’s astonishment was the appearance of
the usual procession of university beadles carrying silver-
headed maces, and escorting the Vice-Chancellor towards
St. Mary’s,

“Why, the bells are going for service ; there must be a
university sermon. Is it a saint’s day?”

“Where's the congregation to come from? Why, half
Oxford is off by this time, and those that are left won't want
to be hearing sermons.”

“Well, T don’t know. A good many scom to be going, I
wonder who is to proach.”

“T vote we go. It will help to pass the time.”

Hardy agreed, and they followed the procession and went
up into the gallery of St. Mary’s, There was a very fair
congregation in the body of the church, as the staffs of the
colleges had not yet broken up, and even in the gallery the
undergraduates mustered in some force. The restless feeling
which had brought our hero there seemed to have had a like
effect on most of the men who were for one reason or another
unable to start on that day.

‘Tom looked steadily into his cap during the bidding prayer,
and sat down composedly afterwards , expecting nol to be
much interested or benefited, but comforted with the assurance
that at any rate it would be almost luncheon time before he
would be again thrown on his own resources. But he was
mistaken in his expectations, and, before the preacher had
been speaking for three minutes, was all attention. The
sorimon was upon the froedum of the Gospel, the power by
which it bursts all bonds and lets the oppressed go free. lis
burthen was, “ Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free.” The preacher dwelt on many sides of these
words ; the freedom of nations, of societies, of universities, of
the conscience of each individual man, were each glanced at,
in turn ; and then, reminding his hearers of the end of the
academical year, he went on—

“We have heard it said in the troubles and toils and
THE END OF THE FRESHMAN’S YEAR. all

temptations of the world,’ ‘Oh that I could begin life over
again ! oh that I could fall asleep, and wake up twelve, six,
three months hence, and find my difficulties solved!’ That
which we may vainly wish elsewhere, by a happy Providence
is furnished to us by the natural divisions of meeting and
parting in this place. To every one of us, old and young, the
long vacation on which we are now entering gives us a
breathing space, and time to break the bonds which place
and circumstance have woven round us during the ycar that
is past. From all our potty cares, and confusions, and
intrigues ; from the dust and clatter of this huge machinery
amidst which we labour and toil; from whatever cynical
contempt of what is generous and devout; from whatever
fanciful disregard of what is just and wise ; from whatever
gall of bitterness is secreted in our best motives ; from what-
over bonds of unequal doaling in which wo havo ontangled
ourselves or others, we are now for a timo sct free. We
stand on the edge of a river which shall for a time at least
sweep them away ; that ancient river, the river Kishon, the
river of fresh thoughts, and fresh scenes, and fresh feelings,
and fresh hopes: one surely amongst the blessed means
whereby God’s free and loving grace works out our deliverance,
our redemption from evil, and renews the strength of each
succeeding year, so that ‘we may mount up again as eagles,
may run and not be weary, may walk and not faint.’

“ And, if turning to the younger part of my hearers, I may
still more directly apply this general lesson to them. Is there
no ono who, in some shape or other, does not {cel the bondage
of which I have been speaking? Ho has something on his
conscience; he has something on his mind ; extravagance,
sin, debt, falsehood. Every morning in the first few minutes
after waking, it is the first thought that occurs to him: he
drives it away in the day; he drives it off by recklessness,
which only binds it more and more closely round him. Is
there any one who has ever felt, who is at this moment
{celing, this grievous burthen? What is tho deliverance ?
How shall he set himself free? In what special way does
the redemption of Christ, the free graco of God, present
itself to him? ‘There is at least one way, clear and simple.
He knows it better than any one can tell him. It is those
same words which I used with another purpose. ‘‘The truth

1 This quotation is from the sermon preached by Dr. Stanley before
the University, on Act Sunday, 1859 pele se by J. H. Parker, of
Oxford). I hope that the distinguished professor whose words they
are will pardon the liberty I have taken in quoting them. No words
of my own could have given so vividly what I wanted to say.
312 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

shall make him free.’ It is to tell the truth to his friend, to
his parent, to any one, whosoever it be, from whom he is con-
cealing that which he ought to make known. One word of
ypen, frank disclosure—one resolution to act sincerely and
honestly by himself and others—one ray of truth let into that
dark corner will indeed set the whole man free.

“ Tnberavt animam meam. ‘1 have delivered my soul.’
What a faithful expression is this of the relief, the deliverance
effected by one strong effort of will in one moment of time.
‘T will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him,
Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before theo, and
ain no more worthy to be called thy son.’ So we heard the
prodigal’s confession this morning. So may the thought well
spring up in the minds of any who in the course of this last
year have wandered into sin, have found themselves beset
with evil habits of wicked idleness, of wretched self-indulgence.
Now that you are indeed in the literal sense of the word
about to rise and go to your father, now that you will be able
to shake off the bondage of bad companionship, now that the
whole length of this long absonce will roll between you and
the past—take a long breath, breake off the yoke of your sin,
of your fault, of your wrong doing, of your folly, of your per-
verscness, of your pride, of your vanity, of your weakness;
break it off by truth, break it off by one stout effort, in one
steadfast prayer ; break it off by innocent and free enjoyment ;
break it off by honest work. Put your ‘hand to the nail and
your right hand to the workman’s hammer :’ strike through
the enemy which has ensnared you, pierce and strike him
through and through. However powerful he seems, ‘at your
fect he will bow, he will fall, he will lie down ; at your feot
he will how and fall, and whore hoe bows, thors will he
riso up no more, So let all thine cnemics perish, O Lord ;
but let them that love Thee be as the sun when he goeth
forth in his might.’”

The two friends separated themselves from the crowd in the
porch and walked away, side by side, towards their college.

“Well, that wasn’t a bad move of ours. It is worth some-
thing to hear a man preach that sort of doctrine,” said Hardy.

“ How does he get to know it all?” said Tom, meditatively.

“ All what? I don’t see your puzzle,”

“Why, all sorts of things that are in a fellow’s mind—
what he thinks about the first thing in the morning, for
instance.”’

“ Pretty much like the rest of us, I take it : by looking at

home. You don’t suppose: that university preachers are unlike
you and me.” :
THE END OF THE FRESHMAN’S YEAR. 313

“Well, I don’t know. Now do you think he ever had
anything on his mind that was always coming up and plaguing
him, and which he never told to anybody ?”

“ Yes, I should think so ; most of us must have had.”

“Have you?”

“ Ay, often and often.”

“ And you think his remedy the right one ?”

“The only one. Make a clean breast of it and the sting is
gone. There’s a great deal to be done afterwards, of course ;
but there can be no question about step No. 1.”

“Did you ever owe a hundred pounds that you couldn’t
pay?” said Tom, with a sudden effort; and his secret had
hardly passed his lips before he felt a relief which surprised
himeelf.

“My dear fellow,” said Hardy, stopping in the street,
“ you don’t menn to say you aro speaking of yoursclf?”

“T do, though,” said Tom, “and it has beon on my mind
ever since Easter term, and has spoilt my temper and every-
thing—that and something else that you know of. You
must have seen me getting more and more ill-tempered, I’m
sure. And I have thought of it the first thing in the morning
and the last thing at night; and tried to drive the thought
away just as he said one did in his sermon. By Jove, I
thought he knew all about it, for he looked right at me just
when he came to that place.”

“But, Brown, how do you mean you owe a hundred
pounds? You haven’t read much certainly ; but you haven't
hunted, or gambled, or tailored much, or gone into any other
extravagant folly. You must be dreaming.”

“Am I though? Come up to my rooms and I'll tell you
all about it: I feel better already now I’ve let it out. TI
send over for your commons, and we'll have some lunch.”

Hardy followed his friend in much trouble of mind, con-
sidering in himself whether with the remainder of his savings
he could not make up the sum which Tom had named.
Fortunately for both of them a short calculation showed him
that ho could not, and he gave up the idea of delivering his
friend in this summary manner with a sigh. He remained
closeted with Tom for an hour, and then came out, looking
serious still, but not uncomfortable, and went down to the
river. He sculled down to Sandford, bathed in the lasher,
and returned in time for chapel. He stayed outside after-
wards, and Tom came up to him and seized his arm.

“T’ve done it old fellow,” he said ; “look here ;” and pro-
duced a letter. Hardy glanced at the direction, and saw
that it was to his father.
314 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“Come along and post it,” said Tom, “and then I shall
feel all right.”

They walked off quickly to the post-office and dropped the
letter into the box.

“There,” he said, as it disappeared, “liberavt animam
meam. \ owe the preacher a good turn for that; I’ve a good
mind to write and thank him. Fancy the poor old governor's
face to-morrow at breakfast !”

“Well, you seom to take it easy enough now,” said Hardy.

“T can't holp it. I tell you I haven’t felt so jolly this two
months, What a fool I was not to have done it before.
After all, now I come to think of it, I can pay it myself, at
least as soon as I am of age, for I know I’ve some money, a
legacy or something, coming to me then. But that isn’t what
I care about now.”

“Tm very glad though that you have the money of your
own.”

“Yes, but the having told it is all the comfort. Come
along, and let’s see whether these boys are come. The old
Pig ought to be in by this time, and I want them to dinc in
hall. It’s only ten months since I came up on it to matricu-
late, and it seems twenty years. But I’m going to be a boy
again for to-night ; you'll sce if I’m not.”

 

CHAPTER XxXIX,

THD LONG VACATION LETTER-BAG,

** June 24, 184—.

“My pean Tom,—Your loltor came to hand this morning,
and il has, of course, given your mother and ime much pain.
It is not the money that we care about, but that our son
should have deliberately undertaken, or pretended to under-
take, what he must have known at the time he could not
perform himself.

“T have written to my bankers to pay 1002. at once to
your account at the Oxford Bank. I have also requested my
solicitor to go over to Oxford, and ho will probably call on
you the day after you receive this. You say that this person
who holds your note of hand is now in Oxford. You will
see him in the presence of my solicitor, to whom you will
hand the note when you have recovered it. I shall consider
afterwards what further steps will have to be taken in the
matter.

“You will not be of age for a year. It will be time enough
THE LONG VACATION LETTER-BAG. 315

then to determine whether you will repay the balance of this
money out of the legacy to which you will be entitled under
your grandfather’s will. In the meantime, I shall deduct at
the rate of 507. a year from your allowance, and I shall hold
you bound in honour to reduce your expenditure by this
amount. You are no longer a boy, and one of the first duties
which a man owes to his friends and to society is to live
within his income.

“I make this advance to you on two conditions. First,
that you will never again put your hand to a note or bill in
a transaction of this kind. If you have money, lend it or
spend it. You may lend or spend foolishly, but that is not
the point here; at any rate you are dealing with what is your
own. But in transactions of this kind you are dealing with
what is not your own. A gentleman should shrink from the
possibility of having to como on others, ovon on his own
fathor, for tho fulfilmont of his obligations, a3 he would froma
lie. JI would sooner seo a son of mine in his grave than
crawling on through life 2 slavo to wants and habits which
he must gratify at other people’s expense.

“My second condition is, that you put an end to your
acquaintance with these two gentlemen who have led you
into this scrape, and have divided the proceeds of your joint
note between them. They are both your seniors in standing,
you say, and they appear to be familiar with this plan of
raising money at the expense of other people. The plain
English word for such doings is, swindling. What pains me
most is, that you should have become intimate with young
men of ihis kind. Iam not sure that it will not be my duty
to lay tle whole matter before the authorities of the College.
You do not mention their names, and I respect’ the feeling
which has led you not to mention them. I shall know them
quite soon enough through my solicitor, who will forward me
a copy of the note of hand and signatures in due course.

“Your letter makes general allusion to other matters ; and
I gather from it that you are dissatisfied with the manner in
which you have spent your first year at Oxford. Ido not
ask for specific confessions, which you scom inclined to offor
me ; in fact I would sooner not have them, unless thero is
any other matter in which you want assistance or advice from
me. I know from experience that Oxford is a place full of
temptation of all kinds, offered to young men at the most
critical time of their lives. Mnowing this, I have deliberately
accepted the responsibility of sending you there, and I do
not repent it. I am glad that you are dissatisfied with your
first year. If you had not been I should have felt much
316 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

more anxious about your second. Let bygones be bygones

between you and me. You know where to go for strength,

and to make confessions which no human ear should hear,

for no human judgment can weigh the cause. The secret

places of a man’s heart are for himself and God. Your

mother sends her love.

“ T am, ever your affectionate father,

“Joun Brown.”

June 26th, 184—.

“My pyar Boy,—I am not sorry that you havo taken my
last letter as you have done. It is quite right to be sensitive
on these points, and it will-hayve done you no harm to have
fancied for forty-eight hours that you had in my judgment
lost caste as a gentleman. But now I am very glad to be able
to ease your mind on this point. You have done a very foolish
thing ; but it is only the habit, and the getting others to
bind themselves, and not the doing it oneself for others, which
is disgraceful. You are going to pay honourably for your
folly, and will owe me neither thanks nor money in the
transaction. I have chosen my own terms for repayment,
which you have accepted, and so the financial question is
disposed of.

“T have considered what you say as to your companions—
friends I will not call them—and will promise you not to
take any further steps, or to mention the subject to any one.
But I must insist om my second condition, that you avoid all
further intimacy with thera. I do not mean that you are to
cut them, or do anything that will attract attention. But, no
more intimacy.

“And now, my dear boy, as lo tho rest of your letter.
Mine must indeed have failed to express my meaning. God
forbid that there should not be the most perfect confidence
between us. There is nothing which I desire or value more.
I only question whether speciai confessions will conduce to it.
My experience is against them. I almost doubt whether they
can be perfectly honest be‘ween man and man; and, taking
into account the difference of our ages, it seems to me much
more likely that we should misunderstand one another. But
having said this, I leave it to you to follow your own con-
science in the matter. If there is any burthen which I can
help you to bear, it will be my greatest pleasure, as it is my
duty, to do it. So now, say what you please, or say no more.
Tf you speak, it will be to one who has felt and remembers a
young man’s trials,

“We hope you will be able to come home to-morrow, or
THE LONG VACATION LETTER-BAG. 317

the next day, at latest. Your mother is longing to seo you,
and I should be glad to have you here a day or two before
the assizes, which are held next week. I should rather like
you to accompany me to them, as it will give me the oppor-
tunity of introducing you to my brother magistrates from other
parts of the county, whom you are not likely to meet else-
where, and it is a good thing for a young man to know his
own county well.

“The cricket club is very flourishing you will be glad to
hear, and they have put off their best matches till your
return ; so you are in great request, you see. I am told that
the fishing is very good this year, and am promised. several
days for you in the club water.

“September is a long way off, but there is nothing like
being beforehand; I have put your name down for a
licence ; and it is time you should have a good gun of your
own ; so I havo ordered one for you from a man who has Iatoly
soltlod in tho county. Ile was Purdy’s foroman, with whom
I usod to build, and, I can sec, understands his business
thoroughly. His locks are as good as any I have ever seen.
I have told him to make the stock rather longer, and not
quite so straight as that of my old double with which you
shot last year. I think I remember you criticized my weapon
on these points; but there will be time for you to alter the
details after you get home, if you disapprove of iy orders.
It will be more satisfactory if it is built under your own eye.

If you continue in the mind for a month’s reading with
your friend Mr. Hardy, we will arrange it towards the end
of the vacation: but would he not come here? From what
you say we should very much like to know him. Pray ask
him from me whether he will pass the last month of the
vacation here, reading with you. I should like you to be his
first regular pupil. Of course this will be my affair. And
now, God bless you, and come home as soon as you can. Your
mother sends her best love.

“Ever your most affectionate,
“Joun Brown.”

“ ENGLEBOURN RECTORY,
€ June 28th, 184—.
“Dearzst Mary,—How good of you to write to me so
soon! Your letter has come like a gleam of sunshine. I am
in the midst of worries already. Indced, as you know, I could
never quite throw off the fear of what might be happen-
ing here, while we were enjoying ourselves at Oxford, and it
has all turned out even worse than I expected. I shall never
318 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

be able to go away again in comfort, I think. And yet, if I
had been here, I don’t know that I could have done any good.
Tt is so very sad that poor papa is unable to attend to his
magistrate’s business, and he has been worse than usual, quite
laid up in fact, since our return. ‘There is no other magistrate
—not even a gentleman in the place, as you know, except the
curate ; and they will not listen to him, even if he would in-
terfere in their quarrels. But he says he will not meddle with
secular matters ; and, poor man, I cannot blame hin, for it is
very sad and wearing to be mixed up in it all.

“ But now I must tell you all my troubles. You remember
the men whom wo saw mowing together just before we went
to Oxford. Betty Winburn’s son was one of them, and I am
afraid the rest are not at all good company for him. When
they had finished papa’s hay, they went to mow for farmer
Tester. You must remember him, dear, I am sure ; the tall
gaunt man, with heavy thick lips, and a broken nose, and the
top of his head quite flat, as if it had been cut off a little
above his eyebrows. He is a very miserly man, and a hard
mastor ; at least all the poor people tell mo so, and ho looks
cruel. I have always been afraid of him, and disliked him, for
I remember as a child hearing papa complain how trouble-
some he was in the vestry; and except old Simon, who, I
believe, only does it from perverseness, I have never heard
anybody speak well of him.

“ The first day that the men went to mow for farmer Tester,
he gave them sour beer to drink. You see, dear, they bar-
gain to mow for so much money and their beer. They were
very discontented at this, and they lost a good deal of time
going to complain to him about it, and they had high words
with him.

“Tho mon said that the beer wasn’t fit for pigs, and the
famer said it was quite good enough ‘for such as they,’ and
if they didn’t like his beer they might buy their own. In the
evening, too, he came down and complained that the mowing
was bad, and then there were more high words, for the men
are very jealous about their work. However they went to
work as usual the next morning, and all might have gone off
quietly, but in the day farmer Testor found two pigs in his
turnip field which adjoins the common, and had them put in
the pound. One of these pigs belonged to Betty Winburn’s
son, and the other to one of the men who was mowing with
him ; so, when they came home at night, they found what
had happened.

“The constable is our pound-keeper, the little man who
amused you so much; he plays the bass-viol in church. When
THE LONG VACATION LETTER-BAG. 319

he puts any beasts into the pound he cuts a stick in two, and
gives one piece to the person who brings the beasts, and keeps
the other himself; and the owncr of the beasts has to bring
the other end of the stick to hii before he can let them out.
Therefore, the owner, you see, must go to the person who has
pounded his beasts, and make a bargain with him for payment
of the damage which has been done, and so get back the other
end of the stick, which they call the ‘tally,’ to produce to the
pound-keeper.

“Well, the men went off to the constable’s when they
heard their pigs were pounded, to find who had the ‘ tally,’
and, when they found it was farmer Tester, they went in a
body to his house, to remonstrate with him, and learn what
he set the damages at. The farmer used dreadful language to
them, I hear, and said they weren’t fit to have pigs, and must
pay half a crown for each pig, before they should have the
‘tally ;’ and tho mon irrtiated him by tolling him that his
foncos were a shame to the parish, because he was too stingy
to have them mended, and that the pigs couldn’t have found
half a crown’s worth of turnips in the whole field, for he never
put any manure on it, except what he could get off the road,
which ought to belong to the poor. At last the farmer drove
them away, saying that he should stop the money out of the
price he was to pay for their mowing.

“Then there was very near being a riot in the parish ; for
some of the men are very reckless people, and they went in
the evening, and blew horns, and beat kettles before his house,
till the constable, who has behaved very well, persuaded them
to go away.

“In the morning, one of the pigs had been taken out of
the pound ; not Betty’s son’s, I am glad to say—for no doubt
it was very wrong of the men to take it out. The farmer was
furious, and went with the constable in the morning to find
the pig, but they could hear nothing of it anywhere. James
Pope, the man to whom it belonged, only laughed at them, '
and said that he never could keep his pig in himself, because :
it was grandson to one of the acting pigs that went about to.
the fairs, and all the pigs of that family took to climbing:
naturally ; so his pig must have climbed out of the pound. :
This of course was all a story: the men had lifted the pig:
out of the pound, and then killed it, so that the farmer might '
not find it, and sold the meat cheap all over the parish. Betty
went to the farmer that morning, and paid the half-crown, and
got her son’s pig out before he came home; but farmer Tester
stopped the other half-crown out of the men’s wages, which
uiade matters worse than ever.
320 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

“The day that we were in the Theatre at Oxford, farmer
Tester was away at one of the markets. He turns his big
cattle out to graze on the common, which the poor people say
he has no right to do, and in the afternoon a pony of his got
into the allotments, and Betty’s son caught it, and took it to
the constable, and had it put in the pound. The constable

' tried to persuade him not to do it, but it was of no use; and

so, when farmer Tester came home, he found that his turn had
come. I am afraid that he was not sober, for I hear that he
behaved dreadfully both to the constable and to Betty’s son,
and, when he found that he could not frighten them, he
declared he would have the law of them if it cost him twenty
pounds. So in the morning he went to fetch his lawyer,
and when we got home you can fancy what a scene it
was.

“You remember how poorly papa was when you left us
at Lambourn. By the time we got home he was quite
knocked up, and so nervous that he was fit for nothing
except to have a quiet cup of tea in his own room. I was
sure, as we drove up the street, there was something the
mattor, Tho ostlor was watching outside the Red Lion, and
ran in as soon as we came in sight ; and, as we passed the
door, out came farmer Tester, looking very flushed in the
face, and carrying his great iron-handled whip, and a person
with him, who I found was his lawyer, and they marched
after the carriage. Then the constable was standing at his
door too, and he came after us, and there was a group of men
outside the rectory gate. We had not been in the house five
minutes before the servant came in to say that farmer Tester
and a gentleman wanted to see papa on particular business,
Papa sent out word*he was very unwell, and that it was not
the proper time to come on business ; he would see them
the next day at twelve o'clock. But they would not go
away, and then papa asked me to go out and see them. You
can fancy how disagreeable it was ; and I was so angry with
them for coming, when they knew how nervous papa is after
a journey, that I could not have patience to persuade them
to leave; and so at last they made poor papa sep them
after all.

Tle was lying on a sofa, and quite unfit to cope with a hard
bad man like farmer Tester, and a fluent plausible lawyer.
They told their story all their own way, and the farmer
declared that the man had tempted the pony into the allot-
ments with corn. And the lawyer said that the constable
had no right to keep the pony in the pound, and that he was
liable to all sorts of punishments. They wanted papa to
THE LONG VACATION LETTER-BAG. 321

make an order at once for the pound to be opened, and I
think he would have done so, but I asked him in a whisper
to send for the constable, and hear what he had to say. The
constable was waiting in the kitchen, so he came in in a
minute. You can’t think how well he behaved; I have
quite forgiven him all his obstinacy about the singing. He
told the whole story about the pigs, and how farmer Tester
had stopped money out of the men’s wages: And when the
lawyer tried to frighten him, he answered him quite boldly,
that he mightn’t know so much about the law, but he knew
what was always the custom long before his time at Engle-
bourn about the pound, and if farmer Tester wanted his
beast out, he must bring the ‘tally’ like another man. Then
the lawyer appealed to papa about the law, and said how
absurd it was, and that if such a custom were to be upheld,
the man who had the tally might charge 1001. for the damage.
And poor papa looked through his law books, and could find
nothing about it at all; and while he was doing it farmer
Tester began to abuse the constable, and said he sided with
all the good-for-nothing fellows in the parish, and that bad
blood would come of it. But the constable quite fired up at
that, and told him that it was such as he who made bad
blood in the parish, and that poor folks had their rights as
well as their betters, and should have them while he was
constable. If he got papa’s order to open the pound, he sup-
posed he must do it, and ’twas not for him to say what was
law, but Harry Winburn had had to get the ‘tally’ for
his pig from farmer Tester, and what was fair for one was
fair for all.

“‘T was afraid papa would have made the order, but the
lawyer said something at last which made him take the
other side. So he settled that the farmer should pay five
shillings for the ‘tally,’ which was what he had taken from
Betty, and had stopped out of the wages, and that was the
only order he would make, and the lawyer might do what he
pleased about it. The constable seemed satisfied with this,
and undertook to take the money down to Harry Winburn,
for farmer Tester declared he would sooner let the pony starve
than go himself. And so papa got rid of them after an hour
and more of this talk. The lawyer and farmer Tester went
away grumbling and very angry to the Red Lion. I was
very anxious to hear how the matter ended ; so I sent after
the constable to ask him to come back.and see me when he
had settled it all, and about nine o'clock he came. He had
had a very hard job to get Harry Winburn to take the money,
and give up the ‘tally.’ The men said that, if farmer Tester

: Y
822 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

could make them pay half-a-crown for a pig in his turnips,
which were no bigger than radishes, he ought to pay ten
shillings at least for his pony trampling down their corn,
which was half grown ; and I couldn’t help thinking this
seemed very reasonable. In the end, however, the constable
had persuaded them to take the money, and so the pony was
let out.

“T told him how pleased I was at the way he had behaved,
* put the little man didn’t seem quite satisfied himself. He
should have liked to have given the lawyer a piece more of
his mind, he said, only he was no scholar; ‘but I’ve a got
all the feelins of a man, miss, though I medn’t have the
ways o’ bringin’ on ’em out.’ You see I am quite coming
round to your opinion about him. But when I said that I
hoped all the trouble was over, he shook his head, and he
seems to think that the men will not forget it, and that some
of the wild ones will be trying to pay farmer Tester out in
the winter nights, and I could see he was very anxious
about Harry Winburn ; so I promised him to go and see
Betty,

“T went down to her cottage yesterday, and found her very
low, poor old soul, about her son. She has had a bad attack
again, and I am afraid her heart is not right. She will not
live long if she has much to make her anxious, and how is
that to be avoided? For her son’s courting is all going
wrong, she can see, though he will not tell her anything about
it ; but he gets more moody and restless, she says, and don’t
take a pride in anything, not even in his flowers or his allot-
ment ; and he takes to going about, more and more every day,
with these men, who will be sure to lead him into trouble.

“ After I left her, I walked up to the Hawk’s Lynch, to
seo whether the view and the air would not do me good.
And it did do me a great deal of good, dear, and I thought
of you, and when I should see your bright face and hear your
happy laugh again. The village looked so pretty and peaceful.
I could hardly believe, while I was up there, that there were
all those miserable quarrels and heartburnings going on in it.
I supposo they go on ovorywhere, but one can’t holp feeling
as if thore were something specially hard in thoso which
come under one’s own eyes, and touch oneself, And then
they are so frivolous, and everything might go on so com-
fortably if people would only be reasonable. I ought to
have bean a man, I am sure, and then I might, perhaps, be
able to do more, and should have more influence. If poor
papa were only well and strong !

“But, dear, I shall tire you with all these long histories
THE LONG VACATION LETTER-BAG. 323

and complainings. I have run on till I have no room left
for anything else ; but you can’t think what a comfort it is
to me to write it all to you, for I have no one to tell it to. I
feel so much better, and more cheerful since I sat down to
write this. You must give my dear love to uncle and aunt,
and let me hear from you again whenever you have time. If
you could come over again and stay for a few days it would
be very kind ; but I must not press it, as there is nothing to
attract you here, only we might talk over all that we did and
saw at Oxford.—Liver, dearest Mary, your very affectionate
cousin,
“ Katip,

“P.S.—I should like to have the pattern of the jacket
you wore the last day at Oxford. Could you cut it out in
thin paper, and send it in your next?”

July —, 184—.

“My pear Brown,—I was very glad to see your hand,
and to hear such flourishing accounts of your vacation doings.
You won't get any like announcement of me, for cricket has
not yet come so far west as this, at least not to settle. We
have a few pioneers and squatters in the villages ; but, I am
sorry to say, nothing yet like matches between the elevens of
districts. Neighbours we have none, except the rector ; so I
have plenty of spare time, some of which I feel greatly dis-
posed to devote to you; and I hope you won’t find me too
tedious to read.

“Tt is very kind of your father to wish that you should bo
my first pupil, and to propose that I should spend the last
month of this vacation with you in Berkshire. But I do not
like to give up a whole month. My father is getting old and
infirm, and I can see that it would be a great trial to him,
although he urges it, and is always telling me not to let him
keep me at home. What do you say to meeting me half way ?
I mean, that you should come here for half of the time, and
then that I should return with you for the last fortnight of
the vacation. This I could manage perfectly.

“But you cannot in any case be my first pupil ; for not to
mention that I have been as you know, teaching for some
years, I have a pupil here, at this minute. You are not
likely to guess who it is, though you know him well enough
—perhaps I should say too well—so, in a word, it is Blake.
Thad not been at home three days before I got a letter from
him, asking me to take him, and putting it in such a way that
I couldn’t refuse. I would sooner not have had him, as I
had already got out of taking a reading party with some

x2
‘324 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

trouble, and felt inclined to enjoy myself here in dignified
idleness till next term. But what can you do when a man
puts it to you as a great personal favour, &. &c.? So I
wrote to accept, You may imagine my disgust a day or two
afterwards, at getting a letter from an uncle of his, some official
person in London apparently, treating the whole matter in a
business point of view, and me as if I were a training groom.
He is good enough to suggest a stimulant to me in the shape
of extra pay and his future patronage in the event of his
nephew’s taking a first in Michaelmas term. If I had re-
ceived this letter before, I think it would have turned
the scale, and I should have refused. But the thing wag
done, and Blake isn’t fairly responsible for his relative’s
views.

“So here he has been for a fortnight. He took a lodging
in the village at first ; but of course my dear old father’s
-ideas of hospitality were shocked at this, and here he is, our
inmate.

“ He reads fiercely by fits and starts. A feeling of personal
hatred against the examiners seems to urge him on more than
any other motive ; but this will not be strong enough to keep
him to regular work, and without regular worl: he won’t do,
notwithstanding all his cleverness, and he is a marvellously
clever fellow. So the first thing { have to do is to get him
steadily to the collar, and how to do it is a pretty particular
puzzle. For he hasn’t a grain of enthusiasm in his composi-
tion, nor any power, as far as I can see, of throwing himself
into the times and scenes of which he is reading. The phi-
losophy of Greece and the history of Rome are matters of
perfect indifference to him—to be got up by catch-words and
dates for examination and nothing more, I don’t think ho
would care a straw if Socrates had never lived, or Hannibal
had destroyed Rome. ‘The greatest names and deeds of the
old world are just so many dead counters to him—the Jewish
just as much as the rest. I tried him with the story of the
attempt of Antiochus Epiphanes to conquer the Jews, and
the glorious rising of all that was living in the Holy Land
under the Macabeos, Not a bit of it; I couldn't got a
spark out of him. He wouldn’t even read the story bo-
cause it is in the Apocrypha, and so, as he said, the
d—d examiners couldn't ask him anything about it in the
schools,

Then his sense of duty is quite undeveloped. He has no
notion of going on doing anything disagreeable because he
ought. So here I am at fault again. Ambition he has in.
abundance ; in fact so strongly, that very likely it may in the
THE LONG VACATION LETTER-BAG. 325

end pull him through, and make him work hard enough for
his Oxford purposes at any rate. But it wants repressing
rather than encouragement, and I certainly sha’n’t appeal
to it.

“You will begin to think I dislike him and want to get
rid of him, but it isn’t the case. You know what a good
temper he has, and how remarkably well he talks ; so he
makes himself very pleasant, and my father evidently enjoys
his company ; and then to be in constant intercourse with a
subtle intellect like his, is pleasantly exciting, and keeps one
alive and at high pressure, though one can’t help always
wishing that it had a little heat in it. You would be im-
mensely amused if you could drop in on us

“T think I have told you, or you must have seen it for
yourself, that my father’s principles are true blue, as becomes
a anilor of tho time of the great war, while his instincts and
practice are liberal in the extreme. Our rector, on the
contrary, is liberal in principles, but an aristocrat of the
aristocrats in instinct and practice. They are always ready
enough therefore to do battle, and Blake delights in the war,
and fans it and takes part in it as a sort of free lance, laying
little logical pitfalls for the combatants alternately, with that
deferential manner of his. He gets some sort of intellectual
pleasure, I euppose, out of seeing where they ought to tumble
in ; for tumble in they don’t, but clear his pit-falls in their
stride—at least my father does—quite innocent of having
neglected to distribute his middle term ; and the rector, if he
has some inkling of these traps, brushes them aside, and
disdains to spend powder on any one but his old adversary
and friend. I employ myself in trying to come down ruth-
lessly on Blake himself ; and so we spend our evenings after
dinner, which comes off at the primitive hour of five. We used
to dine at three, but my father has conformed now tv college
hours. If the rector does not come, instead of argumentative
talk, we get stories out of my father. In the mornings we
bathe, and boat, and read. So, you seo, he and I have plenty
of one another's company, and it is certainly odd that we get
on so well with so very few points of sympathy. But, luckily,
besides his good temper and cleverness, he has plenty of
humour. On the whole, I think we shall rub through the
two months which he is to spend here without getting to hate
one another, though there is little chance of our becoming
friends. Besides putting some history and science into him
(scholarship he does not need), I shall be satisfied if I can
make him give up his use of the pronoun ‘you’ before he
goes. In talking of the corn laws, or foreign policy, or India,
326. TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

or any other political subject, however interesting, he never
will identify himself as an Englishman; and ‘ you do this,’
or ‘you expect that’ is for ever in his mouth, speaking of his
own countrymen. I believe if the French were to land to-
morrow on Portland, he would comment on our attempts to
dislodge them as if he had no concern with the business except
as a looker-on.

“ You will think all this rather a slow return for your jolly
gossiping letter, full of cricket, archery, fishing, and I know
not what pleasant goings-on. But what is one to do? one °
can only write about what is one’s subject of interest for the
time being, and Blake stands in that relation to me just now.
I should prefer it otherwise, but sz on n’a pas ce qu’on aime tl
faut aimer ce quon a. I have no incident to relate ; these
parts get on without incidents somehow, and without society.
I wish there were some, particularly ladies’ society. I break
the tenth commandment constantly, thinking of Commemora-
tion, and that you are within a ride of Miss Winter and her
cousin. When you sco thom next, pray present my respectful
compliments. It is a sort of consolation to think that one
may cross their fancy for a moment and be remembered as
part of a picture which gives them pleasure. With which
piece of sentiment I may as well shut up. Don’t you forget
my message now, and—

“Believe me, ever yours most truly,
“Joun Harpy.

‘“P.S.—I mean to speak to Blake, when I get a chance, of
that wretched debt which you have paid, unless you object.
I should think better of him if he seemed more uncomfortable
about his'affairs, After all he may bo more so than I think,
for he is very reserved on such subjects.”

‘* ENGLEBOURN REcToRY,
‘July, 184—.

- Duarest Mary,—lI send the coachman with this note, in
order that you may not be anxious about me. I have just
returned from poor Betty Winburn’s cottage to write it. She is
very very ill, and I do not think can last out more than a day
or two; and she seems to cling to me so that I cannot have
the heart to leave her. Indeed, if I could make up my mind
to do it, I should never get her poor white eager face out of
my head all day, so that I should be very bad company, and
quite out of place at your party, making everybody melancholy
and uncomfortable who came near me. So, dear, I am not
coming. Of course it is a great disappointment. I had set
my heart on being with you, and enjoying it all thoroughly ;
THE LONG VACATION LETTER-BAG. 327

and even at breakfast this morning knew of nothing to hinder
me. My dress is actually lying on the bed at this minute,
and it looks very pretty, especially the jacket like yours,
which I and Hopkins have managed to, make up from the
pattern you sent, though you forgot the sleeves, which made
it rather hard to do. Ah, well; it is of no use to think of
how pleasant things would have been which one cannot have.
You must write me an account of how it all went off, dear;
or perhaps you can manage to get over here before long to
tell me.

“J must now go back to poor Betty. She is such a faithful,
patient old thing, and has been such a good woman all her
life that there is nothing painful in being by her now, and
one feels sure that it will be much happier and better for her
to be at rest. If she could only feel comfortable about her
son, Tam suro she would think so herself. Oh, I forgot to
soy that her attack was brought on by the shock of hearing
that he had been summoned. for an assault. Farmer Testor’s
son, 2 young man about his own age, has it seems been of late
waylaying Simon’s daughter and making love to her. It is
so very hard to make out the truth in matters of this kind.
Hopkins says she is a dressed-up little minx who runs after
all the young men in the parish ; but really, from what I see
and hear from other persons, I think she is a good girl enough.
Even Betty, who looks on her as the cause of most of her
own trouble, has never said a word to make me think that she
is at all a light person, or more fond of admiration than any
other good-looking girl in the parish.

“But those Testers are a very wicked set. You cannot
think what a misfortune itis in a place like this to have these
Tich families with estates of their own, in which the young
men begin to think themselves above the common farmers.
They ape the gentlemen, and give themselves great airs, but
of course no gentleman will associate with them, as they are
quite uneducated ; and the consequence is that they live a
great deal at home, and give themselves up to oll kinds of
wickedness. This young Testor is one of these. His fathor
is a very bad old man, and does a great deal of harm here ;
and the son is following in his steps, and is quite as bad, or
worse. So you see that I shall not easily believe that Harry
Winburn has been much in the wrong. However, all I.know
of it at present is that young Tester was beaten by Harry
yesterday evening in the village street, and that they came to
papa at once for a summons. :

“Oh, here is the coachman ready to start; so I must
conclude, dear, and go back to my patient. I shall often
328 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

think of you during the day. I am sure you will have a
charming party. With best love to all, believe me, ever
dearest,
“ Your most affectionate
‘ “Kang.

“P.S.—I am very glad that uncle and aunt take to Tom,
and that he is staying with you for some days. You will
find him very useful in making the party go off well, I am
sure,”

 

CHAPTER XXX.
AMUSEMENTS AT BARTON MANOR.

“A xerrer, Miss, from Englebourn,” said a footman,
coming up to Mary with the note given at the end of the last
chapter, on a waiter. She took it and tore it open; and,
while she is reading it, the reader may be introduced to the
place and company in which we find her. The scene is a
large old-fashioned square brick house, backed by fine trees,
in the tops of which the rooks live, and the jackdaws and
starlings in the many holes which time has worn in the old
trunks ; but they are all away on this fine summer morning,
seeking their meal and enjoying themselves in the neigh-
bouring fields. In front of the house is a pretty flower-
garden, separated by a haw-haw from a large pasture, sloping
southwards gently down to a stream, which glides along
through water-cress and willow beds to join the Kennet. The
beasts have all been driven off, and on the upper part of the
field, nearest the house, two men are fixing up a third pair of
targets on the rich short grass. A large teut is pitched
near the archery-ground, to hold quivers and bow-cases, and
luncheon, and to shelter lookers-on from the mid-day sun.
Beyond the brook a pleasant, well-timbered, country lies, with
high chalk-downs for an horizon, ending in Marlborough hill,
faint and blue in the west. This is the place which Mary’s
father has taken for the summer and autumn, and where she
is fast becoming the pet of the neighbourhood.

It will not perhaps surprise our readers to find that our
hero has managed to find his way to Barton Manor in the
second week of the vacation, and, having made the most of
his opportunities, is acknowledged asa cousin by Mr. and
Mrs. Porter. Their boys are at home for the holidays, and
Mr. Porter’s great wish is that they should get used to the
country in their summer holidays. And as they have spent
AMUSEMENTS AT BARTON MANOR. 329

most of their childhood and boyhood in London, to which.
he has been tied pretty closely hitherto, this is a great oppor-
tunity. The boys only wanted a preceptor, and Tom presented
himself at the right moment, and soon became the hero of
Charley and Neddy Porter. He taught them to throw flies
and bait crawfish nets, to bat-fow], and ferret for rabbits, and
to saddle and ride their ponies, besides getting up games of
cricket in the spare evenings, which kept him away from Mr.
Porter's dinner-table. This last piece of self-denial, as he
considered it, quite won over that gentleman, who agreed
with his wife that Tom was just the sort of companion they
would like for the boys, and so the house was thrown open
to him.

The boys were always clamouring for him when he was
away, and making their mother write off to press him to
come again ; which he, being a very good-natured young man,
and particularly fond of boys, was ready enough to do. So
this was the third visit he had paid in a month.

Mr. and Mrs. Brown wondered a little that he should be
so very fond of the young Porters, who were good boys
enough, but very much like other boys of thirteen and fifteen, .
of whom there were several in the neighbourhood. He had
indeed just mentioned an elder sister, but so casually that’
their attention had not been drawn to the fact, which had
almost slipped out of their memories. On the other hand,
Tom seemed so completely to identify himselt with the boys
and their pursuits, that it never occurred to their father and
mother, who were doatingly fond of them, that, after all,
they might not be the only attraction: Mary seemed to take
very little notice of him, and went on with her own pursuits.
much as usual. It was true that she liked keeping the score
at cricket, and coming to look at them fishing or rabbiting in
her walks; but all that was very natural. It is a curious
and merciful dispensation of Providence that most fathers
and mothers seem never to be capable of remembering their
own experience, and will probably go on till the end of
time thinking of their sons of twenty and daughtors of six-
teen or seventeen as mere children, who may be allowed to
run about together as much as they please. And, where it
is otherwise, the results are not very different, for there are
certain mysterious ways of holding intercourse implanted in
the youth of both sexes, against which no vigilance can
avail.

So on this, her great féte day, Tom had been helping Mary
all the morning in dressing the rooms with flowers, and
arranging all the details—where people were to:rit. at the cold

 &

é
330 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

dinner; how to find the proper number of seats; how
the dining-room was to be cleared in time for dancing
when the dew began to fall. In all which matters there
were many obvious occasions for those little attentions which
are much valued by persons in like situations; and Tom
‘was not sorry that the boys had voted the whole prepara-
tions a bore, and had gone off to the brook to ‘ gropple’
in the bank for crayfish till the shooting began. The arrival
of the note had been the first contre-temps of the morning,
and they were now expecting guests to arrive every minute.

“What is the matter? No bad news, I hope,” he said,
seeing her vexed expression.

“Why, Katie can’t come. I declare I could sit down and
ery. I sha’n’t enjoy the party a bit now, and I wish it were
all over.”

“T am sure Katie would be very unhappy if she thought
you were going to spoil you day’s pleasure on her account.”

“Yes, I know she would. But it is so provoking when I
had looked forward so to having her.”

“You have never told me why she cannot come. She was
quite full of it all a few days since.”

“Oh, there is a poor old woman in the village dying, who
is a great friend of Katie’s. Here is her letter; let me see,”
she said, glancing over it to see that there was nothing in it
which she did not wish him to read, “you may read it if
you like.”

“Tom began reading. ‘Betty Winburn,” he said, when
he came to the name, “ what, poor dear old Betty? why I’ve
known her ever since I was born. She used to live in our
parish, and I haven’t seen her this eight years nearly. And
her boy Harry, I wonder what has become of him?”

“You will see if you read on,” said Mary ; and so he read
to the end, and then folded it up and returned it.

“So poor old Betty is dying. Wellshe was always a good
soul, and very kind to me when I wasa boy. I should like
to see her once again, and perhaps I might be able to do some-
thing for her son.”

“Why should we not ride over to Englebourn to-morrow 4
They will be glad to get us out of the way while the house
is being straightened.”

“T should hke it of all things, if it can be managed.”

“Oh, I will manage it somehow, for I must go and see
that dear Katie. I do fecl so ashamed of myself when I
think of all the good she is doing, and I do nothing but put
flowers about, and play the piano. Isn’t she an angel, now }”

“ Of course she is,” :
'

AMUSEMENTS AT BARTON MANOR. 331

“Yes; but I won't have that sort of matter-of-course
acquiescence. Now, de wen really mean that ‘Katie is as
good as an angel?”

“ As seriously as if I saw the wings growing out of her
shoulders, and dew-drops hanging on them.”

“You deserve to have something not at all like wings
growing out of your head. How is it that-you never see
when I don’t want you to talk your nonsense?”

“How am I to talk sense about angels ? I don't know
anything about them,”

“You know what I mean, perfectly. I say that dear Katie
is an angel, and I mean that I don’t know anything in her—
no not one single thing—which I should like to have changed.
If the angels are all as good as she”

“ If! why I shall begin to doubt your orthodoxy.”

“You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“Tt doesn’t matter what you were going to say. You
couldn’t have brought that sentence to an orthodox conclu-
sion, Oh, please don’t look angry, now. Yes, I quite see
what you mean. You can think of Katie just as she is now
in Heaven without being shocked.”

Mary paused for a moment before she answered, as if she
were rather taken by surprise at this way of putting her
meaning, and then said seriously ——

“Indeed, I can. I think we should all be perfectly happy
if we were all as good as she is.”

“ But she is not very happy herself, I am afraid.”

“Of course not. How can she be, when all the people
about her are so troublesome and selfish?” °

“T can’t fancy an angel the least like Uncle Robert, can

ou?”
ee I won't talk about angels any more. You have made me
feel quite as if I had been saying something wicked.”

“ Now really it is too hard that you should lay the blame
on me, when you began the subject yourself. You ought at
least to let me say what I have to say about angels.”

“Why, you said you ia nen about them half a
minute ago.’

“But I may have my nations like "obhee people. You
have your notions. Katie is your ‘angel. e

“ Well, then, what are your notions?”

« Katie is rather too dark for my idea of an angel. I can’t.
fancy a dark angel.”

“Why, how can you call Katie dark?”

“T only say she is too dark for my idea of an angel.”

_ © Well, go on.”

 
332 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“ Then, she is rather too grave.”

“Too grave for an angel!”

“For my idea of an angel—one doesn’t want one’s angel
to be like oneself, and I am so grave, you know.”

“Yes, very. Then your angel is to be a laughing angel.
A laughing angel, and yet very sensible; never talking
nonsense }”

“ Oh, I didn’t say that.”

“But you said he wasn’t to be like you.”

“ He! who in the world do you mean by he?”

“Why, your angel, of course.”

“My angel! You don’t really suppose that my angel is to
be a man.”

“JT have no time to think aboutit. Look, they are putting
those targets quite-crooked. You are responsible for the
targets ; we must go and get them straight.”

They walked across the ground towards the targets, and
Tom settled them according to his notions of opposites.

“ After oll, archery is slow work,” he said when the targets
were settled satisfactorily. “T don’t believe anybody really
enjoys it.”

“ Now that is because you men haven’t it all to yourselves.
You are jealous of any sort of game in which we can join.
I believe you are afraid of being beaten by us.”

“On the contrary, that is its only recommendation, that
you can join in it.”

“Well, I think that ought to be recommendation enough.
But I believe it is much harder than most of your games.
You can’t shoot half so well as you play cricket, can you?”

“No, because I never practise. It isn't exciting to be
walking up and down between two targets, and doing the
same thing over and over again. Why, you don’t find it so
yourself. You hardly ever shoot.”

“ Indeed I do though, constantly.”

“Why, I have scarcely ever seen you shooting.”

“That is because you are away with the boys all day.”

“ Oh, I am never too far to know what is going on. I’m
sure you have never practised for more than a quarter of an
hour any day that I have been here.”

“Well, perhaps I may not have. But I tell you I am
very fond of it.”

Here the two boys came up from the brook, Neddy with
his Scotch cap full of crayfish.

“ Why, you wretched boys, where have you been? You
are not fit to be seen,” said Mary, shaking the arrows at them,
which she was carrying in her hand. “ Go and dress directly,
AMUSEMENTS AT BARTON MANOR. 333

or you will be late. I think I heard a carriage drive up just
now.”

“Oh, there’s plenty of time. Look what whackers, Cousin
Tom,” said Charley, holding out one of his prizes by its back
towards Tom, while the indignant cray-fish flapped its tail
and worked about with its claws, in the hopes of getting hold
of something to pinch. :

“J don’t believe those boys have been dry for two hours
together in daylight since you first came here,” said Mary to
Tom.

“Well, and they’re all the better for it, I’m sure,” said
Tom.

“ Yes, that we are,” said Charley.

“T say, Charley,” said Tom, “your sister says she is very
fond of shooting.”

“ Ay, and so she is. And isn’t she a good shot too? I
beliove she would beat you at fifty yards.”

“There now, you see, you need not have been so un-
believing,” said Mary.

“ Will you give her a shot at your new hat, Cousin Tom?”
said Neddy.

“Yes, Neddy, that I will;” and he added to Mary, “I
will bet you a pair of gloves you don’t hit it in three shots.”

“Very well,” said Mary; “at thirty yards.”

“No, no! fifty yards was the named distance.”

“No, fifty yards is too far. Why, your hat is not much
bigger than the gold.”

“Well, I don’t mind splitting the difference; we will say
forty.”

Very well—three shots at forty yards.”

“Yes; here, Charley, run and hang my hat on that target.”
The boys rushed off with the hat—a new white one—and
hung it with a bit of string over the centre of one of the
targets, and then, stepping a little aside, stood, clapping their
hands, shouting to Mary to take good aim.

“You must string my bow,” sho said, handing it to him as
she buckled on her guard. “Now, do you repent? I am
going to do my best, mind, if I do shoot.”

‘I scorn repentance: do your worst,” said Tom, stringing
the bow and handing it back to her.” ‘And, now I will
hold your arrows ; here is the forty yards.”

Mary came to the place which he had stepped, her eyes full
of fun and mischief ; and he saw at once that she knew what
she was about as she took her position and drew the first
arrow. It missed the hat by some three inches only, and the
boys clapped and shouted.
834 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

‘Too near to be pleasant,” said Tom, handing the second
arrow. ‘I see you can shoot.”

“ Well, I will let you off still.”

“Gloves and all?”

“No, of course you must pay the gloves.”

“Shoot away then. Ah, that will do,” he oried, as the
_ second arrow struck considerably above the hat, “I shall get
my gloves yet,” and he handed the third arrow. They were
too intent on the business in hand to observe that Mr. and
Mrs. Porter and several guests were already on the hand-
bridge which crossed the haw-haw.

Mary drew her third arrow, paused a moment, loosed it,
and this time with fatal aim.

The boys rushed to the target, towards which Mary and
Tom also hurried, Mr. and Mrs. Porter and the new comers
following more quietly.

“Oh, look here—what fun,” said Charley, as Tom came
up, holding up the hat spiked on the arrow, which he had
drawn out of the target.

“ What a wicked shot,” ho said, taking the hat and turning
to Mary. “Look here, you have actually gone through three
places—through crown, and side, and brim.”

Mary began to feel quite sorry at her own success, and
looked at the wounded hat sorrowfully.

“Hullo, look here—here’s papa and mamma and some
people, and we ain’t dressed. Come along Neddy,” and the
boys made off towards the back premises, while Mary and
Tom, turning round, found themselves in the presence of
Mr. and Mrs. Porter, Mrs Brown, and two or three other
guests,

 

CHAPTER XXXI.
BEHIND THE SOERNES.

Mr. and Mrs. Brown had a long way to drive home that
evening, including some eight miles of very indifferent chalky
road over the downs, which separate the Vale of Kennet from
the Vale of White Horse. Mr. Brown was an early man, and
careful of his horses, who responded to his care by being
always well up to much more work than they were ever put
to. The drive to Barton Manor and back in a day was a
rare event in their lives. Their master, taking this fact into
consideration, was bent on giving them plenty of time for the
return journey, and had ordered his groom to be ready to
start by eight o’clock, But, that they might not disturb the
BEHIND THE SCENES. 335

rest by their early departure, he had sent the carriage to the
village inn instead of to the Porters’ stables.

At the appointed time, therefore, and when the evening’s
amusements were just beginning at the manor house, Mr.
Brown sought out his wife; and, after a few words of leave-
taking to their host and hostess, the two slipped quietly
away, and walked down the village. The carriage was stand-
ing before the inn all ready for them, with the hostler and
Mr. Brown’s groom at the horses’ heads. The carriage was a
high phaeton having a roomy front seat with a hood to it,
specially devised by Mr. Brown with a view to his wife’s
comfort, and that he might with a good conscience enjoy at
the same time the pleasures of her society and of driving his
own horses. When once in her place Mrs. Brown was as
comfortable as she would have been in the most Juxurious
barouche with C springs, but the ascont was cortainly rathor
a drawback. Tho ploasure of sitting by hor husband ond of
receiving his assiduous help in tho preliminary climb, how-
ever, more than compensated to Mrs. Brown for this little
inconvenience.

Mr. Brown helped her up as usual, and arranged a plaid
carefully over her knees, the weather being too hot for the
apron. He then proceeded to walk round the horses, patting
them, examining tho bits, and making inquiries as to how
they had fed. Having satisfied himself on these points, and
feed the hostler, he took the reins, seated himself by his wife,
and started at a steady pace towards the hills at the back of
Barton village.

For a minute or two neither of them spoke, Mr. Brown
being engrossed with his horses and she with her thoughts.
Presently, however, he turned to her, and, having ascertained
that she was quite comfortable, went on—

“ Well, my dear, what do you think of them?”

“Qh, I think they are agreeable people,” answered Mrs.
Brown ; “but one can scarcely judge from seeing them to-
day. It is toc far for a drive; we shall not bo home till
midnight.”

“But I am very glad we came. After all they are con-
nexions through poor Robert, and he seems anxious that they
should start well in the county. Why, he has actually
written twice you know about our coming to-day. We must
try to show them some civility.”

“Tt is impossible to come so far often,” Mrs. Brown per-
sisted.

“Tt is too far for ordinary visiting, "What do you say to
asking them to come and spend 2 day or two with us?”
336 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“Certainly, my dear, if you wish it,” answered Mrs. Brown,
but without much cordiality in her voice.

“Yes, I should like it ; and it will please Robert so much.
‘We might have him and Katie over to meet them, don’t you
think?”

“Let me see,” said Mrs. Brown, with much more alacrity,
“My, and Mrs. Porter will have the best bedroom and dress-
ing-room ; Robert must have the south room, and Katie the
chintz. Yes, that will do; I can manage it very well.”

© And their daughter; you have forgotten her.”

“ Well, you see, dear, there is no more room.”

“Why, there is the dressing-room, next to the south room,
with a bed init. I’m sure nobody can want a better room.”

“You know, John, that Robert cannot sleep if there is the
least noise. I could never put any one into his dressing-
room ; there is only a single door between the rooms, and,
even if they made no noise, the fancy that some one was
sleeping there would keep him awake all night.”

“Plague take his fancies! Robert has given way to them
till he is fit for nothing. But you can put him in the chintz
room, and give the two girls the south bedroom and dressing-
room.” .

“What, put Robert in a room which looks north? My
dear John, what can you be thinking about ?”

Mr. Brown uttered an impatient grunt, and, as a vent to
his feelings more decorous on the whole than abusing his
brother-in-law, drew his whip more smartly than usual across
the backs of his horses. ‘The exertion of muscle necessary to
reduce those astonished animals to their accustomed steady
trot restored his temper, and he returned to the charge—

“T suppose we must manage it on the second floor, then,
unless you could get a bed run up in the school-room.”

“No, dear ; I really should not like to do that—it would
be so very inconvenient. We are always wanting the room
for workwomen or servants: besides, I keep my account-
books and other things there.”

“Then I’m afraid it must be on the second floor. Some of
the children must be moved. The girl seems a nice girl, with
no nonsense about her, and won’t mind sleeping up there.
Or, why not put Katie upstairs 7”

“Indeed, I should not think of it. Katie is a dear good
girl, and I will not put any one over her head.”

“Nor I, dear, On the contrary, I was asking you to put
her over another person’s head,” said Mr. Brown, laughing at
his own joke, This unusual reluctance on the part of his
wife to assist in carrying out ey hospitable plans ‘of 7

f

f
. BEHIND THE SCENES. 337

to strike him; so, not being an adept at concealing his
thoughts, or gaining his point by any attack except a direct
one, after driving on for a minute in’ silence, he turned sud-
denly on his wife, and said,— y

“Why, Lizzie, you seem not to want to ask the girl 7”

“Well, John, I do not see the need of it at all.”

“No, and you don’t want to ask her?”

“Tf you must know, then, I do not.”

“Don’t you like her?”

“T do not know her well enough either to like or dis-
like.”

“Then, why not ask her, and see what she is like? But
the truth is, Lizzie, you have taken a prejudice against her.”

“ Well, John, I think she is a thoughtless girl, and extra-
vagant ; not the sort of girl, in fact, that I should wish to be
much with us.” :

“Thoughtless and extravagant!” said Mr. Brown, looking
grave ; “how you women can be so sharp on one another !
Her dress seemed to me simple and pretty, and her manners
very lady-like and pleasing.”

“You seem to have quite forgotten about Tom’s hat,”
said Mrs. Brown.

“Tom’s white hat—so I had,” said Mr. Brown, and he
relapsed into a low laugh at the remembrance of the scene.
“T call that Ais extravagance, and not hers.”

“Tt was a new hat, and a very expensive one, which he
had bought for the vacation, and it is quite spoilt.”

“Well, my dear; really, if Tom will let girls shoot at his
hats, he must take the consequences. He must wear it with
the holes, or buy another.”

“How can he afford another, John? you know how poor
he is.”

Mr. Brown drove on now for several minutes without speak-
ing. He knew perfectly well what his wife was coming to
now, and, after weighing in his mind the alternatives of
accepting battle or making sail and changing the subject
altogether, said,— :

“You know, my dear, he has brought it on himself, A
headlong, generous sort of youngster, like Tom, must be taught
early that he can’t have his cake and eat his cake. If he
likes to lend his money, he must find out that he hasn’t it to
spend.”

“ Vos, dear, I quite agree with you. But 500. a year is o
ureat deal to make him pay.”

“Nota bit too much, Lizzie. His allowance is quite enough
without it to keep him like a gentleman. Besides, after all,

Z
338 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

he gets it in meal or in malt; I have just paid 26/. for his
un.”

en I know how kind and liberal you are to him ; only I am

so afraid of his getting into debt.”

“T wonder what men would do, if they hadn’t some soft-
hearted woman always ready to take their parts and pull them
out of scrapes,” said Mr. Brown. “ Well, dear, how much
do you want to give the boy !”

“Twenty-five pounds, just for this year. But out of my
own allowance, John.”

“Nonsense!” replied Mr. Brown; “you want your al-
lowance for yourself and the children.”

‘Indeed, dear John, I would sooner not do it at all, then,
if I may not do it out of my own money.”

“Well, have it your own way. I believe you would always
look well dressed, if you never bought another gown. Then,
to go back to what we were talking about just now—you will
find a room for the girl somehow ?”

“ Yes, dear, certainly, as I see you are bent on it.”

“T think it would bo scarcely civil not to ask her, especially
if Katie comos. And I own I think hor very protty, and
have taken a great fancy to her.”

“Tsn’t it odd that Tom should never have said anything
about her tous? He has talked of all tho rest till I knew
them quite well before I went there.”

“No; it seems to me the most natural thing in the world.”

“Yes, dear, very natural. But I can’t help wishing he had
talked about her more; I should think it less dangerous.”

“Oh, you think Master Tom is in love with her, eh?”
said Mr. Brown, laughing.

“More unlikely things have happened. You take it very
easily, John.”

‘Well, we have all been boys and girls, Lizzie. The world
hasn’t altered much, I suppose, since I uscd to get up at five
on winter mornings, to ride some twenty miles to cover, on
the chance of meeting a young lady on a grey pony. I
remember how my poor dear old father used to wonder at it,
when our hounds met close by, in a better country. I’m
afraid I forgot to tell him what a pretty creature ‘Gipsy’
was, and how well she was ridden.”

“But Tom is only twenty, and he must go into a pro-
fossion.”

“Yes, yes; much too young, I know—too young for any-
' thing serious. We had better see them together, and then,

if there is anything in it, we can keep them apart. There
cannot be much the matter yet.”

tw
BEHIND THE SCENES. 339

“Well, dear, if you are satisfied, I am sure I am.”

And so the conversation turned on other subjects, and Mr.
and Mrs. Brown enjoyed their moonlight drive home through
the delicious summer night, and were quite sorry when the
groom got down from the hind-seat to open their own gates,
at half-past twelve.

About the same time the festivities at Barton Manor were
coming toaclose. There had been cold dinner in the tent at
six, after the great match of the day; and, after dinner, the
announcement of the scores, and the distribution of prizes to
the winners. A certain amount of toasts and speechifying
followed, which the ladies sat through with the most ex-
emplary appearance of being amused. When their healths
had been proposed and acknowledged, they retired, and were
soon followed by the younger portion of the male sex ; and,
while the J.P.’s and clergymen sat quietly at their wine,
which Mr. Porter took care should be remarkably good, and
their wives went in to look over the house and have tea, their
sons and daughters split up into groups, and some shot handi-
caps, and some walked about and flirted, and some played at
bowls or lawn billiards. And soon the band appeared again
from the servants’ hall, mightily refreshed; and dancing
began on the grass, and in due time was transferred to the
tent, when the grass got damp with the night dew; and then
to the hall of the house, when the lighting of the tent began
to fail. And then there came a supper, extemporized out of
the remains of the dinner; after which, papas and mammas
began to look at their watches, and remonstrate with daugh-
ters, coming up with sparkling eyes and hair a little shaken
out of place, and pleading for “just one more dance.” “You
have been going on ever since one o’clock,” remonstrated the
parents; “And are ready to go on till one to-morrow,”
replied the children. By degrees, however, the frequent sound
of wheels was heard, and the dancerg got thinner and
thinner, till, for the last half-hour, some half-dozen couples
of young people danced an interminable reel, while Mr. and
Mrs. Porter, and a few of the most good-natured matrons of
the neighbourhood looked on. Soon after midnight the band
struck ; no amount of negus could get anything more out
of them but “God save the Queen,” which they accordingly
played and departed ; and then came the final cloaking and
driving off of the last guests. Tom and Mary saw the last of
them into their carriage at the hall-door, and lingered a
moment in the porch.

“What a lovely night!” said Mary. “How I hate going
to bed!”

za
340 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“Tt is a dreadful bore,” answered Tom ; “ but here is the
butler waiting to shut up ; we must go in.”

“‘T wonder where papa and mamma are.”

‘Oh, they are only seeing things put a little to rights.
Let us sit here till they come; they must pass by to get to
their rooms.”

So the two sat down on some hall chairs,

“Oh dear!” I wish it were all coming over again to-
morrow,” said Tom, leaning back, and looking up at the
ceiling. ‘By the way, remember I owe you a pair of gloves;
what colour shall they be ?”

“ Any colour you like. TI can’t bear to think of it. I felt
so dreadfully ashamed when they all came up, and your
mother looked so grave ; I am sure she was very angry.”

‘Poor mother! she was thinking of my hat with three
arrow-holes in it.”

“Well, I am very sorry, because I wanted them to like
me.”

“And go they will; I should like to know who can help it.”

“Now, I won’t have any of your nonsensical compliments.
Do you think they enjoyed the day ?” .

“Yes, I am sure they did. My father said he had never
liked an archery meeting so much.”

“But they went away so early.”

“They had a very long drive, you know.. Let me see,”
he said, feeling in his breast-pocket, “ mother left me a note,
and I have never looked at it till now.” He took a slip of
paper out and read it, and his face fell.

“ What is it?” said Mary, leaning forward.

“Oh, nothing ; only I must go to-morrow morning.”

“There, I was sure she was angry.”

“No, no; it was written this morning before she came
here. I can tell by the paper.”

“ But she will not let you stay here a day, you see.”

‘“T have been here a good deal, considering all things. I
should like never to go away.”

“Perhaps papa might find a place for you, if you asked
him. Which should you like,—to be tutor to the boys, or
gamekeeper ?” :

“On the whole, I should prefer the tutorship at present ;
you take so much interest in the boys.”

“ Yes, because they have no one to look after them now
in the holidays. But, when you come as tutor, I shall wash
my hands of them.”

“Then I shall decline the situation.”

“ How are you going home to-morrow 7”
BEHIND THE SCENES. 341

“T shall ride round by Englebourn. They wish me to go
round and see Katie and Uncle Robert. You talked about
riding over there yourself this morning.”

“T should like it so much. But how can we manage it ?
I can’t ride back again by myself.”

‘“‘Couldn’t you stay and sleep there 1”

“T will ask mamma. No, I’m afraid it can hardly be
managed ;” and so saying, Mary leant back in her chair, and
began to pull to pieces some flowers she held in her hand.

“Don’t pull them to pieces ; give them to me,” said Tom.
“T have kept the rosebud you gave me at Oxford, folded up
in hs
“Which you took, you mean to say. No, I won't give
you any of them—or, let me see—yes, here is a sprig of
lavender ; you may have that.”

“Thank you. But, why lavender?”

“ Lavender stands for sincerity. It will remind you of the
lecture you gave me.”

“JT wish you would forget that. But you know what
flowers mean, then? Do give me a lecture: you owe me one.
What do those flowers mean which you will not give me,—
the piece of heather for instance ?”

“Heather signifies constancy.”

* And the carnations ?”

“ Jealousy.”

« And the heliotrope ?”

“Oh, never mind the heliotrope.”

“But it is such a favourite of mine. Do tell me what
it means 7”

“Je vous aime,” snid Mary, with a laugh, and a slight
blush ; “ it is all nonsense. Oh, here’s mamma at last,” and
she jumped up and went to meet her mother, who came out
of the drawing-room, candle in hand.

“‘ My dear Mary, I thought you were gone to bed,” said
Mrs. Porter, looking from one to the other seriously.
~ Qh, I’m not the least tired, and I couldn’t go without
wishing you and papa good night, and thanking you for all
the trouble you have taken.”

“ Indeed, we ought all to thank you,” said Tom ; “ every-
body said it was the pleasantest party they had ever been at.”

“T am very glad it went off well,” said Mrs. Porter,
gravely ; “and now, Mary, you must go to bed.”

“T am afraid I must leave you to-morrow morning,” said
Tom.

“Yes ; Mrs. Brown said they expect you at home to
morrow.”
342 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

“T am to ride round by Uncle Robert's ; would you like
one of the boys to go with me?”

“Qh, dear mamma, could not Charley and I ride over to
Englebourn 4 I do so long to see Katie.”

“No, dear; it is mush too far for you. We will drive
over in a few days’ time.”

And, so saying, Mrs. Porter wished Tom good night, and
led off her daughter.

Tom went slowly up stairs to his room, and, after packing
his portmanteau for the carrier to take in the morning, threw
up his window and leant out into the night, and watched the
light clouds swimming over the moon, and the silver mist
folding the watcr-meadows and willows in its soft cool mantle.
His thoughts were such as will occur to any reader who has
passed the witching age of twenty; and the scent of the
heliotrope-bed, in the flower-garden below, seemed to rise very
strongly on the night air.

 

CHAPTER XXXII
A ORIGSIS,

In the forenoon of the following day Tom rode slowly along
the street of Englebourn towards the Rectory gate. He had
left Barton soon after breakfast, without having been able
to exchange a word with Mary except in the presence of her
mother, and yet he had felt more anxious than ever before at
least to say good bye to her without witnesses. With this
view he had been up early, and had whistled a tune in the
hall, and held a loud conversation with the boys, who ap-
peared half-dressed in the gallery above, while he brushed
the dilapidated white hat, to let all whom it might concern
know that he was on the move. Then he had walked up and
down the garden in full view of the windows till the bell
rang for prayers. He was in the breakfast-room before the
bell had done ringing, and Mrs. Porter, followed by her
daughter, entered at the same moment. He could not help
fancying that the conversation at breakfast was a little con-
strained, and particularly remarked that nothing was said by
the heads of the family when the boys vociferously bewailed
his approaching departure, and tried to get him to name
some day for his return before their holidays ended. Instead
of encouraging the idea, Mrs. Porter reminded Neddy and
Charley that they had only ten days more, and had not yet
looked at the work they had to do for their tutor in the
A ORISIS. 343

holidays. Immediately after breakfast Mrs. Porter had wished
him good bye herself very kindly, but (he could not help
thinking) without that air of near relationship which he had
flattered himself was well established between himself and all
the members of the Porter family ; and then she had added,
“Now, Mary, you must say good bye; I want you to come
and help me with some work this morning.” He had scarcely
looked at her all the morning, and now one shake of the
hand and she was spirited away in a moment, and he was
left sianding, dissatisfied and uncomfortable, with a sense of
incompleteness in his mind, and as if he had had a thread
in his life suddenly broken off which he could not tell how
to get joined again.

However, there was nothing for it but to get off. He had
no excuse for delay, and had a long ride before him; s0 he
and tho boys went round to the stable. On their passage
through the garden the idoa of picking a nosegay and sending
it to her by one of the boys came into his head. He gathered
the flowers, but then thought better of it, and threw them
away. What right, after all, had he to be sending flowers to
her—above all, flowers to which they had attached a mean-
ing, jokingly it was true, but still a meaning? No, he had
no right to do it ; it would not be fair to her, or her father
or mother, after the kind way in which they had all received
him. So he threw away the flowers, and mounted and rode
off, watched by the boys, who waved their straw hats as he
looked back just before coming to a turn in the road which
would take him out of sight of the Manor House. He rode
along at a foot’s pace for some time, thinking over the events
of the past week ; and then, beginning to feel purposeless,
and somewhat melancholy, urged his horse into a smart trot
along the waste land which skirted the road. But, go what
pace he would, it mattered not; he could not leave his
thoughts behind. So he pulled up again after a mile or so,
slackened his reins, and, leaving his horse to pick his own
way along tho road, betook himself to the serious considera-
tion of his position.

The more he thought of it the more discontented he be-
came, and the day clouded over as if to suit his temper. He
felt as if within the last twenty-four hours he had been some-
how unwarrantably interfered with. His mother and Mrs.
Porter had both been planning something about him, he felt
sure. If they had anything to say, why couldn’t they say it
out to him? But what could there be to say? ‘Couldn’t he
and Mary be trusted together without making fools of them-
selves? He did not stop to analyse his feelings towards her,
344. TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

or to consider whether it was very prudent or desirable for her
that they should be thrown so constantly and unreservedly
together. He was too much taken up with what he chose to
consider his own wrongs for any such consideration.—“ Why
can’t they let me alone ?” was the question which he asked
himself perpetually, and it seemed to him the most reasonable
one in the world, and that no satisfactory answer was possible
to it, except that he ought to be, and should be, let alone.
And so at last he rode along Englebourn street, convinced that
what he had to do before all other things just now was to
assert himself properly, and show every one, even his own
mother, that hv was no longer a boy to be managed according
to any one’s fancies except his own.

He rode strai-ht to the stables and loosed the girths of his
horse, and gave particular directions about grooming and feed-
ing him, and stayed in the stall for some minutes rubbing his
ears and fondling him. The antagonism which possessed him
for the moment against mankind perhaps made him appreciate
the value of his relations with a well-trained beast. Then he
went round to the house and inquired for his uncle, He had
not been in Englebourn for some years, and the servant did
not know him, and answered that Mr. Winter was not out of.
his room and never saw strangers till the afternoon. Where
was Miss Winter, then? She was down the village at Widow
Winburn’s, and he couldn’t tell when she would be back, the
man said. The contents of Katie’s note of the day before had
gone out of his head, but the mention of Betty’s name re-
called them, and with them something of the kindly feeling
which had stirred within him on hearing of her illness. So,
saying he would call later to see his uncle, he started again to
find the widow’s cottage, and his cousin.

The servant had directed him to the last house in the
village, but, when he got outside of the gate, there were
houses in two directions. He looked about for some one
from whom to inquire further, and his eye fell upon our old
acquaintance, the constable, coming out of his door with a
parcel under his arm.

The little man was in a brown study, and did not notice
Toms first address. He was in fact’ anxiously thinking over
his old friend’s illness and her son's trouble ; and was on his
way to farmer Groves’s, (having luckily the excuse of taking
a coat to be tried on) in the hopes of getting him to inter
ss and patch up the quarrel between young Tester ana

arry.

Tom’s first salute had been friendly enough ; no one knew
better how to speak to the poor, amongst whom he had

w
A ORISIS. 345

lived all his life, than he. But, not getting dny answer,
and being in a touchy state of mind, he was /put out, and
shouted—

“Hullo, my man, can’t you hear me ?”

“Kes, I beant dunch,” replied the constable, turning and
looking at his questioner.

“J thought you were, for I spoke loud enough before.
Which is Mrs. Winburn’s cottage ?”

“The furdest house down ther,” he said, pointing, “’tis in
my way if you’ve a mind to come.” Tom accepted the offer
and walked along by the constable.

“ Mrs. Winburn is ill, isn’t she?” he asked, after looking
his jruide over.

“Hes, her be—terrible bad,” said the constable.

“ What is the matter with her, do you know?”

“Zummat o’ fits, I hears. Heor’ve had ’om this six year,
on and off.”

“T suppose it’s dangerous. I mean sho isn’t likely to get
well ?” .

“°Tis in the Lord’s hands,” replied the constable, “ but
her’s that bad wi’ pain, at times, ’twould be a mussy if ’twoud
plaase He to tak’ her out on’t.”

* Perhaps she mightn’t think go,” said Tom, superciliousl y ;
he was not in the mind to agree with any one. The con-
stable looked at him solemnly for a moment and then said—

“ Her’s been a God-fearin’ woman from her youth up, and
hers had a deal o’ trouble. Thaay as the Lord loveth He
chasteneth, and ’tisn’t such as thaay as is afeard to go afore
Him.”

‘“ Well, I never found that having troubles made people a
bit. more anxious to get ‘ out on’t,’ as you call it,” said Tom.

“Tt don’t seem to me as you can ’a had much o’ trouble to
judge by,” said the constable, who was beginning to be
nettled by Tom’s mamner.

‘How can you tell that ?”

“ Leastways ’twould be whoam-made, then,” porsisted the
constable ; “and ther’s a sight o’ odds atween whoam-made
troubles and thaay as the Lord sends.”

“So there may; but I may. have seen both sorts for any-
thing you can tell.”

“Nay, nay; the Lord’s troubles leaves His marks.”

“And you don’t see any of them in my face, eh?”

The constable jerked his head after his own peculiar fashion,
but declined to reply directly to this interrogatory. He
parried it by one of his own.

“In the doctorin’ line, make so bould ?”
346 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“No,” said Tom. “You don’t seem to have such very
good eyes, after all.”

“Oh, I seed you wasn’t old enough to be doin’ for your-
self, like; but I thought you med ha’ been a ’sistant, or
summat.”

“Well, then, you're just mistaken,” said Tom, considerably
disgusted at being taken for a country doctor's assistant.

“YT ax your pardon,” said the constable. “But if you
beant in the doctorin’ line, what be gwine to Widow Winburn’s
for, make so bould ?”

“That's my look out, I suppose,” said Tom, almost angrily.
“‘That’s the house, isn’t it?” and he pointed to the cottage,
already described, at the corner of Englebourn Copse.

“ Kes.”

“ Good day, then.”

“Good day,” muttered the constable, not at all satisfied
with this abrupt close of the conversation, but too unready to
prolong it. He went on his own way slowly, looking back
often, till he saw the door open; after which he seemed
botter satisfied, and ambled out of sight.

. Phe old snufiler!” thought Tom, as he strode up to the

cottage door—“a ranter, I'll be bound, with his ‘Lord’s
troubles, and ‘Lord’s hands,’ and ‘ Lord’s marks.’ I hope
Uncle Robert hasn’t many such in the parish.”

He knocked at the cottage door, and in’ a few seconds it
opened gently, and Katie slipped out with her finger on her
lips. She made a slight gesture of surprise at secing him, and
held out her hand. ;

“Hush!” she said, “she is asleep. You are not in a
hurry?” ‘

‘‘No, not particularly,” he answered, abruptly ; for there
was something in her voice and manner which jarred with his
humour.

“Hush!” she said again, “you must not speak so loud.
We can sit down here, and talk quietly. I shall hear if she
moves.”

So he sat down opposite to her in the little porch of the
cottage. She left the door ajar, so that she might catch the
least movement of -her patient, and then turned to him with a
bright smile, and said—

“ Well, I am so glad to see you! What good wind blows
you here?”

“No particularly good wind, that I know of. Mary
showed me your letter yesterday, and mother wished me to
come round here on my way home ; and go here I am.”

* Aud how did the party go off? I long to hear about it.”
A ORISIS. 347

“Very well; half the county were there, and it was all
very well done.”

“ And how did dear Mary look 4” :

“Oh, just as usual. But now, Katie, why didn’t you
come? Mary and all of us were so Meapponited

“T thought you read my letter ?”

“Yes, so I did.” ~

“ Then ee the reason.”

“T don’t call it a reason. Really, you have no right to
shut yourself up from everything. You will be getting
moped to death.”

“But do I look moped?” she said ; and he looked at her,
and couldn’t help admitting to himself, reluctantly, that she
did not. So he re-opened fire from another point.

“You will wear yourself. out, nursing every old woman in
the parish.

“ But I don’t nurse every old woman.”

“Why, there is no one here but you to-day, now,” he said,
with a motion of his head towards the cottage.

“No, because I have let the regular nurse go home for a
few hours. Besides, this is a special case. You don’t know
what a dear old soul Betty is.” :

“Yes, I do ; I remember her ever since I was a child.”

“ Ah, I forgot ; I have often heard her talk of you. Then
you ought not to be surprised at anything I may do for her.”

“She is a good, kind old woman, I know. But still I
must say, Katie, you ought to think of your friends and
relations a little, and what you owe to society.”

“Indeed, I do think of my friends and relations very much,
and I should have liked, of all things, to have been with
you yesterday. You ought to be pitying me, instead of
scolding me.’

“ My dear Katie, you know I didn’t mean to scold you;
and nobody admires the way you give yourself up to visiting,
and all that sort of thing, more than I; only you ought to
have a little pleasure sometimes. People have o right to
think of themselves and their own happiness a little.”

“ Perhaps I don’t find visiting and all that sort of thing so
very miserable. But now, Tom, you saw in my letter that
poor Betty’s son has got into trouble?”

“Yes; and that is what brought on her attack, you said.”

“T believe so. She was in a sad state about him all yester-
day,—so painfully eager and anxious. She is better to-day ;
but still I think it would do her good if you would see her,
and say you will be a friend to her son. Would you mind?”

“It was just what I wished to do yesterday. I will do all
348 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

I can for him, I’m sure. I always liked him as a boy; you
can tell her that. But I don’t feel, somehow—to-day, at
least—as if I could do any good by seeing her.”

“ Oh, why not?”

“T don’t think I’m in the right humour. Is she very ill?”

“Yes, very ill indeed ; I don’t think she can recover.”

“Well, you see, Katie, I’m not used to death-beds. I
shouldn’t say the right sort of thing.”

“ How do you mean—the right sort of thing?”

“Oh, you know. I couldn’t talk to her about her soul.
I'm not fit for it, and it isn’t my place.”

“No, indeed, it isn’t. But you can remind her of old
4imes, and say a kind word about her son.”

“Very well, if you don’t think I shall do any harm.”

“Ym sure it will comfort her. And now tell me about
yesterday.”

They sat talking for some time in the same low tone, and
Tom began to forget his causes of quarrel with the world, and
gave an account of the archery party from his own point of
view. Katie saw, with a woman’s quickness, that he avoided
mentioning Mary, and smiled to herself, and drew her own
conclusions.

At last, there was a slight movement in the cottage, and,
laying her hand on his arm, she got up quickly, and went in.
In a few minutes she came to the door again.

“ How is she?” asked Tom.

“Oh, much the same; but she has waked without pain,
which is a great blessing. Now, are youready?” ~

“Yes; you must go with me.”

“Come in, then.” She turned, and he followed into the
cottage.

Betty’s bed had been moved into the kitchen, for the sake
of light and air. He glanced at the corner where it stood
with almost a feeling of awe, as he followed his cousin on
tip-toe. It was all he could do to recognise the pale, drawn
face which lay on the coarse pillow. The rush of old memories
which the sight called up, and the thought of the suffering of
his poor old friend touched him deeply. ;

Katie went to the bed-side, and, stooping down, smoothed
the pillow, and placed her hand for a moment on the forehead
of her patient. Then she looked up, and beckoned to him,
and said, in her low, clear voice,—

“Betty, here is an old friend come to see you; my
Sate Squire Brown's son. You remember him quite a little

oy ” ; ,
The old woman moved her head towards the voice, and

,
A CRISIS. 349

smiled, but gave no further sign of recognition. Tom stole -
across the floor, and sat down by the bed-side.

“Oh, yes, Betty,” he said, leaning towards her and speaking
softly, « you must remember me. Master Tom—who used to
come to your cottage on baking days for hot bread, you
know.”

To be sure, I minds un, bless his little heart,” said the
old woman . faintly. ‘‘Hev he come to see poor Botty? Do’ee
let un com’, and lift un up so as I med see un. My sight be
getting dim-like. y

“Here he is, Betty,” said Tom, taking her hand—a hard-
working hand, lying there with the skin all puckered from
long and daily acquaintance with the washing-tub—“ I’m
Master Tom.”

“ Ah, dearee me,” she said slowly, looking at him with
lustreless eyes. ‘Well, you be growed into a fine young
gentleman, surely. And ‘how's the Squire and Madam Brown,
and all the fam’ly ?”

“Ob, very well, Betty,—they will be so sorry to hear of
your illness.”

“But there ain’t no hot bread for un. ‘Tis ill to bake
wi’ no fuz bushes, and bakers’ stuff is poor for hungry folk.”

“Pm within three months as old as your Harry, you
know,” said Tom, trying to lead her back to the object of his
visit.

“Harry,” she repeated, and then collecting herself went on,
“our Harry ; where ishe? They haven’t sent un to prison,
and his mother a dyin’ ?”

“Oh, no, Betty ; he will be here directly. - I came to ask
whether there is anything I can do for you.”

“ You'll stand by un, poor buoy—our Harry, as you used
to play wi? when you was littlh—‘twas they as aggravated un
so as he couldn’t abear it, afore ever he’d a struck a fly.”

“Yes, Betty; I will see that he has fair play. Don’t
trouble about that ; it will be all right. You must be quite
quiet, and not trouble yourself about anything, that you may
get well and about again.”

“Nay, nay, Master Tom. I be gwine whoam ; ees, I be
gwine whoam to my maester, Harry's father—I knows I be
—and you'll stand by un when I be gone; and Squire
Brown ’ll say a good word for un to the justices ?”

“Yes, Betty, that he will. But you must cheer up, and
you'll get better yet ; don’t be afraid.”

“T beant afeard, Master Tom ; no, bless you, I beant afeard
but what the Lord 'Il be mussiful to a poor lone woman like
me, as has had a sore time of it since my measter died, wi' a
a

4
350 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

‘hungry boy like our Harry to kep, back and belly ; and the

theumatics terrible bad all winter time.” ;
«Tm gure, Betty, you have done your duty by him, and
every one else.”

“‘Dwontee speak o’ doin’s, Master Tom. Tis no doin’s o’
ourn as’ll make any odds where I be gwine.”

Tom did not know what to answer ; so he pressed her hand
and said,— .

“‘ Well, Betty, I am very glad I have seen you once more:
I sha’n’t forget it. Harry sha’n’t want a friend while I live.”

“The Lord bless you, Master Tom, for that word,” said the
dying woman, returning the pressure, as her eyes filled with
tears. Katie, who had been watching her carefully from the
other side of the bed, made him a sign to go.

“ Good-bye, Betty,” he said; “TI won’t forget, you may be
sure; God bless you;” and then, disengaging his hand gently,
went out again into the porch, where he sat down to wait for
his cousin.

In a fow minutes the nurse returned, and Katie came ou
of the cottage soon afterwarda.. :

“ Now I will walk up home with you,” she said. “You
must come in and seo papa. Well, I’m sure you must be
glad you went in. Was not I right?”

“Yes, indeed ; I wish I could have said something more
to comfort her.”

“You couldn’t have said more. It was just what she
wanted.”

“But where is her son? I ought to see him before I go.”

‘“‘He has gone to the doctor’s for some medicine, He will
be back soon.”

“Well, I must see him ; and I should like to do something
for him at once. I’m not very flush of money, but I must
give you something for him. You'll take it; I shouldn’t
like to offer it to him.”

“T hardly think he wants money ; they are well off now.
He earns good wages, and Betty has done her washing up to
this week.”

“Yes, but he will be fined, I suppose, for this assault ; and
then, if she should die, there will be the funeral expenses.”

“Very well; as you please,” she said ; and Tom proceeded
to hand over to her all his ready money, except a shilling or
ae After satisfying his mind thus, he looked at her, and
said—

“Do you know, Katie, I don’t think I ever saw you so
happy and in such spirits?”

“There now! And yet you began talking to me as if I
A CRISIS, " 351

were looking sad enough to turn all the beer in the parish
sour.

“Well, so you ought to be, according to Cocker, spending
all your time in sick rooms.”

“ According to who?”

“ According to Cocker.”

“Who is Cocker?”

“Oh, I don’t know ; some old fellow who wrote the rules
of arithmetic, I believe; it’s only a bit of slang. But, I
repeat, you have a right to be sad, and it’s taking an unfair
advantage of your relations to look as pleasant as you do.”

Katie laughed. “You ought not to say so, at any rate,”
she said, “for you look all the pleasanter for your visit to a
sick room.”

“Did I look very unpleasant before?”

“Well, I don’t think you were in a very good humour.”

“ No, I was in a very bad humour, and talking to you and
poor old Betty has set me right, I think. But you said hers
waé a special case. It must be very sad work in general.”

“Only when one sees people in great pain, or when they
are wicked, and quarrelling, or complaining about nothing ;
then I do get very low sometimes. But even then it is much
better than keeping to oneself. Anything is better than
thinking of oneself, and one’s own troubles.”

“T dare say you are right,” said Tom, recalling his morn-
ing’s meditations, “especially when one’s troubles are home-
made. Look, here’s an old fellow who gave me a lecture on
that subject before I saw you this morning, and took me for
the apothecary’s boy.”

They were almost opposite David’s door, at which he stood
with a piece of work in his hand. He had seen Miss Winter
from his look-out window, and had descended from his board
in hopes of hearing news.

Katie returned his respectful and anxious salute, and said,
“She is no worse, David. We left her quite out of pain and
very quiet.” ;

«Ah, ’tis to be hoped as she'll hev a peaceful time on’t
now, poor soul,” said David; “I’ve a been to farmer Groves’,
and I hopes as he'll do summat about Harry.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Miss Winter, “and my cousin
here, who knew Harry very well when they were little boys
together, has promised to help him. This is Hary’s best
friend,” she said to Tom, “who has done more than any one
to keep him right.”

David seemed a little embarrassed, and began jerking his
head about when his acquaintance of the morning, whom he
352 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

had scarcely noticed before, was introduced by Miss Winter
ag “my cousin.”

“T wish to do all I can for him,” said Tom, “and I’m very
glad to have made your acquaintance. You must let me
know whenever I can help ;” and he took out a card and
handed it to David, who looked at it, and then said,—

“ And I be to write to you, sir, then, if Harry gets into
trouble ?”

“Yes; but we must keep him out of trouble, even home--
made ones, which don’t leave good marks, you know,” said
Tom. ,

“And thaay be nine out o’ ten o’ aal as comes to a man,
sir,” said David, “as I’ve a told Harry scores o’ times.”

“That seems to be your text, David,” said Tom, laughing.

“ Ah, and ’tis a good un too, sir. Ax Miss Winter else.
*Tis a sight better to hev the Lord’s troubles while you be
about it, for thaay as hasn’t makes wus for theirselves out 0’
nothin’. Dwon’t ’em, miss?”

“Yes ; you know that I agree with you, David.”

“Good-bye, then,” said Tom, holding out his hand, “ and
mind you let me hear from you.” °

*“ What o queer old bird, with his whole wisdom of man
packed up small for ready use, like a quack doctor,” he said,
as soon as they were out of hearing.

“Indeed, he isn’t the least like a quack doctor. I don’t
know a better man in the parish, though he is rather obstinate,
like all the rest of them.”

“T didn’t mean to say anything against him, I assure
you,” said Tom ; “on the contrary, I think him a fine old
fellow. But I didn’t think so this morning, when he showed
me the way to Betty’s cottage.”” The fact was that Tom saw
all things and persons with quite a different pair of eyes from
those which he had been provided with when he arrived in
Englebourn that morning. He even made allowances for old
Mr. Winter, who was in his usual querulous state at luncheon,
though perhaps it would have been difficult in the whole neigh-
bourhood to find a more pertinent comment on, and illus-
tration of, the constable’s text than the poor old man furnished,
with his complaints about his own health, and all he had to
do and think of, for everybody about him. It did strike
Tom, however, as very wonderful how such a character as
Katie’s could have grown up under the shade of, and in con-
stant contact with, such a one as her father’s. He wished
his uncle good-bye soon after luncheon, and he and Katie
started again down the village—she to return to her nursing
and he on his way home. Heled his horse by the bridle and

6
A ORISIS. 353

walked by her side down the street She pointed to the
Hawk’s Lynch as they walked along, and said, “You should
ride up there ; it is scarcely out of your way. Mary and I
used to walk there every day when she was here, and she was
so fond of it.”

At the cottage they found Harry Winburn. He came out,
and the two young men shook hands, and looked one another
over, and exchanged a few shy sentences. Tom managed
with difficulty to say the little he had to say, but tried to
make up for it by a hearty manner. It was not the time or
place for any unnecessary talk ; so in a few minutes he was
mounted and riding-up the slope towards the heath, “I
should say he must be half astone lighter than I,” he thought,
“and not quite so tall; but he looks as hard as iron, ard
tough as whipcord. What a No. 7 he’d make in a heavy
crew! Poor follow, he scoms dreadfully cut up. I hope I
shall bo able to be of use to him. Now for this place which
Katie showed me from the village street.”

He pressed his horse up the steep side of the Hawk's
Lynch. The exhilaration of the scramble, and the sense of
power, and of some slight risk, which he felt as he helped on
the gallant beast with hand and knee and heel, while the
loose turf and stones flew from his hoofs and rolled down the
hill behind them, made Tom’s eyes kindle and his pulse beat
quicker as he reached the top and pulled up under ‘2 Scotch
firs. “This was her favourite walk, then. No wonder.
What an air, and what a view!” He jumped off his horse,
slipped the bridle over his arm and let him pick away at the
short grass and tufts of heath as he himself first stood, and
then sat, and looked out over the scene which she had so
often looked over. She might have sat on the very spot he
was sitting on ; she must have taken in the same expanse of
wood and meadow, village and park, and dreamy, distant hill.
Her presence seemed to fill the air round him. A rush of ©
new thoughts and feelings swam through his brain and carried
him, a willing picce of drift-man, along with them. He gavo
himself up to the stream, and revelled in them. His eye
traced back the road along which he had ridden in the
morning, and rested on the Barton woods, just visible in the
distance, on this side of the point where all outline except
that of the horizon began to be lost. The flickering July air
seemed to beat in a pulse of purple glory over the spot. The
soft wind which blew straight from Barton seemed laden with
her name, and whispered it in the firs over his head. Every
nerve in his body was bounding with new life, and he could
cit still no longer. He rose, sprang on his horse, and, with a

AA
354. TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

shout of joy, turned from the vale and rushed away on to the
heath, northwards, towards his home behind the chalk hills.
He had ridden into Englebourn in the morning an almost
unconscious dabbler by the margin of the great stream ; he
rode from the Hawk’s Lynch in the afternoon over head and
cars, and twenty, a hundred, ay, unnumbered fathoms below
that, deep, consciously, and triumphantly in love.

But at what a pace, and in what a form! Love, at least in
his first access, must be as blind a horseman as he is an archer.
The heath was rough with peat-cutting and turf-cutting, and
many a deep-rutted farm road, and tufts of heather and furze.
Over them and through them went horse and man—horse
rising seven, and man twenty off, a well-matched pair in age
for a wild ride—headlong towards the north, till a blind rut
somewhat deeper than usual put an end to their career, and
sent the good horse staggering forward some thirty feet on to
his nose and knees, and Tom over his shoulder, on to his
back in the heather.

“Well, it’s lucky it’s no worse,” thought our hero, as he
picked himself up and anxiously examined the horse, who
stood trembling and looking wildly puzzled at the wholo
proceeding ; “ I hope he hasn’t overreached. “What will the
governor say? His kmees are all right. Poor old boy,” he
said, patting him, .“‘no wonder you look astonished. You're
not in love. Come along ; we won't make fools of ourselves
anymore. What is it?—

“A true lovo forsaken a new love may get,
But a neck that’s once broken can nover be set.’
What stuff! one may get a neck set for anything I know;
but a new love—blasphemy !”

The rest of the ride passed off soberly enough, except in
Tom’s brain, wherein were built up in gorgeous succession
castles such as—we have all built, I suppose, before now.
And with the castles were built up side by side good honest
xesolves to be worthy of her, and win her and worship her
with body, and mind, and soul. And, as a first instalment,

‘away to the winds went all the selfish morning thoughts ;

and he rode down the northern slope of the chalk hills
a dutiful and affectionate son, at peace with Mrs. Porter,
honouring her for her care of the treasure which he was
seeking, and in good time for dinner.

“Well, dear,” said Mrs. Brown to her husband when they
were alone that night, “did you ever see Tom in such spirits,
and so gentle and affectionate? Deat boy; there can be
nothing the matter.” .

“ Didn’t I tell you'so,” replied Mr, Brown ; “you women
BROWN PATRONUS, 355

have always got some nonsense in your heads as goon as your
boys have a hair on their chin or your girls begin to put
up their back hair.” ed

“Well, John, say what you will, I’m sure Mary Porter is
a very sweet, taking girl, and—” ;

“T am quite of the same opinion,” said Mr. Brown, “ and
am very glad you have written to ask them here.”

And so the worthy couple went happily to bed.

 

CHAPTER XXXII.
BROWN PATRONUS.

On ao Saturday afternoon in August, a few weeks after his -
eventful ride, Tom returned to Englobourn Rectory, to stay
over Sunday, and attend Betty Winburn’s funeral. He was
strangely attracted to Harry by the remembrance of their old
boyish rivalry ; by the story which he had heard from his
cousin, of the unwavering perseverance with which the young
peasant clung to and pursued his suit for Simon’s daughter ;
but, more than all, by the feeling of gratitude with which he
remembered the effect his visit to Betty’s sick-room had had
on him, on the day of his ride from Barton Manor. On that
day he knew that he had ridden into Englebourn in a miser-
able mental fog, and had ridden out of it in sunshine, which
had lasted through the intervening weeks. Somehow or
another he had been set straight then and there, turned into
the right road and out of the wrong one, at what he very
naturally believed to be the most critical moment of his life.
Without stopping to weigh accurately the respective merits
of the several persons whom he had come in contact with on
that day, he credited them all with a large amount of gratitude |
and good-will, and Harry with his mother’s share as well
as his own. So he had been longing to do something for
him ever since. The more he rejoiced in, and gave himsolf
up to his own new sensations, the more did his gratitude
become as it were a burden to him ; and yet no opportunity
offered of letting off some of it in action. The magistrates,
taking into consideration the dangerous state of his mother,
had let Harry off with a reprimand for his assault; so thore
was nothing. to be done there. He wrote to Katie offering
more money for the Winburns; but she declined—adding,
however, to her note, by way of postscript, that he might give
it to her clothing club or coal club. Then came the news of
Betty’s death, and an intimation from Katie that she thought
Aad
356 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

Harry would be much gratified if he would attend the funeral.
He jumped at the suggestion. All Englebourn, from the
Hawk’s Lynch to the Rectory, was hallowed ground to him.
The idea of getting back there, so much nearer to Barton
Manor, filled him with joy which he tried in vain to repress
when he thought of the main object of his visit.

He arrived in time to go and shake hands with Harry
before dinner ; and, though scarcely a word passed between
them, he saw with delight that he had evidently given pleasure
to the mourner. Then he had a charming long evening with
Katie, walking in the garden with her between dinner and
tea, and after tea discoursing in low tones over her work-
table, while Mr. Winter benevolently slept in his arm-chair.
Their discourse branched into many paths, but managed
- always somehow to end in the sayings, beliefs, and perfections
of the young lady of Barton Manor. Tom wondered how it
had happened so when he got to his own room, as he fancied
he had not betrayed himself in the least. He had determined
to keep resolutely on his guard, and to make a confidant of
no living soul till he was twenty-one, and, though sorely
tempted to break his resolution in favour of Katie, had
restrained himself. He might have spared himself all the
trouble ; but this he did not know, being unversed in the
ways of women, and all unaware of the subtlety and quickness
of their intuitions in all matters connected with the heart.
Poor, dear, stolid, dim-sighted mankind, how they do see
through us and walk round us!

The funeral on the Sunday afternoon between churches had
touched him much, being the first he had ever attended. He
walked next behind the chief mourner—the few friends,
amongst whom David was conspicuous, yielding place to him.
He stood beside Harry in church, and at the open grave, and
made the responses as firmly as he could, and pressed his
shoulder against his, when he felt the strong frame of the son
trembling with the weight and burden of his resolutely sup-
pressed agony. When they parted at the cottage door, to
which Tom accompanied the mourner and his old and tried
friend David, though nothing but a look and a grasp of the
hand passed between them, he felt that they were bound by
a new and invisible bond; and, as he walked back up the
village and passed the churchyard, where the children were
playing about on the graves—stopping every now and then to
watch the sexton as he stamped down, and filled in the mould
on the last-made one, beside which he had himself stood as
a mourner—and heard the bells beginning to chime for the
afternoon service, he resolved within himself that he would

)
BROWN PATRONUS. 357

be a true and helpful friend to the widow’s son. On this
subject he could talk freely to Katie; and he did so that
evening, expounding how much one in his position could do
for a young labouring man if he really was bent upon it, and
building up grand castles for Harry, the foundations of which
rested on his own determination to benefit and patronize him.
Katie listened half doubtingly at first, but was soon led away
by his confidence, and poured out the tea in the full belief
that, with Tom’s powerful aid, all would go well. After which
they took to reading the “Christian Year” together, and
branched into discussions on profane poetry, which Katie
considered scarcely proper for the evening, but which, never-
theless, being of such rare occurrence with her, she had not
the heart to stop.

The next morning Tom was to return home. After breakfast
he began the subject of his plans for Harry again, when Katie
produced a small paper packet, and handed it to him, saying—

“Here is your money again.”

“What money ?”

“The money you left with me for Harry Winburn. I
thought at the time that most probably he would not take it.”

‘*But are you sure he doesn’t.want it? Did you try hard
to get him to take it?” said Tom, holding out his hand re-
luctantly for the money.

“ Not myself. I couldn’t offer him money myself, of course ;
but I sent it by David, and begged him to do all he could to
persuade him to take it.”

“Well, and why wouldn’t he?”

“Oh, he said the club-money which was coming in was
more than enough to pay for the funeral, and for himself he
didn’t want it.” '

“How provoking! I wonder if old David really did his
best to get him to take it.” ;

“Yes, I am sure he did. But you ought to be very glad
to-find some independence in a poor man.”

“Bother his independence! I don’t like to feel that it
costs me nothing but talk—TI want to pay.”

© Ah, Tom, if you knew the poor as well as I do, you
wouldn't say so. I am afraid there are not two other men in
the parish who would have refused your money. The fear of
undermining their independence takes away all my pieasure
in giving.”

“ Undermining ! Why, Katie, I am sure I have heard you
mourn over their stubbornness and unreasonabléness.”

“Oh, yes; they are often provokingly stubborn and un-
reasonable, and yet not independent about money, or anything
358 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

they can get out of you. Besides, I acknowledge that I have
become wiser of late ; I used to like to see them dependent,
and cringing to me, but now I dread it.”

“But you would like David to give in about the singing,
wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, if he would give in I should be very proud. I have
learnt a great deal from him; I used positively to dislike
him ; but, now that I know him, I think him the best man
in the parish, If he ever does give in—and I think he will—

. it will be worth anything, just because he is so independent.”

“That's all very well; but what am I to do to show Harry
Winburn that I mean to be his friend, if he won’t take
money ?” i

“You have come over to his mother’s funeral—he will
think more of that than of all the money you could give him ;
and you can show sympathy for him in a great many ways.”

“ Well, I must try. By the way, about his love affair ; is
the young lady at home? I have never seen her, you know.”

‘No, she is away with an aunt, looking out for a place. I
have persuaded her to get one, and leave home again for the
present. Her father is quite well now, and she is not wanted.”

“Well, it seems I can’t do any good with her, then ; but
could not I go and talk to her father about Harry? I might
help him in that way.”

“You must be very careful ; Simon is such an odd-tempered
old man.” :

“Oh, I’m not afraid; he and I are great chums, and a little
soft soap will go a long way with him. Fancy, if I could get
him this very morning to ‘sanction Harry’s suit,’ as the phrase
is, what should you think of me?” .

“T should think very highly of your powers of persuasion.”

Not the least daunted by his cousin’s misgivings, Tom
started in quest of Simon, and found him at work in front of
the greenhouse, surrounded by many small pots and heaps of
finély sifted mould, and absorbed in his occupation.

Simon was a rough, stolid Berkshire rustic, somewhat of a
tyrant in the bosom of his family, an unmanageable servant,
a cross-grained acquaintance ; as a citizen, stiff-necked and a
grumbler, who thought that nothing ever went right in the
parish ; but, withal, a thorough honest worker; and, when
allowed to go his own way—and no other way would he go,
as his mistress had long since discovered—there was no man
who earned his daily bread more honestly. He took a pride
in his work, and the Rectory garden was always trim and well

kept, and the beds bright with flowers from early spring till
late autumn.
BROWN PATRONUS. 359

He was absorbed in what he was about, and-‘Tom came up
close to him without attracting the least sign of recognition ;
so he stopped, and opened the conversation.

“Good day, Simon ; it’s a pleasure to sce a garden looking
So gay as yours.”

Simon looked up from his work, and, when he saw who it
was, touched his battered old hat, and answered, —

“ Mornin’ sir ! Ees, you finds me allus in plume.”

“Indeed I do, Simon: but how do you manage it? I
should like to tell my father’s gardener.”

‘Tis no use to tell un if a hevn’t found out for hisself.
Tis nothing but lookin’ a bit forrard and farm-yard stuff as
does it.”

““ Well, there’s plenty of farm-yard stuff at home, and yet,
somehoy, we never look half so bright as you do.”

us May be as your gardener just takes and hits it auver the
top o’ the ground, and lets it lie. That’s no kind o’ good, that
beant—'tis the roots as wants the stuff ; and you med jist as
well take and put a round o’ beef agin my back bwone as hit
the stuff auver the ground, and never see as it gets to the
roots 0’ the plants.”

“No, I don’t think it can be that,” said Tom, laughing ;
‘‘our gardener seems always to be digging his manure in,
but somehow he can’t make it come out in flowers as you
do.”

“Ther be mwore waays 0’ killin’ a cat besides choking on
un wi’ crame,” said Simon, chuckling in his turn.

“That's true, Simon,” said Tom ; “the fact is, a gardener
must know his business as well as you to be always in bloom,
eh ?”

“That's about it, sir,” said Simon, on whom the flattery
was beginning to tell.

Tom saw this, and thought he might now feel his way a
little further with the old man.

“T’m over on a sad errand,” he said ; “I’ve been to poor
Widow Winburn’s funeral—she was an old friend of yours,
I think 9”

“ Kes ; I minds her long afore she wur married,” said Simon,

turning to his pots again.
' She wasn’t an old woman, after all,” said Tom.
“ Sixty-two year old cum Michaelmas,” said Simon.
“Well, she ought to have been a strong woman for another
ten years at least ; why, you must be older than she by some
years, Simon, and you can do a good day’s work yet with any
man.’
Simon went on with his potting without replying except
360 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

by a carefully measured grunt, sufficient to show that he had
heard the remark, and was not much impressed by it.

* Tom saw that he must change his attack ; so, after watch-
ing Simon for a minute, he began again.

“T wonder why it is that the men of your time of life are
so much stronger than the young ones in constitution. Now,
I don’t believe there are three young men in Englebourn who
would have got over that fall you had at Farmer Groves’ so
quick as you have ; most young men would have been crippled
for life by it.”

“Zo ’em would, the young wosbirds. I dwon’t make no
account on ’em,” said Simon.

“« And you don’t feel any the worse for it, Simon?”

“Narra mossel,” replied Simon; but presently he seemed
to recollect something, and added, “I wun’t saay bug what I
feels it at times when I’ve got to stoop about much.”

“ Ah, I'm sorry to hear that, Simon. Then you oughtn’t
to have so much stooping to do; potting, and that sort of
thing, is the work for you, I should think, and just giving
an eye to everything about the place, Anybody could do
the digging and setting out cabbages, and your time is
only wasted at it.’—Tom had now found the old man’s weak
point.

“Kes, sir, and so I tells miss,” he said “but wi’ nothin’ but

a bit o’ glass no bigger’n a cowcumber frame ’tis all as a man
can do to keep a few plants alive droo’ the winter.”
' “Qf course,” said Tom, looking round at the very respect-
able greenhouse which Simon had contemptuously likened to
a cucumber-frame, “you ought to have at least another house
as big as this for forcing.”

“Master ain’t pleased, he ain’t,” said Simon, “if he dwon’t
got his things, his spring wegebatles, and his strawberries, a8
early as though we'd a got forcin’ pits and glass like other
folk. °Tis a year and mwore since he promised as I sh’d hev
glass along that ther’ wall, but ’tis no nigher comin’ as I can
see. I be to spake to miss about it now, he says, and, when
I spakes to her, ‘tis, ‘Oh, Simon, we must wait till the
’spensary’s ‘stablished,’ or ‘Oh, Simon, last winter wur a werry
tryin wun, and the sick club’s terrible bad off for funds,’—
and so we gwoes on, and med gwo on, for aught as I can see,
so long as there’s a body sick or bad off in all the parish.
And that'll be allus. For, what wi’ miss’s wisitin’ on ’em, and
sendin’ on ’em dinners, and a’al the doctor's stuff as is served
out o’ the ’spensary—wy, ’tis enough to keep em bad a’al
ther lives. Ther ain't no credit in gettin’ well. Ther wur
no sich a caddle about sick folk when I wur a bwoy.
BROWN PATRONUS. 361

Simon had never been known to make such a long speech
before, and Tom argued well for his negotiation.

“ Well, Simon,” he said, “I’ve been talking to my cousin,
and I think she will do what you want now. The dispensary
is sot up, and the people are very healthy. How much glass
should you want, now, along that wall?”

“A matter o’ twenty fit or so,” said Simon.

“T think that can be managed,” said Tom; “I'll speak
to my cousin about it; and then you would have plenty to
do in the houses, and you'd want a regular man under you.”

“Kes; ’twould take two on us reg'lar to kep things as |
should be.”

“ And you ought to have somebody who knows what he is
about. .Can you think of any one who would do, Simon?”

“Ther’s a young chap as works for Squire Wurley. I’ve
heard as he wants to better hisself.”

“But he isn’t an Englebourn man. Isn’t there any one in
the parish ?” ;

“ Ne’er a one as I knows on.”

“What do you think of Harry Winburn—he seems a good
hand with flowers?” The words had scarcely passed his lips
when Tom saw that he had made a mistake. Old Simon
retired into himself at once, and a cunning distrustful look
came over his face. There was no doing anything with him.
Even the new forcing house had lost its attractions for him,
and Tom, after some further ineffectual attempts to bring him
round, returned to the house somewhat crestfallen.

“Well, how have you succeeded ?” said Katie, looking up
from her work, as he came in and sat down -near her tule.
Tom shook his head.

“T’m afraid I’ve made a regular hash of it,” he said. “I
thought at first I had quite come round the old savage by
praising the garden, and promising that you would let him
have a new house.” ‘

. “You don’t mean to say you did that?” said Katie, stopping
her work.

“Indeed, but I did, though. I was drawn on, you know,
I saw it was the right card to play ; so I couldn't help it.”

“Oh, Tom! how cofild you do so? Wedon’t want another
house the least in the world ; it is only Simon’s vanity. He
wants to beat the gardener at the Grange at the flower-shows.
Every penny will have to come out of what papa allows me
for the parish.”

“Don’t be afraid, Katie; you won't have to spend a penny.
Of course I reserved a condition. The new house was to be
put up if he would take Harry as under-gardener.”
362 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“ What did he say to that 4”

“Well, he said nothing. I never came across such an old
Turk. How you have spoiled him! If he isn’t pleased, he
won't take the trouble to answer you a word. I was very
near telling him a piece of my mind. But he looked all the
more, I believe he would poison Harry if he came here:
‘What can have made him hate him so?”

“ He is jealous of him. Mary and I were so foolish as to
praise poor Betty’s flowers before Simon, and he has never
forgiven it. I think, too, that he suspects, somehow, that we
talked about getting Harry here. I ought to have told you,
but I quite forgot it.”

“Well, it can’t be helped. I don’t think I can do any
good in that quarter; so now I shall be off to the Grange to
see what I can do there.” :

“How do you mean ?”

“Why, Harry is afraid of. being turned out of his cottage.
I saw how it worried him, thinking about it ; so I shall go to

‘the Grange, and say a good word for him. Wurley can’t

refuse if I offer to pay the rent myself—it’s only six pounds
a year. Of course, I sha’n’t tell Harry ; and he will pay it
all the same; but it may make all the difference with Wurley,
who is a regular screw.” ;

“Do you know Mr. Wurley ?”” :

“Yes, just to speak to. He knows all about me, and he
will be very glad to be civil.”

“No doubt he will; but I don’t like your going to his
house, You don’t know what a bad man he is. Nobody but
men on the turf, and that sort of people, go there now ; and
I believe he thinks of nothing but gambling and game-
preserving,”

“Oh, yes; I know all about him. The county people aro
beginning to look shy at him ; so he’ll be all tho more likely
to do what IT ask him.”

“ But you won't get intimate with him?”

“You needn’t be afraid of that.”

“Tt is a sad house to go to—I hope it won’t do you any
harm,”

“Ah, Katie!” said Tom, with a smile not altogether cheer-
ful, “I don’t think you need be anxious about that. When
one has been a year at Oxford, there isn’t much snow left to
soil; so now I am off. I must give myself plenty of time to
cook Wurley.”

“Well, I suppose I must not hinder you,” said Katie.
“T do hope you will succeed in some of your kind plans for
Harry.”
BROWN PATRONUS. 363

“T shall do my best ; and it is a great thing to have some-
body besides oneself to think about and try to help—some
poor person—don’t you think so, even for a man?”

“Of course I do. Iam sure you can’t be happy without
it, any more than I, We shouldn’t be our mothers’ children
if we could be.”

“Well, good-bye, dear; you can’t think how I enjoy these
glimpses of you and your work. You must give my love to
Uncle Robert.”

And so they bade one another adieu, lovingly, after the
manner of cousins, and Tom rode away with a very soft place
in his heart for his cousin Katie. It was not the least the
same sort of passionate feeling of worship with which he
regarded Mary. The two feelings could lie side by side in
his heart with plenty of room to spare. In fact, his heart
had been getting so big in the last few weeks, that it seemed
capable of taking in the whole of mankind, not to mention
woman. Still, on ‘the whole, it may be safely asserted, that
had matters been in at all a more forward state, and could she
have seen exactly what was passing in his mind, Mary would
probably have objected to the kind ef affection which he felt
for his cousin at this particular time. The joke about cousinly
love is probably as old, and certainly as true, as Solomon’s
proverbs. However, as matters stood, it could be no concern
of Mary’s what his feelings were towards Katie, or any other
person,

Tom rode in at the lodge gate of the Grange soon after |
eleven o’clock and walked his horse slowly through the park,
admiring the splendid timber, and thinking how he should
break his request to the owner of the place, But his thoughts
were interrupted by the proceedings of the rabbits, which
‘ were out by hundreds all along the sides of the plantations,
and round the great trees. A few of the nearest just deigned
to notice him by scampering to their holes under the roots of
the antlered oaks, into which some of them popped with a
disdainful kick of their hind legs, while others turned round,
sat up, and looked at him. As he neared the house, he
passed a keeper’s cottage, and was saluted by the barking of:
dogs from the neighbouring kennel; and the young pheasants
tan about round some twenty hen-coops, which were arranged
along opposite the door where the keeper’s children were
playing. The pleasure of watching the beasts and birds
kept him from arranging his thoughts, and he reached the
hall-door without having formed the plan of his campaign.

A footman answered the bell, who doubted whether his
master was down, but thought he would see the gentleman if
364 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

he would send in his name. "Whereupon Tom handed in his
card; and, in a few minutes, a rakish-looking stable-boy came
round for his horse, and the butler appeared, with his master’s
compliments, and a request that he would step into the
breakfast-room. Tom followed this portly personage through
the large handsome hall, on the walls of which hung a buff-
coat or two and some old-fashioned arms, and large paintings
of dead game and fruit—through a drawing-room, the furni-
ture of which was all covered up in melancholy cases—into
the breakfast-parlour, where the owner of the mansion was
seated at table in a lounging jacket. He was a man of forty,
or thereabouts, who would have been handsome, but for the
animal look about his face, His cheeks were beginning to
fall into chaps, his full lips had a liquorish look about them,
and bags were beginning to form under his light blue eyes.
His hands were very white and delicate, and shook a little as
he poured out his tea; and he was full and stout in body,
with small shoulders, and thin arms and legs ; in short, the
last man whom Tom would have chosen as bow in a pair oar.
The only part of him which showed strength were his dark
whiskers, which were abundant, and elaborately oiled aud
curled. The room was light and pleasant, with two windows
looking over the park, and furnished luxuriously, in the most
modern style, with all manner of easy chairs and sofas. A
glazed case or two of well-bound books showed that some
former owner had cared for such things ; but the doors had,
probably, never been opened in the present reign. The
master, and his usual visitors, fuund sufficient food for the
mind in the Racing Calendar, “ Boxiana,”’ “The Adventures
of Corinthian Tom,” and Bell’s Life, which lay on a side
table ; or in the pictures and prints of racers, opera dancers,
and steeple-chases, which hung in profusion on the walls.
The breakfast-tablo was beautifully appointed, in the matter
of china and plate; and delicate little rolls, neat pats of
butter in ice, and two silver hot dishes containing curry and
broiled salmon, and a plate of fruit, piled in tempting profu-
sion, appealed, apparently in vain, to the appetite of the lord
of the feast.

“ Mr. Brown, sir,” said the butler, ushering in our hero to
his master’s presence.

“Ah, Brown, I’m very glad to see you here,” said Mr.
Wurley, standing up and holding out his hand. “Have any
breakfast 1”

“Thank you, no, I have breakfasted,” said Tom, somewhat
astonished at the intimacy of the greeting ; but it was his cue
to do the friendly thing—so he shook the proffered hand,
BROWN PATRONUS. 365

which felt very limp, and sat down by the table, looking
pleasant. .

“Ridden from home this morning?” said Mr. Wurley,
picking over daintily some of the curry to which he had
helped himself.

“No, I was at my uncle’s, at Englebourn, last night. It is
very little out of the way; so I thought I would just call on
my road home.”

“ Quite right. I’m very glad you came without ceremony.
People about here are so d—d full of ceremony. It don’t
suit me, all that humbug. But I wish you'd just pick a
bit.”

“Thank you. Then I will eat some fruit,” said Tom, help-
ing himself to some of the freshly picked grapes ; “how very
fine these are !”

“Yes, I’m open to back my houses against the field for
twenty miles round. This curry isn’t fit for a pig —Take it
out, and tell the cook so.” The butler solemnly obeyed,
while his master went on with one of the frequent oaths with
which he garnished his conversation. “You're right, they
can’t spoil the fruit. They’re a set of skulking devils, are
servants. They think of nothing but stuffing themselves, and
how they can cheat you most, and do the least work.” Say-
ing which, he helped himself to some fruit; and the two ate
their grapes for a short time in silence. But even fruit
seemed to pall quickly on him, and he pushed away his
plate. The butler came back with a silver tray, with soda
water, and a small decanter of brandy, and long glasses
on it.

“ Won’t you have something after your ride?” said the host
to Tom ;” some soda water with a dash of bingo clears one’s
head in the morning.”

“No, thank you,” said Tom, smiling, “it’s bad for training.”

“ Ah, you Oxford men are all for training,” said his host,
drinking greedily of the foaming mixture which the butler
handed to him. “A glass of bitter ale is what you take, eh?
Iknow. Get some ale for Mr. Brown.”

Tom felt that it would be uncivil to refuse this orthodox
offer, and took his beer accordingly, after which his host
* produced a box of Hudson’s regalias, and proposed to look at
the stables. So they lighted their cigars, and went out.
Mr. Wurley had taken of late to the turf, and they inspected
several young horses which were entered for country stakes,
Tom thought them weedy-looking animals, but pationtly
listened to their praises and pedigrees, upon which his host
was eloquent enough ; and, rubbing up his latest readings
366 | TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

in Beil’s Znfe, and the racing talk which he had been in the
habit of hearing in Drysdale’s rooms, managed to hold his
own, and asked, with a grave face, about the price of tho
Coronation colt for the next Derby, and whether Scott's lot
was not tho right thing to stand on for the St. Leger, thereby
raising himself considerably in his host’s eyes. There were
no hunters in the stable, at which Tom expressed his surprise.
Tn reply, Mr. Wurley abused the country, and declared that it
was not worth riding across—the fact being that he had lost
his nerve, and that the reception which he was beginning
to meet with in the field, if he came out by chance, was
of the coldest.

From the stables they strolled to the keeper's cottage, where
Mr. Wurley called for some buckwheat and Indian corn, and
began feeding the young pheasants, which were running about,
almost like barn-door fowls, close to them.

“We've had a good season for the young birds,” he said ;
“my fellow knows that part of his business, d—n him, and
don’t lose many. You had better bring your gun over in
October ; we shall have a week in the covers early in the
month.”

“Thank you, I shall be very glad,” said Tom ; “ but you
don’t shoot these birds?”

“Shoot ’em! what the devil should I do with ’em ?”

“Why, they’re so tame I thought you just kept them about
the house for breeding. I don’t care so much for pheasant
shooting ; I like a good walk after a snipe, or creeping along
to get a wild duck, much better.’ Thore’s some sport in
it, or even in partridgo shooting with a couple of good dogs,
now—’

“You're quite wrong. There’s nothing like a good dry
ride in a cover with lots of game, and a fellow behind to load
for you.”

“Well, I must say, I prefer the open.”

“You've no covers over your way, have you?”

“Not many.” |

“T thought so. You wait till you’ve had a good day in my
covers, and you won’t care for quartering all day over wet
turnips. Besides, this sort of thing pays. They talk about
pheasants costing a guinea a head on one’s table. It’s all
stuff; at any rate, mine don’t cost me much: In fact, I say it
pays, and I can prove it.”

“But you feed your pheasants ?”

“Yes, just round the house for a few weeks, and I sow a
little buckwheat in the covers. But they have to keep them-
selves pretty much, I can tell you.”
BROWN PATRONUS. 367.

“ Don’t the farmers object?”

“Yes, d—n them ; they’re never satisfied. But sae don’t
grumble to me; they know botter. There aro a dozen follows
ready to take any farm that’s given up, and they know it. Just
get a beggar to put a hundred or two into the ground, and
he won’t quit hold in a hurry. Will you play a game at
billiards 1”

The turn which their conversation had taken hitherto had
offered no opening to Tom for introducing the object of his
visit, and he felt less and less inclined to come to the point.
He looked his host over and over again, and the more he
looked the less he fancied asking anything like a favour of
him. However, as it had to be done, he thought he couldn’t
do better than fall into his ways for a few hours, and watch

-for achance. The man seemed good natured in his way ; and
all his belongings—the fine park and house, and gardéns and
stables—were not without their effect on his young guest. It
is not given to many men of twice his age to separate a man
from his possessions, and look at him apart from them. So he
yielded easily enough, and they went to billiards in a fine
room opening out of the hall; and Tom, who was very fond
of the game, soon forgot everything i in the pleasure of play-
ing on such a table.

It was not a bad match. Mr. Wurley uadaetecd the-game
far better than his guest, and could give lim advice as to
what side to put on and how to play for cannons. This he
did in a patronizing way, but his hand was unsteady and his
nerve bad. Tom’s good eye and steady hand, and the practice
he had had at the St. Ambrose pool-table, gave him ‘con-
siderable advantage in the hazards. And so they played on,
Mr. Wurley condescending to bet only half-a-crown a game,
at first giving ten points, and then five, at which latter
odds Tom managed to be two games ahead when the butler
announced lunch, at two o’clock.

“J think I must order my horse,” said Tom, putting on his
coat.

“No, curse it, you must give me my revenge. I’m always
five points better after lunch, and after dinner I could give
you fifteen points. Why shouldn’t you stop and dine and
sleep? I expect some men to dinuer.”

“Thank you, I must get home to-day.”

“JT should like you to taste my mutton; I nevor kill it
under five years old. You don’t got that every day.”

Tom, however, was proof against the mutton; but con-
sented to stay till towards the hour when the other guests
were expected, finding that his host had a decided objection
368 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

to be left alone. So after lunch, at which Mr. Wurley drank
the better part of a bottle of old sherry to steady his nerves,
they returned again to billiards and Hudson’s regalias,

. They played on for another hour; and, though Mr. Wurley’s
hand was certainly steadier, the luck remained with Tom,
He was now getting rather tired of playing, and wanted to
be leaving, and he began to remember the object of his visit
again. But Mr. Wurley was nettled at being beaten by a
boy, as he counted his opponent, and wouldn’t hear of leaving
off. So Tom played on carelessly game after game, and was
soon again only two games ahead, Mr. Wurley’s temper was
recovering, and now Tom protested that he must go. Just
one game more, his host urged, and Tom consented. Wouldn’t
he play for a sovereign? No. So they played double or
quits ; and after a sharp struggle Mr. Wurley won the game,
at which he was highly elated, and talked again grandly of the
odds he could give after dinner.

Tom felt that it was now or never, and so, as he put on
his coat, he said,—

“Well, I'm much obliged to you for a very pleasant day,
Mr, Wurley.”

“T hope you'll come over again, and stay and sleep. I shall
always be glad to see you. It is so cursed hard to keop some-
body always going in the country.”

“Thank you; I should like to come again. But now I
want to ask a favour of you before I go.”

‘Eh, well, what is it?” said Mr. Wurley, whose face and
manner became suddenly anything but encouraging.

“There’s that cottage of yours, the one at the corner of
Englebourn copse, noxt the village.”

“The woodman’s house, I know,” said Mr. Wurley.

“The tenant is dead, and I want you to let it to a friend of
mine ; I'll take care the rent is paid.”

Mr. Wurley pricked up his ears at this announcement. He.
gave a sharp look at Tom; ahd then bent over the table,
made a stroke, and said, “Ah, 1 heard the old woman was
dead. Who’s your friend, then 3”

“Well, I mean her son,” said Tom, a little embarrassed 5
“he’s an active young fellow, and will make a good tenant,
Tm sure,”

“T daresay,” said Mr. Wurley, with a loer; “and I suppose
there’s a sister to keep house for him, eh ?”

“No, but he wants to get married.”

“Wants to get married, eh?” said Mr. Wurley, with
another leer and oath. ‘You're right; that’s a deal safer
kind of thing for you,”
BKOWN PATRONUS. _ 369

“Yes,” said Tom, resolutely disregarding the insinuation,
which he could not help feeling was intended ; “it will keep
him steady, and if he can get the cottage it might make all
the difforence. There wouldn’t be much trouble about the
marriage then, I dare say.”

“You'll find it a devilish long way. You're quite right,
mind you, not to get them settled close at home ; but Engle-
bourn is too far, I should say.”

“ What does it matter to me ?”

“Qh, you're tired of her! Isee. Perhaps it won't be too
far, then.”

“ Tired of her! who do you mean?”

“Ha, ha!” said Mr. Wurley, looking up from the table
over which he was leaning, for he went on knocking the balls
about ; “devilish well acted! But you needn’t try to come
the old soldier over me. I’m not quite such a fool as
that.”

“T don’t know what you mean by coming the old soldier.
I only asked you to let the cottage, and I will be responsible
for the rent. Ill pay in advance if you like.”

“Yes, you want me to let the cottage for you to put in this
ir ” .

one I beg your pardon,” said Tom, interrupting him, and
scarcely able to keep his temper; “J told you it was for this
young Winburn.”

“Of course you told meso. Ha, hal”

“And you don’t believe me.”

“Como, now, all’s fair in love and war. But, I tell you,
you needn’t be mealy-mouthed with me. You don’t mind
his living there ; he’s away at work all day, eh? and his wife
stays at home.”

“Mr. Wurley I give you my honour I never saw the girl
in my life that I know of, and I don’t know that she will
marry him.”

“What did you talk about your friend for, then?” said
Mr. Wurley, stopping and staring at Tom, curiosity beginning
to mingle with his look of cunning unbelief.

“ Because I meant just what I said.”

“ And the friend, then 7”

“TJ have told you several times that this young Winburn
is the man.”

“What, your friend?”

“Yes, my friend,” said Tom ; and he felt himself getting
red at having to call Harry his friend in such company. Mr.
Wurley looked at him for a few moments, and then took his
leg off the billiard table, and came round to Tom with the

BB
370 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

sort of patronizing air with which he had lectured him on
billiards.

“T say, Brown, I'll give you a piece of advice,” he said.
“You're a young fellow, and haven’t seen anything of the
world, Oxford’s all very well, but it isn’t the world. Now
I tell you, a young fellow can’t do himself greater harm than
getting into low company and talking as you have been talk-
ing. It might ruin you in the county. That sort of radical
stuff won’t do, you know, calling a farm labourer your friend.”

Tom chafed at this advice from a man who, he well knew,
was notoriously in the habit of entertaining at his house, and
living familiarly with, betting men and trainers, and all the
riff-raff of the turf. But he restrained himself by a consider-
able effort, and, instead of retorting, as he felt inclined to do,
said, with an attempt to laugh it off, ‘“ Thank you, I don’t
think there’s much fear of my turning radical. _ But will you
let me the cottage ?”

“My agent manages all that. We talked about pulling it
down. ‘The cottage is in my preserves, and I don’t mean to
have some poaching fellow there to be sneaking out at night
after my pheasants.”

“ But his grandfather and great-grandfather lived there.”

' 1 “T dare say, but it’s my cottage.”

“ But surely that gives him a claim to it.”

“ D—n it! it’s my cottage. You're not going to tell me I
mayn’t do what I like with it, I suppose.”

“T only said that his family having lived there so long
gives him a claim.”

“A claim to what? These are some more of your cursed
radical notions. I think they might teach you something
better at Oxford,

Tom was now porfectly cool,’ but withal in such a tremon-
dous fury of excitement that -he forgot tho interests of his
client altogether.

“T came here, sir,” he said, very quietly and slowly, “not
to request your advice on my own account, or your opinion
on the studies of Oxford, valuable as no doubt they are ; I
came to ask you to let this cottage to me, and I wish to have
your answer.”

“Tl be d—d if I do ; there’s my answer.”

‘Very well,” said Tom; “then I have only to wish you
good morning. I am sorry to have wasted a day in the
company of a man who sets up for a country gentleman with
me penne of a Thames bargee and the heart of a Jew pawn-

roker.

Mr. Wurley rushed to the bell and rang it furiously.
BROWN PATRONUS. 371

“ By—!” he almost screamed, shaking his fist at Tom, “Tl
have you horsewhipped out of my house ;” and then poured
forth a flood of uncomplimentary slang, ending in another pull
at the bell, and “ By —! I'll have you horsewhipped out of
my house.”

“You had better try it on—you and your flunkeys to-
gether,” said Tom, taking a cigar-case out of his pocket and
lighting up, the most defiant and exasperating action he could
think of on the spur of the moment. ‘ Here’s one of them ;
so I’ll leave you to give him his orders, and wait five minutes
in the hall, where there's more room.” And. so, leaving the
footman gaping at his lord, he turned on his heel, with the
air of Bernardo del Carpio after he had bearded King Al-
phonso, and walked into the hall.

He heard men running to and fro, and doors banging, as
he stood there looking at the old buff-coats, and rather thirsting
for a fight. Presently a door opened, and the portly butler
shuffled in, looking considerably embarrassed, and said,—

“ Please, sir, to go out quiet, else he'll be having one of his
fits.”

“Your master, you mean.”

“Yes, sir,” said the butler, nodding, “D. T., sir. After
one of his rages the black dog comes, and it’s hawful work ;
so I hope you'll go, sir.”

“Very well, of course I'll go. I don’t want to give him a
fit.” Saying which, Tom walked out of the hall-door, and
Joisurcly round to the stables, whero he found alrondy signs
of commotion. Without regarding them, he got his horse
saddled and bridled, and, after looking him over carefully,
and patting him, and feeling his girths in the yard, in the
presence of a cluster of retainers of one sort or another, who
were gathering from the house and offices, and looking sorely
puzzled whether to commence hostilities or not, mounted and
walked quietly out. .

After his anger had been a little cooled by the fresh air of the
wild country at the back of the Hawk’s Lynch, which he struck
into on his way home soon after leaving the park, it suddenly
occurred to him that, however satisfactory to himself the results
of his encounter with this unjust landlord might seem, they
would probably prove anything but agréeable to the would-be
tenant, Harry Winburn. In fact, as he meditated on the
matter, it became clear to him that in the course of one
morning he had probably exasperated old Simon against his
aspirant son-in-law, and put a serious spoke in Harry’s love-
wheel, on the one hand, while on the other, he had insured
his speedy expulsion from his cottage, if not the demolition of

BB2
372 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

that building. Whereupon he became somewhat low under
the conviction that his friendship, which was to work such
wonders for the said Harry, and deliver him out of all his
troubles, had as yet only made his whole look-out in the
world very mych darker and more dusty. In short, as yet he
had managed to do considerably less than nothing for his
friend, and he felt very small before he got home that evening.
He was far, however, from being prepared for the serious way
in which his father looked upon his day’s proceedings. Mr.
Brown was sitting by himself after dinner when his son turned
up, and had to drink several extra glasses of port to keep
himself decently composed, while Tom narrated the events of
the day in the intervals of his attacks on the dinner, which
was brought back for him. When the servant had cleared
away, Mr. Brown proceeded to comment on the history in a
most decided manner.

Tom was wrong to go to the Grange in the first instance ;
and this part of the homily was amplified by a discourse on
the corruption of the turf in general, and the special curse of
small country races in particular, which such men as Wurley
supported, and which, but for them, would cease. Racing,
which used to be the pastime of great people, who could well
afford to spend a few thousands a year on their pleasure, had
now mostly fallen into the hands of the very worst and lowest
men of all classes, most of whom would not scruple—as Mr.
Brown strongly put it—to steal a copper out of a blind
boggar’s hat. If he must go, at any rate he might have dono
nis errand and come away, instead of staying there all day
accepting the man’s hospitality. Mr. Brown himself really
should be much embarrassed to know what to do if the man
should happen to attend the next sessions or assizes.

But, above all, having accepted his hospitality, to turn round
at the end and insult the man in his own house! This
seemed to Brown, J.P. a monstrous and astounding performance.

This new way of putting matters took Tom entirely by
surprise. He attempted a defence, but in vain. His father
admitted that it would be a hard case if Harry were turned
out of his cottage, but wholly refused to listen to Tom’s
endeavours to prove that a tenant in such a case had any
claim or right as against his landlord, A weekly tenant was
a weekly tenant, and no succession of weeks’ holding could
make him anything more. Tom found himself rushing into
a line of argument which astonished himself and sounded
wild, but in which he felt sure there was-some truth, and
which, therefore, he would not abandon, though his father
‘was evidently annoyed, and called it mere mischievous senti-
MHAEN ALAN. 373

ment. Each was more moved than he would have liked to
own ; each in his own heart felt aggrieved, and blamed the
other for not understanding him. But, though obstinate on
tho general question, upon the point of his leaving the Grange,
Tom was fairly brought to shame, and gave in at last, and
expressed his sorrow, though he could not help maintaining
that, if his father could have heard what took place, and seen
the man’s manner, he would scarcely blame him for what he
had said anddone. Having once owned himself in the wrong,
however, there was nothing for it but to write an apology, the
composition of which was as disagreeable a task as had ever
fallen to his lot.

 

CHAPTER XXXIV.
MHAEN ATAN.

Has any person, of any nation or language, found out and
given to the world any occupation, work, diversion, or pursuit,

more subtlely dangerous to the susceptible youth of both
sexes than that of nutting in pairs. If so, who, where, what?
A few years later in life, perhaps district visiting, and attend-
ing schools together, may in certain instances be more fatal ;
but, in the first bright days of youth, a day’s nutting against
the world! A day in autumn, warm enough to make sitting
in sheltered nooks in the woods, wherever the sunshine lies,

very pleasant, and yet not too warm to make exercise uncom-
fortable—two young people who have been thrown much
together, one of whom is conscious of the state of his feelings

towards. the other, and is, moreover, aware that his hours are
numbered, that in a few days at furthest they will be separated
for many months, that persons in authority on both sides are
beginning to suspect something (as is apparent from the diffi-
culty they have had in getting away together at all on this

same afternoon)—here is a conjunction of persons and cir-

cumstances, if ever there was one in the world, which is

surely likely to end in a catastrophe. Indeed, so obvious to

the meanest capacity is the danger of the situation, that, as

Tom had, in his own mind, staked his character for resolution

with his private self on the keeping of his secret till after he

was of age, it is hard to conceive how he can have been

foolish enough to get himself into a hazel copse alone with

Miss Mary on the earliest day he could manage ‘it after the

arrival of the Porters, on their visit to Mr. and Mrs. Brown.

That is to say, it would be hard to conceive, if it didn’t just
happen to be the most natural thing in the world.
374 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

For the first twonty-four hours after their meeting in the
home of his fathers, the two young people, and Tom in parti-
cular, felt very uncomfortable. Mary, being a young lady
of very high spirits, and, as readers may probably have
discovered, much given to that kind of conversation which
borders as nearly upon what men commonly call chaff as a
well-bred girl can venture on, was annoyed to find herself
quite at fault in all her attempts to get her old antagonist of
Commemoration to show fight. She felt in a moment how
changed his manner was, and thought it by no means changed
for the better. As for Tom, he felt foolish and shy at first,
to an extent which drove him half. wild ; his words stuck in
his throat, and he took to blushing again like a boy of
fourteen: In fact, he got so angry with himself, that he
rather avoided her actual presence, though she was scarcely a
moment out of his sight. Mr. Brown made the best of his
son’s retreat, devoted himself most gallantly to Mary, and
was completely captivated by her before bedtime on the first
night of their visit. He triumphed over his wife when they
were alone, and laughed at the groundlessness of her sus-
picions. But she was by no means so satisfied on the subject
as her husband.

In a day or two, however, Tom began to take heart of
grace, and to find himself oftener at Mary’s side, with some-
thing to say, and more to look. But now she, in her turn,
began to be embarrassed ; for all attempts to re-establish their
old footing failed, and the difficulty of finding a satisfactory
new one remained to be solved. So for the present, though
neither of them found it quite satisfactory, they took refuge
' in the presence of a third party, and attached themselves to
Katie, talking at one another through her. Nothing could
exceed Katie’s judiciousness as a medium of communication ;
and through her a better understanding began to establish
itself, and the visit which both of them had been looking
forward to so eagerly seemed likely, after all, to be as pleasant
in fact as it had been in anticipation. As they became moro
at easé, the vigilance of Mrs. Brown and Mrs, Porter seemed
likely to revive. But in a country house there must be
plenty of chances for young folk who mean it, to be together ;
and so they found and made use of their opportunities, giving
at the same time as little cause to their natural guardians as
possible for any serious interference. The families got on,
on the whole, so well together, that the visit was prolonged
from the original four or five days to a fortnight ; and this
time of grace was drawing to a close when the event happened
which made the visit memorable to our hero.
MHAEN AIAN. 375

On the morning in question, Mr. Brown arranged at break-
fast that he and his wife should drive Mr. and Mrs. Porter to
make calls on several of the neighbours. Tom declared his
intention of taking a long day after the partridges, and the
young ladies were to go and make a sketch of the house from
a. point which Katie had chosen. Accordingly, directly after
luncheon, the carriage came round, and the elders departed ;
and the young ladies started together, carrying their sketching
apparatus with them.

It was probably a bad day for scent ; for they had not been
gone a quarter of an hour when Tom came home, deposited
his gun, and followed on their steps. He found them sitting
under the lee of a high bank, sufficiently intent on their
drawings, but neither surprised nor sorry to find that he had
altered his mind, and come back to interrupt them. So he
lay down near them, and talked of Oxford, and Englebourn,
and so from one thing to another, till he got upon the subject
of nutting, and the sylvan beauties of a neighbouring wood.
Mary was getting on badly with her drawing, and jumped at
the idea of a ramble in the wood; but Katie was obdurate,
and resisted all their solicitations to move. She suggested,
however, that they might go ; and, as Tom declared that they
should not be out of call, and would be back in half an hour
at furthest, Mary consented ; and they left the sketcher, and
strolled together out of the fields, and into the road, and so
through a gate into the wood. It was a pleasant oak wood.
Tho wild flowers wore over, but the great masses of forns,
four or five feet high, made a grand carpet round the stoms
of the forest monarchs, and 2 fitting couch for here and there
one of them which had been lately felled, and lay in fallen
majesty, with bare shrouded trunk awaiting the sawyers.
Further on, the hazel underwood stood thickly on each side
of the green rides, down which they sauntered side by side.
Tom talked of the beauty of the wood in Spring-time, and
the glorious succession of colouring—pale yellow, and deep
blue and white, and purple—which the primroses, and hya-
cinths and starwort, and foxgloves gave, each in their turn,
in the early year, and mourned over their absence. But
Mary preferred Autumn, and would not agree with him. She
was enthusiastic for ferns and heather. He gathered some
sprigs of the latter for her, from a little sandy patch which
they passed, and some more for his own button-hole ; and
then they engaged in the absorbing pursuit of nutting, and
the talk almost ceased. He caught the higher branches, and
bent them down to her, and watched her as she gathered
them, and wondered at the ease and grace of all her move-
376 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

ments, and the unconscious beauty of her attitudes. Soon
she became more enterprising herself, and made little excur-
sions into the copse, surmounting briers, and passing through
tangled places like a Naiad, before he could be there to help
her, And so they went on, along the rides and through the
copse, forgetting Katie and time, till they were brought up
by the fence on the further side of the wood. The ditch was
on the outside, and on the inside a bank with a hedge on the
top, full of tempting hazel-bushes. She clapped her hands at
the sight, and, declining his help, stepped lightly up the bank,
and began gathering. He turned away for a moment, jumped
up the bank himself, and followed her example.

He was sta: ing up in the hedge, and reaching after a
tempting clusi:+ of nuts, when he heard a short sharp cry of
pain behind him, which made him spring backwards, and
nearly miss his footing as he came to the ground. Recovering
himself, and turning round, he saw Mary lying at the foot of
the bank, writhing in pain.

He was at her side in an instant, and dreadfully alarmed.

“Good heavens! what has happened?” he said.

“My ancle!” she cried ; and the effort of speaking brought
the sudden flush of pain to her brow.,

“ Oh! what can I do?” e

“ The boot! the boot!” she said, leaning forward to unlace
it, and then sinking back against the bank. “ It is so painful.
I hope I sha’n’t faint.”

Poor Tom could only clasp his hands as he knelt by her,
and repeat, “Oh, what can I do—what can I do?” His
utter bewilderment presently roused Mary, and her natural
high courage was beginning to master the pain.

“ Have you a knife?”

“ Yes—here,” he said, pulling one out of his pocket, and
‘opening it; “ here it is.”

“ Please cut the lace.”

Tom, with beating heart and trembling hand, cut the lace,
and then looked up at her.

“Ch, be quick—cut it again! Don’t be afraid.”

He cut it again; and, without taking hold of the foot,
geutly pulled out the ends of the lace.

She again leaned forward, and tried to take off the boot;
but the pain was too great, and she sank back, and put her
hand up to her flushed face.

“ May I try 1—perhaps I could do it.”

“Yes, pray do, Oh, I can’t bear tho pain!” she added,
aext moment ; and Tom felt ready to hang himself for having
been the cause of it
MHAEN AIAN 377

‘** You must cut the boot off, please.”

“ But perhaps I may cut you. Do you really mean it?”

“Yes, really. There, take care. How your hand shakes.
You will never do for a doctor.”

His hand did shake, certainly. He had cut a little hole
in the stocking ; but, under the circumstances, we need not
wonder—the situation was new and trying. Urged on by
her, he cut and cut away, and, at last, off came the boot, and
her beautiful little foot lay on the green turf. She was much
relieved at once, but still in great pain ; and now he began to
recover his head.

“ The ankle should be bound up; may I try?”

“ Oh, yes; but what with?”

Tom dived into his shooting-coat pocket, and produced
one of the large, many-coloured neck-wrappers which were
fashionable at Oxford in those days.

“ How lucky !” he said, as he tore it into strips, “I think
this will do. Now, you'll stop me, won't you, if I hurt, or
don’s do it right?”

“ Don’t be afraid; I'm much - better. Bind it tight—
tighter than that.”

He wound the strips as tenderly as he could round her foot
and ankle, with hands all alive with nerves, and wondering
more and more at her courage as she kept urging him to
draw the bandage tighter yet. Then, still under her direc-
tion, he fastened and pinned down the ends; and as ho was
rather neat with his fingers, from the practice of tying flies
and splicing rods and bats, produced, on the whole, a cre-
ditable sort of bandage. Then he looked up at her, the
perspiration standing on his forehead, as if he had been
pulling a race, and said :

“Will that do? I’m afraid it’s very awkward.”

“Oh, no; thank you so much! But I’m so sorry you
have torn your handkerchief.”

Tom made no answer to this remark, except by a look.
What could he say, but that he would gladly have torn his
skin off for the same purpose, if it would have been of any use.
But this speech did not seem quite the thing for the moment.

“But how do you feel? Is it very painful?” he asked,

“ Rather. But don’t look so anxious. Indeed, it is very
bearable. But what are we to do now ?”

He thought fo: a moment, and said, with something like a
sigh—

a Shall I run home, and bring the servants and a sofa, or
gomething to carry you on ?” :

“No, I shouldn’t like to be left here alone.”
378 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

His face brightened again.

“How near is the nearest cottage ?” she asked.

‘“‘There’s none nearer than the one which we passed on the
road—on the other side of the wood, you know.”

“Then I must try to get there. You must help me up.”

He sprang to his feet, and stooped over her, doubting how
to begin helping her. He had never felt so shy in his life.
He held out his hands.

“T think you must put your arm round me,” she said, after
looking at him fora moment. He lifted her on to her feet.

“ Now, let me lean on your arm. There, I daresay I shall
manage to hobble along well enough ;” and she made a brave
attempt to walk. But the moment the injured foot touched
the ground, she stopped with a catch of her breath, and a
shiver, which went through Tom like a knife ; and the flush
came back into her face, and she would have fallen had he
not again put his arm round her waist, and held her up. “I
am better again now,” she said, after a second or two.

“But Mary, dear Mary, don’t try to walk again, For my
sake. I can’t bear it.” :

“But what am I to do?” she said, “I must get back
somchow.”

“ Will you let me carry you ?”

She looked in his face again, and then dropped her eyes,
and hesitated.

“T wouldn’t offer, dear, if there were any other way. But
you mustn’t walk. Indeed, you must not; you may lame
yourself for life.”

He spoke very quietly, with his eyes fixed on the ground,
though his heart was beating so that he feared she would
hear it,

“Very well,” she said; “but I’m very heavy.”

So he lifted her gently, and stepped off down the ride,
carrying his whole world in his arms, in an indescribable
flutter of joy, and triumph, and fear. He had gone some
forty yards or so, when he staggered, and stopped for a
moment,

“Oh, pray put me down—pray do! You'll hurt yourself.
I'm too heavy.”

For the credit of muscular Christianity, one must say that
it was not her weight, but the tumult in his own inner man,
which made her bearer totter. Nevertheless, if one is wholly
unused to the exercise, the carrying a healthy young English
girl weighing a good eight stone, is as much as most men can
conveniently manage,

“Tl just put you down for a moment,” he said. “ Now
MHAEN ALAN. 379.

take care of the foot;” and he stooped, and placed her
tenderly against one of the oaks‘ which bordered the ride,
standing by her side without looking at her. Neither of
them spoke for a minute. Then he asked, still looking away
down the ride, “ How is the foot?”

“Oh, pretty well,” she answered, cheerfully. “Now, leave
me here, and go for help. It is absurd of ‘me to mind being
left, and you mustn’t carry me any more.”

Ho turned, and their eyes met for a moment, but that was
enough.

« Are you ready ?” he said.

“Yes, but take care. Don’t go far. Stop directly you
feel tired.”

Then he lifted her again, and this time carried her without
faltering, till they came to a hillock covered with soft grass,
Hore they rested again, and so by easy stages he carried her
through the wood, and out into the road, to the nearest
cottage, neither of them speaking.

An old woman came to the door in answer to his kick, and
went off into ejaculations of pity and wonder in the broadest
Berkshire, at seeing Master Tom and his burthen. But he
pushed into the house and cut her short with—

“ Now, Mrs. Pike, don’t talk, that’s a dear good woman, but
bustle about, and bring that arm-chair here, and the other low
one, with a pillow on it, for the young lady’s foot to rest on.”

Tho old woman obeyed his injunctions, except as to talking ;
and, while she placed the chairs and shook up tho pillow,
descanted on the sovereign virtues of sdme green oil and
opodeldoc, which was as good as a charm for sprains and
bruises. es

Mary gave him one grateful look as he lowered her tenderly
and reluctantly into the chair, and then spoke cheerfully to
Mrs. Pike, who was foraging in a cupboard, to find if there
was any of her famous specific in the bottom of the bottle.
As ho stood up, and thought what to do noxt, ho heard the
sound of distant wheels, and looking through the window saw
the carriage coming homewards. It was a sorrowful sight to
him.

“Now, Mrs. Pike,” he said, “never mind the oil. Here's
the carriage coming ; just step out and stop it.”

The old dame scuttled out into the road. The carriage was
within one hundred yards. He leant over the rough arm-
chair in which she was leaning back, looked once more into
her eyes ; and then, stooping forwards, kissed her lips, and
the next moment was by the side of Mrs. Pike, signalling the
coachmanh to stop.
380. TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

In the bustle which followed he stood aside, and watched
Mary with his heart in his mouth. She never looked at him,
but there was no anger, but only a dreamy look in her sweet
face, which seemed to him a thousand times more beautiful
than ever before. Then, to avoid inquiries, and to realize all
that had passed in the last wonderful three hours, he slipped
away while they were getting her into the carriage, and
wandered back into the wood, pausing at each of their halting
places. At last he reached the scene of the accident, and
here his cup of happiness was likely to brim over, for he
found the mangled little boot and tho cut lace, and securing
the precious prize, hurried back home, to be in time for
dinner.

Mary did not come down; but Katie, the only person of
whom he dared to inquire, assured him that she was doing
famously. The dinner was very embarrassing, and he had
the greatest difficulty in answering the searching inquiries of
bis mother and Mrs. Porter, as to how, when, where, and in
whose presence the accident had happened. As soon as the
ladies rose, he left his father and Mr. Porter over their old
port and politics, and went out in the twilight into the
garden, burthened with the weight of sweet thought. He
felt that he had something to do—to set himself quite right
with Mary ; he must speak somehow, that night, if possible,
or he should not be comfortable or at peace with his con-
science. There were lights in herroom. He guessed by the
shadows that she was lying on a couch by the open window,
round which the other ladies were flitting. Presently lights
appeared in the drawing-room ; and, as the shutters were
being closed, he saw his mother and Mrs, Porter come in, and
sit down near the fire, Listening intently, he heard Katie
talking in a low voico in the room above, and saw her head
against the light as she sat down close to the window, probably
at the head of the couch where Mary was lying. Should he
call to her? If he did how could he say what he wanted to
say through her?

A happy thought struck him. He turned to the flower-
beds, hunted about and gathered a bunch of heliotrope,
hurried up to his room, took the sprig of heather out of his
shooting coat, tied them together, caught up a reel and line
from his table, and went into the room over Mary’s. He threw
the window open, and, leaning out, said gently, “ Katie.’ No
answer. He repeated the name louder. No answer still, and,
leaning out yet further, he saw that the window had been
shut. He lowered the bunch of flowers, and, swinging it
backwards and forwards, made it strike the window below—
MHAEN ALAN. 381

once, twice; at the third stroke he heard the window
open.

“ Katie,” he whispered again, “is that you?”

“Yes, where are you? What is this?”

“For her,” he said, in the same whisper. Katie untied the
flowers, and he waited a few moments, and then again called
her name, and she answered.

‘* Has she the flowers?” he asked.

“Yes, and she sends you her love, and says you are to go
down to the drawing-room ;” and with that the window
elosed, and he went down with a lightened conscience into
the drawing-room and after joining in the talk by the fire
for - few minutes, took a book, and sat down at the further
side of the table. "Whether he ever knew what the book was
may be fairly questioned, but to all appearances he was deep
in the perusal of it till the tea and Katie arrived, and the
gentlemen from the dining-room. Then he tried to join in
the conversation again ; but, on the whole, life was a burthen
to him that night till he could get fairly away to his own
room, and commune with himself, gazing at the yellow harvest
moon, with his elbows on the window-sill.

The ankle got well very quickly, and Mary was soon going
about with a gold-headed stick which had belonged to Mr.
Brown's father, and a limp which Tom thought the most
beautiful movement he had ever seen. But, though she was
about again, by no amount of patient vigilance could he now get
the chance of speaking to her alonc. But he consoled himself
with the thought that she must understand him; if he had
spoken he couldn’t have made himself clearer.

And now the Porters’ visit was all but over, and Katie and
her father left for Englebourn. The Porters were to follow
the next day, and promised to drive round and stop at the
Rectory for lunch. Tom petitioned for a seat in their carriage
to Englebourn. He had been devoting himself to Mrs. Porter
ever since the accident, and had told her a good deal about
pis own early life. His account of his early friendship for
Betty and her son, and the renewal of it on the day he left
Barton Manor, had interested her, and she was moreover not
insensible to his assiduous and respectful attentions to herself,
which had of late been quite marked: she was touched too
at his abxiety to hear all about her boys, and how they were
going on at school. So on the whole Tom was in high favour
with her, and she most graciously assented to his occupying
the fourth seat in their barouche. She was not without her
suspicions of the real state of the case with him ; but his
behaviour had been so discreet that she had no immediate
382 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

fears ; and, after all, if anything should come of it some years
hence, her daughter might do worse. In the meantime she
would see plenty of society in London; where Mr. Porter's
vocations kept him during the greater part of the year.

They reached Englebourn after a pleasant long morning’s
drive; and Tom stole a glance at Mary, and felt that she
understood him, as he pointed out the Hawk’s Lynch and the
clump of Scotch firs to her mother ; and told how you might
see Barton from the top of it, and how he loved the place, and
the old trees, and the view, .

Katie was at the door ready to receive them, and carried
off Mary and Mrs. Porter to her own room, Tom walked
round the garden with Mr, Porter, and then sat in the draw-
ing-room, and felt melancholy. He roused himself, however,
when the ladies came down and luncheon was announced.
Mary was full of her reminiscences of the Englebourn people,
and especially of poor Mrs. Winburn and her son, in whom °
she had begun to take a deep interest, perhaps from overhear-
ing some of Tom’s talk to her mother. So Harry’s story was
canvassed again, and Katie told them how he had been turned
out of his cottage, and how anxious she was as to what would
come of it.

“ And is he going to marry your gardener’s daughter after
all?” asked Mrs. Porter.

“‘T am afraid there is not much chance of it,” said Katie ;
“T cannot make Martha out.”

“Tg she at home, Katie?” asked Mary ; “I should like to
see her again. I took a great fancy to her when I was here.”

“Yes, she is at the lodge. We will walk there after
luncheon.”

So it was settled that the carriage should pick them up at
the lodge; and soon after lunchcon, whilo the horses were
being put to, the whole party started for the lodgo after
saying good-bye to Mr. Winter, who retired to his room much
fatigued by his unwonted hospitality.

Old Simon’s wife answered their knock at the lodge door,
and they all entered, and Mrs. Porter paid her compliments
on the cleanliness of the room.

Then Mary said, “Is your daughter at home, Mrs.
Gibbons?”

“Kes, miss, someweres handy,” replied Mrs. Gibbons ;
“her hav’n’t been gone sut, not dree minnit.”

“T should like so muzh to say good-bye to her,” said Mary.
“We shall be leaving Barton soon, and I shall not see her
again till next summer.”

“Tor bless’ee, miss, ’tis werry good ov’ee,” said the old
MHAEN ALAN. .883

dame, very proud; “do’ee set down then while I gees her a
call.” And with that she hurried out of the door which led
through the back kitchen into the little’ yard behind the
lodge, and the next moment they heard her calling out—

“Patty, Patty, wher bist got to? Come in and see the
gentlefolk.”

The name which the old woman was calling out made Tom
start.

“TY thought you said her name was Martha,” said Mrs.
Porter.

“Patty is short for Martha in Berkshire,” said Katie,
laughing. :

“And Patty is such a pretty name. I wonder you don’t

call her Patty,” said Mary.
_ “We had a housemaid of the same name a year or two
ago, and it made such a confusion—and when one once gets
used to a name it is so hard to change—so she has always
been called Martha.”

“ Well, I’m all for Patty ; don’t you think so?” said Mary,
turning to Tom.

The sudden introduction of a name which he had such
reasons for remembering, the memories and fears which it
called up—above all, the bewilderment which he felt at hear- -
ing it tossed about and canvassed by Mary in his presence, as
if there were nothing more in it than in any other name—
confused him so that he floundered and blundered in his
attempt:to answer, and at last gavo it up altogothor. Sho was
surprised, and looked at him inquiringly. His eyes fell before
hers, and he turned away to the window, and looked at the
carriage, which had just drawn up at the lodge door. He had
scarcely time to think how foolish he was to be so moved,
when he heard the back-kitcheh door open again, and the old
woman and her daughter come in. He turned round sharply,
and there on the floor of the room, curtseying to the ladies,
stood the ex-barmaid of “The Choughs.” His first impulse
was to hurry away—she was looking down, and ho might not
be recognised ; his next, to stand his ground, and take what-
ever might come. Mary went up to her and took her hand,
saying that she could not go away without coming to see her.
Patty looked up to answer, and, glancing round the room,
caught sight of him.

He stepped. forward, and then stopped and tried to speak,
but no words would come. Patty looked at him, dropped
Mary’s hand, blushed up to the roots of her hair as she looked
timidly round at the wondering spectators, and, putting her
hands to her face, ran out of the back door again.
384 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD. ‘

‘“Lawk a massy! what ever can ha’ cum to our Patty?”
said Mrs. Gibbons, following her out.

“T think we had better go,” said Mr. Porter, giving his
arm to his daughter, and leading her to the door, “Good-bye,
Katie ; shall we see you again at Barton ?”

“T don’t know, uncle,” Katie ‘answered, following with
Mrs, Porter in a state of sad bewilderment.

Tom, with his brain swimming, got out a few stammering
farewell words, which Mr. and Mrs. Porter received with

* marked coldness as they stepped into their carriage. Mary’s
face was flushed and uneasy, but at her he scarcely dared to
steal a look, and to her was quite unable to speak a word.

Then the carriage drove off, and he turned, and found Katie
standing at his side, her eyes full of serious wonder. His fell
before them.

“My dear Tom,” she said, “what is all this? I thought
you had never seen Martha?”

“So I thought—I didn’t know—I can’t talk now—I'll
explain all to you—don’t think very badly of me, Katie—God
bless you!” with which words he strode away, while she
looked after him with increasing wonder, and then turned and
went into the lodge.

He hastened away from the Rectory and down the village
street, taking the road home mechanically, but otherwise
wholly unconscious of roads and men. David, who was very
anxious to speak to him about Harry, stood at his door making
signs to him to stop, in vain: and then gave chase, calling out
after him, till he saw that all attempts to attract his notice
were useless, and so ambled back to his shop-board much
troubled in mind.

The first object which recalled Tom at all to himself was
the little white cottage looking out of Englebourn copse
towards the village, in which he had sat by poor Betty’s
death-bed. The garden was already getting wild and tangled,
and the house seemed to be uninhabited. He stopped for a
moment and looked at it with bitter searchings of heart.
Here was the place where he had taken such a good turn, as
he had fondly hoped—in connexion with the then inmates of
which he had made the strongest good resolutions he had ever
made in his life perhaps. What was the good of his trying
to befriend anybody? His friendship turned to a blight ;
whatever he had as yet tried to do for Harry had only injured
him, and now how did they stand? Could they ever be
friends again after that day’s discovery? To do him justice,
the probable ruin of all his own prospects, the sudden coldness
of Mr, and Mrs, Porter's looks, and Mary’s averted face, were
MHAEN AIAN. . 385

not the things he thought of first, and did not trouble him
most. He thought of Harry, and shuddered at thé wrong he
had done him as he looked at his deserted home. The door
opened and a figure appeared. It was Mr. Wurley’s agent,
the lawyer who had been employed by farmer Tester in his
contest with Harry and his mates about the pound. The man
of law saluted him with a smirk of scarcely concealed triumph,
and then turned into the house again and shut the door, as if
he did not consider further communication necessary or safe.
Tom turned with a muttered imprecation on him and his
master, and hurried away along the lane which led to the
heath. The Hawk’s Lynch lay above him, and he climbed
the side mechanically and sat himself again on the old spot.

He sat for some time looking over the landscape, graven on
his mind as it was by his former visit, and bitterly, oh, how
bitterly ! did the remembrance of that visit, and of the exulta-
tion and triumph which then filled him, and carried him away
over the heath with a shout towards his home, come back on
him. He could look out from his watch-tower no longer, and
lay down with his face between his hands on the turf, and
groaned as he lay.

But his good angel seemed to haunt the place, and soon the
cold fit began to pass away, and better and more hopeful
thoughts to return. After all, what had he done since his
last visit to that place to be ashamed of? Nothing. His
attempts to do Harry service, unlucky as they had proved,
had been honest. Had he become less worthy of the love
which had first consciously mastered him there some four
weeks ago? No; he felt, on the contrary, that it had already
raised him, and purified him, and made a man of him. But
this last discovery, how could he ever get over that? Well,
after all, the facts were just the same as before; only now
they had come out. It was right that they should have come
out; better for him and for every one that they should be
lmown and faced. He was ready to face them, to abide any
consequences that they might now bring in their train. His
heart was right towards Mary, towards Patty, towards Harry

—that he felt sure of. And, if so, why should he despair of

either his love or his friendship coming to a good end ?

And so he sat up again, and looked out bravely towards
Barton, and began to consider what was to be done. His
eyes rested on the Rectory. That was the first place to begin
with. He must set himself right with Katie—let her know
the whole story. Through her he could reach all the rest,
and do whatever must be done to clear the ground and start

fresh again,
09g ;
386 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

At first he thought of returning to her at once, and rose to
go down to Englebourn. But anything like retracing his
steps was utterly distasteful to him just then. Before him he
saw light, dim enough as yet, but still a dawning; towards
that he would press, leaving everything behind him to take
eare of itself. So he turned northwards, and struck across
the heath at his best pace. The violent exercise almost
finished his cure, and his thoughts became clearer and more

* hopeful as he neared home. He arrived there as the house-

hold were going to bed, and found a letter waiting for him.
It was from Hardy, saying that Blake had left him, and he
was now thinking of returning to Oxford, and would come for
his long-talked-of visit to Berkshire, if Tom was still at home,
and in the mind to receive him,

Never was a letter more opportune. Here was the tried
friend on whom he could rely for help and advice and
sympathy—who knew all the facts too from beginning to end !
‘His father and mother were delighted to hear that they should
now see the friend of whom he had spoken so much. So he
went up stairs, and wrote an answer, which set Hardy to work
packing his portmanteau in the far west, and brought him
speedily to the side of his friend under the lee of the Berk-
shire hills. ot

 

CHAPTER XXXV.
BEOOND YEAR.

For some days after his return home—in fact, until his
friend’s arrival, Tom was thoroughly beaten down and wretched,
notwithstanding his. efforts to look hopefully forward, and
keep up his spirits. His usual occupations were utterly dis-
tasteful to him; and, instead of occupying himself, he sat
brooding over his late misfortune, and hopelessly puzzling his
head as to what he could do to set matters right. ‘The convic-
tion in which he always landed was that there was nothing to
be done, and that he was a desolate and blighted being,
deserted of gods and men. MHardy’s presence and company
soon shook him out of this maudlin nightmare state, and he
began to recover as soon as he had his old sheet-anchor friend
to hold on to and consult with. Their consultations were
held chiefly in the intervals of woodcraft, in which they
spent most of the hours between breakfast and dinner. Hardy
did not take out a certificate, and wouldn't shoot without one ;
so, as the best autumn exercise, they selected a tough old
SECOND YEAR. 387

pollard elm, infinitely ugly, with knotted and twisted roots,
curiously difficult to get at and cut through, which hdd been
long marked as a blot by Mr. Brown, and condemned to be
felled as soon as there was nothing more préssing for his men
to do. But there was always something of more importance ;
so that the cross-grained dld tree might have remained until
this day, had not Hardy and Tom pitched on him as a foeman
worthy of their axes. They shovelled, and picked, and hewed
away with great energy. The woodman who visited ‘them
occasionally, and who, on examining their first efforts, had
remarked that the severed roots looked a little ‘as tho’ the
dogs had been a gnawin’ at ’em,” began to hold them in
respect, and to tender his advice with some deference, By
the time the tree was felled and shrouded, Tom was in a con-
valescent state. ,

Their occupation had naturally led to discussions on the
advantages of emigration, the delights of clearing one’s own
estate, building one’s own house, and getting away from con-
ventional life with a few tried friends. Of course the pic-
tures which were painted included foregrounds with beautiful
children playing about the clearing, and graceful’ women,
wives of the happy squatters, flitting in and out of the log-
houses and sheds, clothed and occupied after the manner of
our ideal grandmothers; with the health and strength of
Amazons, the refinement of high-bred ladies, and wondrous
skill in all domestic works, confections, and contrivances.
The log-houses would also contain fascinating select libraries,
continually reinforced from home, ‘sufficient to keep all
dwellers in the happy clearing in communion with all the
highest minds of their own and former generations. Wondrous
games in the neighbouring forest, dear old home customs
established and taking root in the wilderness, with ultimate
dainty flower gardens, conservatories, and pianofortes—a mil-
lennium on a small scale, with universal education, competence,
prosperity, and equal rights! Such castle-building, as an
accompaniment to the hard exercise of wooderaft, worked
wonders for Tom in the next week, and may be safely recom-
mended to parties in like evil case with him.

But more practical discussions were not neglected, and it
was agreed that they should make a day at Englebourn to-
gether before their return to Oxford, Hardy undertaking to
invade the Rectory with the view of re-establishing his friend’s
character there. '

Tom wrote a letter to Katie to prepare her for a visit. The
day after the ancient elm was fairly disposed of they started
early for Englebourn, and separated at the entrance to the

002
388 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

village—Hardy proceeding to the Rectory to fulfil his mission,
which he felt to be rather an embarrassing one, and Tom to
look after the constable, or whoever else could give him in-
formation about Harry,

He arrived at the “Red Lion,” their appointed trysting-place,
before Hardy, and spent a restless half-hour in the porch and
bar waiting for his return. At last Hardy came, and Tom
hurried him into the inn’s best room, where bread and cheese
and ale awaited them, and, as soon as the hostess could be got
out of the room, began impatiently—

“Well you have seen her?”

“Yes, I have come straight here from the Rectory.”

“ And is it all right, ech? Had sho got my letter”

“Yes, she had had your letter.”

* And you think she is satisfied ?”

“Satisfied 7 No, you can’t expect her to be satisfied.”

*T mean, is she satisfied that it isn’t so bad after all as it
looked the other day? What does Katie think of me ?”

“J think she is still very fond of you, but that she has
been puzzled and outraged by this discovery, and cannot get
over it all at once.”

“Why didn’t you tell her the whole story from beginning
to end ?”

“T tried to do so as well as I could.”

“Oh, but I can see you haven’t done it. She doesn’t really
understand how it is.”

“Perhaps not ; bui you must remember it is an awkward
subject to be talking about to a young woman. I would sooner
stand another fellowship examination than go through it
again.” ;

“Thank you, old fellow,” said Tom, laying his hand on
Hardy's shoulder; “TI feel that I’m unreasonable and im-
patient ; but you can excuse it ; you know that I don’t mean
it,”

“Don’t say another word ; I only wish I could have done
more for you.”

“But what do you suppose Katie thinks of me?”

“Why, you see, it sums itself up in this: she sees that
you have been making serious love to Patty, and have turned
the poor girl’s head, more or less, and that now you are in love
with somebody else. Why, put it how we will, we can’t get
out of that. There are the facts, pure and simple, and she
wouldn’t be half a woman if she didn’t resent it.”

“ But it’s hard lines, too, isn’t it, old fellow? No, I won't
sey that? I deserve it all, and much worse. But you think
I may come round all right ?”
SECOND YEAR. 389 _

“Yes, all in good time. I hope there’s no danger in any
other quarter ?”

“Goodness knows! There's the rub, you see. She will
go back to town disgusted with me. I sha’n’t see her again,
and she won’t hear of me for I don’t know how long ; and
she will be meeting heaps of men. Has Katie been over
to Barton?”

“Yes ; sho was there last week, just before they left.”

“Well, what happened ?”

“She wouldn't say much; but I gathered that they are
very well.”

“Oh, yes, bother it. Of course, they are very well. But
didn’t she talk to Katie about what happened last week ?”

“Of course she did. What else should they talk about?”

_ “ But you don’t know what they said 1”

“No. But you may depend on it that Miss Winter will
be your friend. My dear fellow, there is nothing for it but
time.”

“ Well, I suppose not,” said Tom, with a groan. ‘ Do you
think I should call and see Katie?”

“No; I think better not.”

“Well, then, we may as well get back,” said Tom, who was
not sorry for his friend’s decision. So they paid their bill
and started for home, taking the Hawk’s Lynch on the way,
that Hardy might see the view.

“And what did you find out about young Winburn?” he
said, as they passed down the street.

“Oh, no good,” said Tom; “he was turned out, as I
thought, and has gone to live with an old woman up on the
heath here, who is no better than she should be; and none
of the farmers will employ him.”

“You didn’t see him, I suppose?”

“No ; he is away with some of the heath people, hawking
besoms and. chairs about the country. They make them when
there is no harvest work, and loaf about in Oxfordshire and
‘Buckinghamshire, and other counties, selling them.”

‘No good will come of that sort of life, I’m afraid.”

“No; but what is he todo?”

“T called at the lodge as I came away, and saw Patty and
her mother. It’s all right in that quarter. The old woman
doesn’t seem to think anything of it; and Patty is a good
girl, and will make Harry Winbur, or anybody else, a capital
wife. Here are your letters.”

« And the locket?”

_ “I quite forgot it. Why didn’t you remind me of it? You
talked of nothing but the letters this morning.”

‘
390 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“Tm glad of it. It can do no harm now, and as it is worth
something, I should have been ashamed to take it back. I
hope she'll put Harry’s hair in it soon, Did she seem to mind
giving up the letters?”

“Not very much. No, you are lucky there. She will get
over it.”

“But you told her that I am her friend for life, and that
she is to let me know if I can ever do anything for her ?”

“Yes, And now I hope this is the last job of the kind I
shall ever have to do for you.”

| But what bad luck it has been? If I had only seen her
. before, or known who she was, nothing of all this would have
happened.”

To which Hardy made no reply ; and the subject was not
alluded to again in their walk home.

_ A day or two afterwards they returned to Oxford—Hardy
to begin his work as fellow and assistant-tutor of the College,
and Tom to see whether he could not make a better hand of
his second year than he had of his first. He began with
a much better chance of doing so, for he was thoroughly
humbled. The discovery that he was not altogether such a
hero as he had fancied himself, had dawned upon him very
distinctly by the end of his first year ; and the events of the
long vacation had confirmed the impression, and pretty well
taken all the conceit out of him for the time. The impotency

_of his own will, even when he was bent on doing the right
thing, his want of insight and foresight in whatever matter
he took in hand, the unruliness of his tempers and passions
just at the moments when it behoved him to have them most
thoroughly in hand and under control, were a set of dis-
agreeable facts which had been driven well home to him. The
results, being even such as we have seen, he did not much
repine at, for he felt he had deserved them ; and there was a
sort of grim satisfaction, dreary as the prospect was, in facing
them, and taking his punishment like a man, This was what
he had felt at the first blush on the Hawk’s Lynch ; and, as
he thought over matters again by his fire, with his oak sported,
on the first evening of term, he was still in the same mind.
This was clearly what he had to do now. How to do it, was
the only question.

At first he was inclined to try to set himself right with the
Porters and the Englebourn circle, by writing further ex-
planations and confessions to Katie. But, on trying his hand
at a letter, he found that he could not trust himself, The
temptation of putting everything in the best point of view
for himself was too great ; so he gave up the attempt, and
SECOND YEAR. 391

merely wrote a few lines to David, to remind him that he was
always ready and anxious to do all he could for his friend,
Harry Winburn, and to beg that he might have news of any-
thing which happened to him, and how he was getting on.
He did not allude to what had lately happened, for he did not
know whether the facts had become known, and was in no
hurry to open the subject himself.

Having finished his letter, he turned again to his medita-
tions over the fire, and, considering that he had some little
right to reward resolution, took off the safety valve, and
allowed the thoughts to bubble up.freely which were always
underlying all others that passed through his brain, and
making constant low, delicious, but just now somewhat melan-
choly music, in his head and heart. Ho gave himsolf up
to thinking of Mary, and their walk in the wood, and tho
sprained ankle, and all the sayings and doings of that eventful
autumn day. And then he opened his desk, and examined
certain treasures therein concealed, including a withered rose-
bud, a sprig of heather, a cut boot-lace, and a scrap or two
of writing. Having gone through some extravagant forms of
worship, not necessary to be specified, he put them away.
Would it ever all come right?

He made his solitary tea, and sat down again to consider
the point. But the point would not be considered alone. He
began to feel more strongly what he had had several hints of
already, that there was a curiously close connexion between
his own love story and that of Harry Winburn and Patty—
that he couldn’t separate them, even in his thoughts, Old
Simon’s tumble, which had recalled his daughter from Oxford
at so critical a moment for him ; Mary’s visit to Englebourn
at this very time; the curious yet natural series of little
accidents which had kept him in ignorance of Patty’s identity
until the final catastrophe—then, again, the way in which
Harry Winburn and his mother had come across him on the
very day of his leaving Barton ; tho followship of a common
mourning which had seemed to bind them together so closely ;
and this last discovery, which he could not help fearing must
turn Harry into a bitter enemy, when he heard the truth, as he
must, sooner or later—as all these things passed before him,
he gave in to a sort of superstitious feeling that his own fate
hung, in some way or another, upon that of Harry Winburn..
If he helped on his suit, he was helping on his own; but
whether he helped on his own or not, was, after all, not that
which was uppermost in his thoughts. He was much changed
in this respect since he last sat in those rooms, just after his
first days with her. Since then an angel had met him, and
™

392 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.
had “touched the chord of self, which, trembling,” was passing

“in music out of sight.”

The thought of Harry and his trials enabled him to indulge
in some good honest indignation, for which there was no
room in his own case. That the prospects in life of such a
man should be in the power, to a great extent, of such people
as Squire Wurley and farmer Tester ; that, because he hap-
pened to be poor, he should be turned out of the cottage where
his family had lived for a hundred years, at a week’s notice,
through the caprice of a drunken gambler; that, because he

* had stood up for his rights, and had thereby offended the

worst farmer in the parish, he should be a marked man, and
unable to get work—these things appeared so monstrous to
Tom, and made him so angry, that he was obliged to get up
and stamp about the room. And from the particular case he
very soon got to generalizations.

Questions which had before now puzzled him gained a new
significance every minute, and became real to him. Why a
few men should be rich, and all the rest poor ; above all, why
he should be one of the few? Why the mere possession of
property should give a man power over all his neighbours ?
‘Why poor men who were ready and willing to work should
only be allowed to work as a sort of favour, and should after
all get the merest tithe of what their labour produced, and be
tossed aside as soon as their work was done, or no longer
required # These, and other such problems, rose up before
him, crude and sharp, asking to be solved. Feeling himself
quite unable to give any but one answer to them—viz. that
he was getting out of his depth, and that the whole business
was in a muddle—he had recourse to his old method when
in difficulties, and putting on his cap, started off to Hardy's
rooms to talk the matter over, and see whether he could not
get some light on it from that quarter.

He returned in an hour or so, somewhat less troubled in his
mind, inasmuch as he had found his friend in pretty much
the same state of mind on such topics as himself. But one
step he had gained. Under his arm he carried certain books
from Hardy’s scanty library, the perusal of which he hoped,
at least, might enable him sooner or later to feel that he had
got on to some sort of firm ground. At any rate, Hardy had
advised him to read them; so, without more ado, he drew
his chair to the table and began to look into them.

This glimpse of the manner in which Tom spent the first
evening of his second year at Oxford, will enable intelligent
readers to understand why, though he took to reading far
more kindly and earnestly than he had ever done before, he
SECOND YEAR. $93

made no great advance in the proper studies of the place.
Not that he wholly neglected these, for Hardy kept him
pretty well up to the collat, and he passed his little-go credit-
ably, and was fairly placed at the college examinations. In
some of the books which he had to get up for lectures he was
really interested. The politics of Athens, the struggle between
the Roman plebs and patricians, Mons Sacer and the Agrarian
Laws—these began to have a new meaning to him, but chiefly
because they bore more or less on the great Harry Winburn
problem ; which problem, indeed, for him had now fairly
swelled. into the condition-of-England problem, and was

becoming every day more and more urgent and importunate, -

shaking many old beliefs, and leading him whither he knew
not.

This very matter of leading was a sore trial to him. The
further he got on his new road the more he felt the want of
guidance—the guidance of some man; for that of books he
soon found to be bewildering. His college tutor, whom he
consulted, only deprecated the waste of time ; but on finding it
impossible to dissuade him, at last recommended the economic
works of that day as the proper well-springs of truth on such
matters. To them Tom accordingly went, and read with the
docility and faith of youth, bent on learning, and feeling
itself in the presence of men who had, or assumed, the right
of speaking with authority.

And they spoke to him with authority, and he read on,
believing much and hoping more; but somehow they did not
really satisfy him, though they silenced him for the time.
It was not the fault of the books, most of which laid down
clearly enough, that what they professed to teach was the
science of man’s material interests, and the laws of the making
and employment of capital. But this escaped him in his
eagerness, and he wandered up and down their pages in search
of quite another science, and of laws with which they did not
meddle. Nevertheless, here and there they seemed to touch
upon what he was in search of. He was much fascinated,
for instance, by the doctrine of “the greatest happiness of
the greatest number,” and for its sake swallowed for a time,
though not without wry faces, the dogmas, that self-interest
is the true pivot of all social action, that population has a
perpetual tendency to outstrip the means of living, and that
to establish a preventive check on population is the duty of
all good citizens. And so he lived on for some time in a
dreary uncomfortable state, fearing for the future of his
country, and with little hope about his own. But, when he
came to take stock of his newly-acquired knowledge, to weigh
394 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

it and measure it, and found it to consist of a sort of hazy
conviction that society would be all right and ready for the
millennium, when every man could do what he liked, and
nobody could interfere with him, and there should be a law
against marriage, the result was more than he could stand.
He roused himself, and shook himself, and began to think,
“Well, these my present teachers are very clever men, and
well-meaning men, too. I see all that; but, if their teaching
is only to land me here, why it was scarcely worth while
going through so much to get so little.”

Casting about still for gnidance, Grey occurred to him.
Grey was in residence as a bacholor, attending divinity lectures,
and preparing for ordination. He was still working hard at
the night-school, and Tom had been there once or twice to
help him when the curate was away. In short, he was in
very good books with Grey, who had got the better of his
shyness with him. He saw that Tom was changed and
sobered, and in his heart hoped some day to wean him from
the pursuits of the body, to which he was still fearfully ad.
dicted, and to bring him into the fold. This hope was not
altogether unfounded ; for, notwithstanding the strong bias
against them which Tom had brought with him from school,
he was now at times much attracted by many of the High
Church doctrines, and the men who professed them, Such
men as Grey he saw did really believe something, and were
in earnest about carrying their beliefs into action. The party
might and did comprise many others of the weakest sort, who
believed and were in earnest about nothing, but who liked to
be peculiar. Nevertheless, while he saw it laying hold of
many of the best men of his time, it is not to be wondered at
that he was drawn towards it. Some help might lie in these
men if he could only get at it! ea

So he propounded his doubts and studies, and their results,
to Grey. But it was a failure. Grey felt no difficulty, or
yery little, in the whole matter ; but Tom found that it was
because he believed the world to belong to the devil. “Zazssez
JSaire,’ “buying cheap and selling dear,” Grey held might be
good enough laws for the world—very probably were. ‘The
laws of the Church were “ self-sacrifice,” and “bearing one
another’s burthens ;” her children should come out from the
regions where the world’s laws were acknowledged.

Tom listened, was dazzled at first, and thought he was
getting on the right track. But very soon he found that
Grey’s specific wag not of the least use to him. It was no
good to tell him of the rules of a society to which he felt that
he neither belonged, nor wished to belong, for clearly it could
SECOND YEAR, 395,

- not be the Church of England. He was‘an outsider! Grey ,
would probably admit it to be so, if he asked him! He had
no longing to be anything else, ¢f the Church meant an ex-
elusive body, which took no care of any but its own people,
and had nothing to say to the great world in which he and
most people had to live, and buying and selling, and hiring
and working, had to go on. The close corporation might have
very good laws, but they were nothing to him. What he
wanted to know about was the law which this great world—
the devil’s world, as Grey called it—was ruled by, or rather
ought to be ruled by. Perhaps, after all, Bentham and the
others, whose books he had been reading, might be right!
At any rate, it was clear that they had in their thoughts the
same world that he had—the world which included himself
and Harry Winburn, and all labourers, and squires, and
farmers. So he turned to them again, not hopefully, but
more inclined to listen to them than he had been before he
had spoken to Grey.

Hardy was so fully occupied with college lectures and
private pupils, that Tom had scruples about taking up much
of his spare time in the evenings. Nevertheless, as Grey had
broken down, and there was nobody else.on whose judgment
he could rely who would listen to him, whenever he had 4
chance he wouid propound some of his puzzles to his old
friend. In some respects he got little help, for Hardy was
almost as much at sea as he himself on such subjects as
“value,” and “wages,” and the “laws of supply and demand.”
But there was an indomitable belief in him. that all men’s
intercourse with one another, and not merely that of Church-
men, must be founded on the principle of “doing as they
would be done by,” and not on “buying cheap and selling
dear,” and that these never would or could be reconciled with
one another, or mean the same thing, twist them how you
would. This faith of his friend’s comforted Tom greatly, and
he was never tired of bringing it out; but at times he had
his doubts whether Grey might not be right—whether, after
all, that and the like maxims and principles were meant to be
the laws of the kingdoms of this world. He wanted some
corroborative evidence on the subject from an impartial and
competent witness, and at last hit upon what he wanted.
For, one evening, on entering Hardy’s rooms, he found him
on the last pages of a book, which he shut with an air of
triumph on recognising his visitor. Taking it up, he thrust
it into Tom’s hands, and slapping him on the shoulder, said,
“There, my boy, that’s what we want, or pretty near it at any
tate. Now, don’t say a word, but go back to your rooms,
H

396 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

and swallow it whole and digest it, and then come back and
tell me what you think of it,

“ But I want to talk to you.”

“T can’t talk, Ihave spent the better part of two days
over that book, and have no end of papers to look over.
There ; get back to your rooms, and do what I tell you, or
sit down here and hold your tongue.”

So Tom sat down and held his tongue, and was soon deep
in Carlyle’s “ Past and Present.” How he did revel in it—
in the humour, the power, the pathos, but, above all, in the
root and branch denunciations of many of the doctrines in
which he had been so lately voluntarily and wearily chaining
himself! The chains went snapping off one after another,
and, in his exultation, he kept spouting out passage after
passage in a song of triumph, “ Enlightened egoism never so
luminous is not the rule by which man’s life can be led—
laissez-faire, supply and demand, cash payment for the sole
nexus, and so forth, were not, are not, and never will be,
a practical law of union for a society of men,” &c. &c., until
Hardy fairly got up and turned him out, and he retired with
his soiefoundl treasure to his own roome.

He had scarcely ever in his life been so moved by a book
before. He laughed over it, and cried over it, and began
half a dozen letters to the author to thank him, which he
fortunately tore up. He almost forgot Mary for several hours
during his first enthusiasm. He had no notion how he had
been mastered and oppressed before. He felt as the crew of
a small fishing-smack, who are being towed away by an
enemy’s cruiser, might feel on seeing a frigate with the Union
Jack flying, bearing down and opening fire on their captor ;
or as a small boy at school, who is being fagged against rules
by the right of the strongest, feels when he sees his big
brother coming round the corner. The help which he had
found was just what he wanted. There was no narrowing of
the ground here—no appeal to men as members of any
exclusive body whatever to separate themselves and come out
of the devil’s world; but to men as men, to every man as a
man—to the weakest and meanest, as well as to the strongest
and most noble—telling them that the world is God’s world,
that every one of them has a work in it, and bidding them
find their work and set about it.

. The strong tinge of sadness which ran through the whole
book, and its unsparing denunciations of the established
order of things, suited his own unsettled and restless frame
of mind. So he gave himself up to his new bondage, and
rejoiced in it, as though he had found at last what he was
SECOND YEAR. : 397

seeking for; and, by the time that long vacation came round
again, to which we are compelled to hurry him, he was filled
full of a set of contradictory notions and beliefs, which were
destined to astonish and perplex the mind of that worthy
J.P. for the county of Berks, Brown the elder, whatever other
effect they might have on society at large.

Readers must not suppose, however, that our hero had
given up bis old pursuits; on the contrary, he continued to
boat, and cricket, and spar, with as much vigour as ever.
His perplexities only made him a little more silent at his
pastimes than he used to be. But, as we have already seen
him thus employed, and know the ways of the animal in
such matters, it is needless to repeat. What we want to do
is to follow him into new fields of thought and action, and
mark, if it may be, how he develops, and gets himself
educated in one way and another; and this plunge into the
great sea of social, political, and economical questions is the
noticeable fact (so far as any is noticeable) of his second
year’s residence.

During the year he had only very meagre accounts of
matters at Englebourn. Katie, indeed, had come round
sufficiently to write to him ; but she scarcely alluded to her
cousin, He only knew that Mary had come out in London,
and was much admired ; and that the Porters had not taken
Barton again, but were going abroad for the autumn and
winter. The accounts of Harry were bad ; he was still living
at Daddy Collins’s, nobody knew how, and working gang-
work occasionally with the outlaws of the heath.

The only fact of importance in the neighbourhood had
been the death of Squire Wurley, which happened suddenly
in the spring. A distant cousin had succeeded him, a young
man of Tom’s own age.

He was also in residence at Oxford, and Tom knew him.
They were not very congenial ; so he was much astonished
when young Wurley, on his return to College, after his rela-
tive’s funeral, rather sought him out, and seemed to wish
to know more of him. The end of it was an invitation to
Tom to come to the Grange, and spend a week or so at the
beginning of the long vacation.’ There was to be a party of
Oxford men, and nobody else there; and they meant to
enjoy themselves thoroughly, Wurley said.

1 Tom felt much embarrassed how to act, and, after some
hesitation, told his inviter of his last visit to the mansion in
question, thinking that a knowledge of the circumstances
might change his mind. But he found that young Wurley
knew the facts already ; and, in fact, he couldn’t help sus-
398 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

pecting that his quarrel with the late owner had something
to say to his present invitation. However, it did not lie in
his mouth to be curious on the subject ; and so he accepted
the invitation gladly, much delighted at the notion of begin-
ning his vacation so near Englebourn, and having the run of
the Grange fishing, which was justly celebrated.

 

CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE RIVER SDE.

So, from Henley, Tom went home just to see his father and
mother, and pick up his fishing-gear, and then started for
the Grange. On his road thither, he more than once almost
made up his mind to go round by Engleboum, get his first
interview with Katie over, and find out how the world was
really going with Harry and his sweetheart, of whom he had
had such meagre intelligence of late. But, for some reason
or another, when it came to taking the turn to Englebourn,
he passed it by, and, contenting himself for the time with a
distant view of the village and the Hawk’s Lynch, drove
straight to the Grange.

He had not expected to feel very comfortable at first in the
house which he had left the previous autumn in so strange a
manner, and he was not disappointed. The rooms reminded
him unpleasantly of his passage of arms with the late master,
and the grave and portly butler was somewhat embarrassed
in his reception of him; while the footman, who carried off
his portmanteau, did it with a grin which put him out. The
set of men whom he found there were not of his sort. They
were young Londoners, and he a thorough countryman. But
the sight of the stream,. by which he took a hasty stroll
before dinner, made up for everything, and filled him with
pleasurable anticipations, He thought he had never seen a
sweeter bit of water. ;

The dinner to which the party of young gentlemen sat
down was most undeniable. The host talked a little too
much, perhaps, under all the circumstances, of my wine,
my plate, my mutton, &c., provoking the thought of how
long they had been his. But he was bent on hospitality
7 his fashion, and his guests were not disposed to criticise
much, :

The old butler did not condescend to wait, but brought in
a magnum of claret after dinner, carefully nursing it as if it
were a baby, and placing it patronizingly before his young
' THE RIVER SIDE. 399 |

master. Before they adjourned to the billiard-room they had
disposed of several of the same; but the followers were
brought in by a footman, the butler being employed in dis-
cussing @ bottle of an older vintage with the steward in the
still-room. Then came pool, pool, pool, soda-water and brandy,
and cigars, into the short hours; but Tom stole away early,
having an eye to his morning’s fishing, and not feeling much
at home with his companions.

He was out soon after sunrise the next morning. He
never wanted to be called when there was a trout-stream
within reach ; and his fishing instinct told him that, in these
sultry dog-days, there would be little chance of sport when
the sun was well up. So he let himself: gently out of the
hall door—paused a moment on the steps to fill his chest
with the fresh morning air, as he glanced at the weathercock
over the stables—and then set to work to put his tacklo
together on the lawn, humming 4 tune to himself as he
selected an insinuating red hackle and alder-fly from. his
well-worn book, and tied them on to his cast. Then he slung
his creel over his shoulder, picked up his rod, and started for
the water.

As he passed the gates of the stable-yard, the keeper came
out—a sturdy bullet-headed fellow, in a velveteen coat, and
cord breeches and gaiters—and touched his hat. Tom re-
turned the salute, and wished him good morning.

“ Mornin’, sir ; you be about early.”

“Yes ; I reckon it’s the best time for sport at the end
of June.”

“Tis so, sir, Shall I fetch a net, and come along!”

“No, thank you, I'll manage the ladle myself. But which
do you call the best water?”

“They be both middling good. There ain’t much odds
atwixt ’em. But I sees most fish movin’ o’ mornins in the
deep water down below.”

“T don’t know; the night was too hot,” said Tom, who
had examined tho water the day boforo, and mado up his
mind whore he was going. “I’m for deep water on cold
days ; I shall begin with tho stickles up above. There's a
good head of water on, I suppose ?”

“ Plenty down this last week, sir ?”

“ Come along, then; we'll walk together, if you're going
that way.” So Tom stepped off, brushing through the steam-
ing long grass, gemmed with wild flowers, followed by the
keeper ; and, as the grasshoppers bounded chirruping out of
his way, and the insect life hummed and murmured, and the
lark rose and sang above his head, he felt happier than he
400 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

had done for many a long month. So his heart opened
towards his companion, who kept a little behind him.

“‘ What size do you take ’em out, keeper?”

“ Anything over nine inches, sir. But there’s a smartish
few fish of three pounds, for them as can catch ’em.”

“ Well, that’s good ; but they ain’t easy caught, eh?”

“T don’t rightly know, sir; but there’s gents comes as
stands close by the water, and flogs down stream with the
sun in their backs, and uses all manner o’ vlies, wi’ long
names ; and then thay gwoes away, and says, ’tain’t no use
flying here, ‘cos there’s so much cadis bait and that like.”

Ah, very likely,” said Tom, with a chuckle.

“Tho chaps as catches the big fishes, sir,” went on the
keeper, getting confidential, “is thay cussed night-line
poachers. There’s one o’ thay as has come here this last
spring-tide—the artfullest chap as ever I come across, and
down to every move on the board. He don’t use no shove-
nets, nor such-like tackle, not he; I s’pose he don’t call that
sport. Besides, I got master to stake the whole water, and
set old knives and razors about in the holes, so that don’t
answer ; and this joker all’us goes alone—which, in course,
he couldn't do with nets. Now, I knows within five or six
yards where that chap sets his lines, and I finds ’em, now
and again, set the artfullest you ever see. But ’twould take
a man’s life to look arter him, and I knows he gets, maybe, a
dozen big fish a week, do all as I knows.”

“ How is it you can’t catch him, keeper?” said Tom, much
amused.

“Why, you see, sir, he don’t come at any hours. Drat
un!” said the keeper, getting hot ; “blessed if I don’t think
he sometimes comes down among the haymakers and folk at
noon, and up lines and off, while thay chaps does nothing but
snigger at un—all I knows is, as I’ve watched till midnight,
and then on again at dawn for’n, and no good come on it but
once.”

“ How was that ?”

“Well, one mornin’, sir, about last Lady-day, I comes quite
quiet up stream about dawn. When I get’s to farmer Giles’s
piece (that little rough bit, sir, as you sees t’other side’ the
stream, two fields from our outside bounds), I sees un a
stooping down and hauling in’s line. ‘Now's your time,
Billy,’ says I, and up the hedge I cuts, hotfoot, to get betwixt
he and our bounds. Wether he seen me or not, I can't
mind ; leastways, when I up’s head t’other side the hedge,
vorrights where I seen him last, there waa he a-trotting up
stream quite cool, a-pocketing a two-pounder, ‘Then he sees

“t
THE RIVER SIDE, «401

me, and away we goes side by side for the bounds—he this
side the hedge and I tother; he takin’ the fences like our
old greyhound-bitch, Clara. We takes the last fence on to
that fuzzy field as you sees there, sir (parson’s glebe, and out
of our liberty), neck and neck, and I turns short to the left,
’cos there warn’t no fence now betwixt he and I. Well,
I thought he’d a dodged on about the fuz Not he; he
slouches his hat over’s eyes, and stands quite cool by fust fuz
bush—I minded then as we was out o’ our beat. Hows’ever,
my blood was up; so I at’s him then and there, no words
lost, and fetches a crack at’s head wi’ my stick. He fends
wi’ his’n ; and then, as I rushes in to collar’n, dash’d if ’e
didn’t meet I full, and catch I by the thigh and collar, and
send I slap over's head into a fuz bush. Then he chuckles
fit to bust hisself, and cuts his stick, while I creeps out full
o’ prickles, and wi’ my breeches tore shameful. Dang un!”
cried the keeper, while Tom roared, “he’s a lissum wosbird,
that I’ool say, but I'll be up sides wi’ ho next time I sees
un. Whorson fool as I was, not to stop and look at ’n and
speak to un! Then I should ha’ know’d’n again ; and now
he med be our parish clerk for all as I knows.”

“And you’ve never met him since?”

“Never sot eye on un, sir, arly or late—wishes I had.”

“ Well, keeper, here’s half-a-crown to go towards mending
the hole in your breeches, and better luck at the return match.
T shall begin fishing here.”

‘“‘Thank’ee, sir. You keep your cast pretty nigh that there
off bank, and you med have a rare good un ther’. I seena
fish suck there just now as warn’t spawned this year, nor last
nether.”

And away went the communicative keeper.

“‘Stanch fellow, the keeper,” said Tom to himself, as he
reeled out yard after yard of his tapered line, and with a
gentle sweep dropped his collar of flies lightly on the water,
each cast covering another five feet of the dimpling surface.
“ Good fellow, the keeper—don’t mind telling o story against
himeelf—can stand being laughed at—more than his master
con, Ah, there's the fish he saw sucking, I'll be bound.
Now, you beauties, over his nose, and fall light—don’t dis-
grace your bringing up!” and away went the flies quivering
through the air and lighting close to the opposite bank,
under a bunch of rushes. A slight round eddy followed
below the rushes, as the cast came gently back across the
current,

« Ah, you see them, do you, old boy?” thought Tom.
“ Say your prayers, then, and get shrived!” and away went

DD
402 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

the flies again, this time a little below. No movement. The
third throw, a great lunge and splash, and the next moment
the lithe rod bent double, and the gut collar spun along,
cutting through the water like mad. Up goes the great fish
twice into the air, Tom giving him the point ; then up stream
again, Tom giving him the butt, and beginning to reel up
gently. Down goes the great fish into the swaying weeds,
working with his tail like a twelve-horse screw. “If I can
only get my nose to ground,” thinks he. So thinks Tom, and
trusts to his tackle, keeping a steady strain on trouty, and
creeping gently down stream. “ No go,” says the fish, as he
feels his nose steadily hauled round, and turns with a swirl
down stream. Away goes Tom, recling in, and away goes the
fish in hopes of a slack—away, for twenty or thirty yards—
the fish coming to the top lazily, now and again, and holding
on to get his second wind. Now a cart track crossed the
stream, no weeds, and shallow water at the side. “Here we
must haye it out,” thinks Tom, and turns fish’s nose up
stream again. The big fish gets sulky, twice drifts towards
the shallow, and twice plunges away at the sight of his
enemy into the deep water. The third time he comes sway-
ing in, his yellow side gleaming and his mouth open ; and,
the next moment, Tom scoops him out on to the grass, with a
“whoop” that might have been heard at the house. a

“ Two-pounder, if he’s an ounce,” says Tom, as he gives him
the coup de grace, and lays him ou} lovingly on the fresh
green sward.

‘Who amongst you, dear readers, can appreciate the intense
delight of grassing your first big fish after a nine month’s
fast? All first sensations have their special pleasure ; but
none can be named, in a small way, to beat this of the first
fish of the season. The first clean leg-hit for four in your
first match at Lord’s—the grating of the bows of your
racing-boat against the stern of the boat ahead in your first
race—the first half-mile of a burst from the cover side in
November, when the hounds in the field a-head may be
covered with a table-cloth, and no one but the huntsman and a
top sawyer or two lies between you and them—the first brief
after your call to the bar, if it comes within the year—the
sensations produced by these are the same in kind; but
cricket, boating, getting briefs, even hunting lose their edge
as time goes on. As to lady readers, it is impossible, pro-
bably, to give them an idea of the sensation in question.
Perhaps some may have experienced something of the kind
at their first balls, when they heard whispers and saw all eyes
turning their way, and knew that their dresses and gloves
THE RIVER SIDE. 403

fitted perfectly. But this joy can be felt but once in a life,
and the first fish comes back as fresh as ever, or ought to
come, if all men had their rights, once in a season. So, good
luck to the gentle craft, and its professors, and may the Fates
send us much into their company! The trout-fisher, like the
landscape-painter, haunts the loveliest places of the earth,

and haunts them alone. Solitude, nature, and his own “

thoughts—he must be on the best terms with all of these ;
and he who can take kindly the largest allowance of these
is likely to be the kindliest and truest with his fellow-
men. ‘

Tom had splendid sport that summer morning, As the
great sun rose higher, the light morning breeze, which had
curled the water, died away; the light mist drew up into
light cloud, and the light cloud vanished, into cloudland, for
anything I know; and still the fish roso, strange to say,
though Tom felt it was an affair of minutes, and acted accord-
ingly. At eight o'clock, he was about a quarter of a mile
from the house, at a point in the stream of rare charms both
for the angler and the lover of gentle river beauty. The
main stream was crossed by a lock, formed of a solid brick
bridge with no parapets, under which the water rushed
through four small arches, each of which could be closed in
an instant by letting down a heavy wooden lock gate, fitted
in grooves on the upper side of the bridge. Such locks are
frequent in the west-country streams—even at long distances
from mills and millers, for whose behoof they were made in
old days, that the supply of water to the mill might bo easily
regulated. All pious anglers should bless the memories of
the old builders of them, for they are the very paradises of
the great trout, who frequent the old brickwork and timber
foundations. The water in its rush through the arches, had
of course worked for itself a deep hole, and then, some twenty
yards below, spread itself out in wanton joyous ripples and
eddies over a broad surface some fifty yards across, and dashed
away towards a little island some two hundred yards below,
or rolled itself slowly back towards the bridge again, up the
backwater by the side of the bank, os if longing for another
merry rush through one of those narrow arches. The island
below was crowned with splendid alders, willows forty feet
high, which wept into the water, and two or three poplars ;
a rich mile of water meadow, with an occasional willow or
alder, lay gleaming beyond ; and the view was bounded by a
glorious wood, which crowned the gentle slope, at the foot of
which the river ran. Another considerable body of water,
which had been carried off above from the main stream to

pp2
» ’

*
404 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

flush the water meadows, rejoined its parent at this point ; it
came slowly down a broad artificial ditch running parallel
with the main stream ; and the narrow strip of land which
divided the two streams ended abruptly just below the lock,
forming a splendid point for bather or angler. Tom had
fixed on this pool as his bonne bouche, as a child keeps its
plums till the last, and stole over the bridge, stooping low to
gain the point above indicated. Having gained it, he glanced
round to be aware of the dwarf ash-trees and willows which
were scattered along the strip and might catch heedless
collars and spoil sport, when, lying lazily almost on the sur-
face where the backwater met the stream from the meadows,
‘he beheld the great grandfather of all trout—a fellow two
‘feet long and a foot in girth at the shoulders, just moving fin
enough to keep him from turning over on to his back. He
threw himself flat on the ground and crept away to the other
side of the strip ; the king-fish had not seen him ; and the
next moment Tom saw him suck in a bee, laden with his
morning’s load of honey, who touched the water unwarily
close to his nose. With a trembling hand, Tom took off his
tail fly, and, on his knees, substituted a governor ; then,
shortening his line after wetting his mimic bee in the pool
behind him, tossed it gently into the monster's very jaws.
For a moment the fish seemed scared, but, the next, conscious
in his strength, lifted his nose slowly to the surface and
sucked in the bait.

Tom struck gently, and then sprang to his feet. But the
Heavens had other work for the king-fish, who dived swiftly
under the bank; a slight jar followed, and Tom’s rod was
straight over his head, the line and scarce a yard of his trusty
gut collar dangling about his face. He seized this remnant
with horror and unsatisfied longing, and examined it with
care. Could he have overlooked any fraying which the gut
might have got in the morning’s work? No; he had gone
over every inch of it not five minutes before, as he neared
the pool. Besides, it was cut clean through, not a trace of
bruise or fray about it. How could it have happened? He
went to the spot and looked into the water ; it was slightly
discoloured, and he could not see the bottom. He threw his
fishing coat off, rolled up the sleeve of his flannel shirt, and,
lying on his side, felt about the bank and tried to reach the
bottom, but couldn’t. “So, hearing the half-hour bell ring, he
deferred further inquiry, and stripped in silent disgust for
a plunge in the pool. ‘ Three times he hurled himself into the
delicious rush of the cold chalk stream, with that utter
abandon in which man, whose bones are brittle, can only
THE RIVER SIDE. 405

indulge when there are six or seven feet of water between
him and mother earth ; and, letting the stream bear him
away at its own sweet will to the shallows below, struck up
again through the rush and the roar to his plunging place.
Then, slowly and luxuriously dressing, he lit his short pipe
—companion of meditation—and began to ruminate on the
escape of the king-fish, What could have cut his collar?
The more he thought the less he could make it out. When
suddenly he was aware of the keeper on his way back to the
house for orders and breakfast.

“What sport, six?”

“Pretty fair,” said Tom, carelessly, lugging five plump
speckled fellows, weighing some seven and a half pounds,
out of his creel, and laying them out for the keeper’s inspec-
tion.

“Well, they be in prime order, sir, durely,” says the
keeper, handling them; “they allus gets mortal thick
across the shoulders while the May-fly be on Lose any
sir?”

“T put in some little ones up above, and lost one screamer
just up the back ditch there. He must have been a four-
pounder, and went off, and be hanged to him, with two yards
of my collar and a couple of first-rate flies. How on earth he
got off I can’t tell!” and he went on to unfold the particulars
of the short struggle.

The keeper could hardly keep down a grin. ‘Ah, sir,”
said he, “I thinks I knows what spwiled your sport. You
owes it all to that chap as I was a-telling you of, or my
name's not Willum Goddard ;” and then, fishing the lock-
pole with a hook at the end of it out of the rushes, he began
groping under the bank, and presently hauled up a sort of
infernal machine, consisting of a heavy lump of wood, a yard
or so long, in which were carefully inserted the blades of four
or five old knives and razors, while a crop of rusty jagged
nails filled up the spare space.

Tom looked at it in wonder. ‘ What devil's work have
you got hold of there?” he said at last.

“ Bless you, sir,” said the keeper, “’tis only our shove-net
traps as I were a-telling you of. I keeps hard upon a dozen
on.’em, and shifts em about in the likeliest holes ; and I takes
care to let the men as is about the water meadows see me
a-sharpening on’em up a bit, wi’ a file, now and again. And,
since master gev me orders to put ’em in, I don’t think they
tries that game on not once a month.”

“Well, but where do you and your master expect to go to
if you set such things as those about?” said Tom, looking
406 . TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

serious. “ Why, you'll be cutting some fellow’s hand or foot
half off one of these days. Suppose I’d waded up the bank
to see what had become of my cast?”

. «Lor, sir, I never thought o’ that,” said the keeper, look-
ing sheepish, and lifting the back of his short hat off his head
to make room for-a scratch ; “ but,” added ‘he, turning the
subject, “if you wants to keep thay artful wosbirds off the
water, you must frighten ’em wi’ summat out o’ the way.
Drattle ‘em, I knows they puts me to my wit's-end; but
you'd never ’a had five such fish as them afore breakfast, sir,
if we didn’t stake the waters.”

“Well, and I don’t want ’em, if I can’t get ’em without.
Tl tell you what it is, keeper, this razor business is going a
bit too far; men ain’t to be maimed for liking a bit of sport.
You set spring-guns in the woods, and you know what that
came to. Why’ don’t you, or one of your watchers, stop
out here at night, and catch the fellows, like men?”

“ Why, you see, sir, master don’t allow me but one watcher,
and he’s mortal feared o’ the water, he be, specially o’ nights.
He’d sooner by half stop up in the’ woods. Daddy Collins
(that’s an old woman as lives on the heath, sir, and a bad
sort she be, too) well, she told he once, when"he wouldn't
gee her some bacchy as he’d got, and she'd a mind to, as he'd
fall twice into the water for once as he’d get out ; and th’ poor
chap ever since can’t think but what he'll be drownded. And
there’s queer sights and sounds by the river o’ nights, too,
I ’ool say, sir, let alone the white mist, as makes everything
look unket, and gives a chap the rheumatics,”

“Well, but you ain’t afraid of ghosts and rheumatism ?”

“No, I don’t know as I be, sir. But then, there’s the
pheasants a-breedin’, and there's four brood of flappers in the
withey bed, and a sight of young hares in the spinneys, I
be hard put to to mind it all.” ,

_ “TI daresay you are,” said Tom, putting on his coat, and
shouldering his rod ; “I’ve a good mind to take a turn at it
myself, to help you, if you'll only drop those razors.”

“I wishes you would, sir,” said the keeper, from behind ;
‘if genl’men ’d sometimes take a watch at nights, they'd find
out as keepers hadn’t all fair-weather work, I’ll warrant, if
they’re to keep a good head o’ game about a place. "Taint all
popping off guns, and lunching under hayricks, I can tell
?em—no, nor half on it.” :

“Where do you think, now, this fellow we were talking
of sells his fish 4” said Tom, after a minute’s thought.

“Mostly at Reading Market, I hears tell, sir. There’s
the guard of the mail, ag goes by the cross-roads three days
THE NIGHT WATOH. . 407

a week, he wur a rare poaching chap hisself down in the
west afore he got his place along of his bugle-playing.
They do say as he’s open to any gaine, he is from a buck
to a snipe, and drives a trade all down the road with the
country chaps.” ;

“What day is Reading Market?”

“Tuesdays and Saturdays, sir.”

“ And what time does the mail go by 9” ae

“ Six o'clock in the morning, sir, at the cross-roads.”

“ And they’re three miles off, across the fields ?”

“Thereabouts, sir. I reckons it about a forty minutes’
stretch, and no time lost.”

“There'll be no more big fish caught on the fly to-day,”
said Tom, after a minute's silence, as they neared the house. :
, he wind had fallen dead, and not a spot of cloud in the
sky.

“Not afore nightfall, I think, sir;” and the keeper dis-
appeared towards the offices.

 

‘ CHAPTER XXXVIL
THE NIGHT WATCH.

“You may do as you please, but I'm going to see it out.”

“No, but I say, do come along; that’s a good fellow.”

“Not I; why, we've only just come out. Didn't you
hear? Wurley dared me to do a night’s watching, and I said
I meant to do it.” ‘

“Yes; so did I. But we can change our minds. What's
the good of having a mind if you can’t change it! at devrepae
moc pportides copwrepar—isn't that good Greek and good
sense ?”

“T don’t see it. They'll only laugh and sneer if we go
back now.” ey

“ Théy’ll, laugh at us twice as much if we don’t. Fancy!
they're just beginning pool now on that stunning . table,
Come along, Brown ; don’t miss your chance. We shall be
sure to divide the pools, as we've missed the claret. Cool
hands and cool heads, you know! Green on brown, pink
your player in hand! That’s a good deal pleasanter than
squatting here all night on the damp grass.”

“ Very likely.” ‘ x

“But you won't? Now, do be reasonable. Will you
come if I stop with you another half-hour ?” ;

“No.”
408 TOM. BROWN AT OXFORD.

“An hour then? Say till ten o'clock?”

“Tf I went at all, I would go at once.”

“Then you won't come?”

“ No.”

“Tl bet you a sovereign you never see a poacher, and
then how sold you will be in the morning! It will be much
worse coming in to breakfast with empty hands and a cold in
the head, than going in now. They will chaff then, I grant

ou.” :

“Well, then, they may chaff and be hanged, for I sha’n’t
go in now.”

Tom’s interlocutor put his hands in the pockets of his
heather mixture shooting-coat, and took a turn or two of some
dozen yards, backwards and forwards, above the place where
our hero was sitting. He didn’t like going in and facing the
pool-players by himself; so he stopped once more and re-
opened the conversation.

“What do you want to do by watching all night, Brown ?”

“To show the keeper and those fellows indoors that I mean
what I say. I said I'd do it, and I will.”

“You don’t want to catch a poacher, then?”

“T don’t much care: I'll catch one if he comes in my way
—or try it on, at any rate.” ;

“T say, Brown, I like that; as if you don’t poach yourself.
Why, I remember when the Whiteham keeper spent the best
part of a week outside the college gates, on the look-out for
you and Drysdale and some other fellows.”

“What has that to do with it?”

. “Why, you ought to have more fellow-feeling. I suppose
you go on the principle of set a thief to catch a thief?”

Tom made no answer, and his companion went on—

“Come along now, like a good fellow. If you'll come
“a ae we can come out again all fresh, when the rest go to

e

“Not we. I sha’n’t go in. But you can come out again,
if you like ; you'll find me hereabouts.” ,

Tho man in the heather mixture had now shot his last bolt,
and took himself off to the house, leaving Tom by the river
side, How they got there may be told in a few words. After
his morning’s fishing, and conversation with the keeper, he
had gone in full of his subject, and propounded it at the
breakfast table. His strictures on the knife and razor busi-
ness produced a rather warm discussion, which merged in the
question whether a keeper’s life was a hard one, till some-
thing was said implying that Wurley’s men were over-worked.
The master took this in high dudgeon, and words ran high.

-
2
THE NIGHT WATOH,. 409

In the discussion Tom remarked (apropos of night-work) that
he would never ask another man to do what he would not do
himself; which sentiment was endorsed by, amongst others,
the man in the heather mixture. The host had retorted,
that they had better in that case try it themselves; which
remark had the effect of making Tom resolve to cut short his
visit, and in the meantime had brought him and his ally to
the river side on the night in question.

The first hour, as we have seen, had been enough for the
ally ; and so Tom was left in company with a plaid, a stick,
and a pipe, to spend the night by himself.

It was by no means the first night he had spent in the
open air, and promised to be a pleasant one for camping
out. It was almost the longest day in the year, and the
weather was magnificent, There was yet an hour of daylight,
and the place he had chosen was just the right one for enjoy-
ing the evening.

He was sitting under one of a clump of huge old alders,
growing on the thin strip of land already noticed, which
divided the main stream from the deep artificial ditch which
fed the water-meadows. On his left the emerald-green
meadows stretched away till they met the inclosed corn-lend.
On his right ran the main stream, some fifty feet in breadth
at this point ; on the opposite side of which was a rough piece
of ground, half withey-bed, half copse, with a rank growth of
rushes at the water’s edge. These were the chosen haunts of
the moor-hen and water-rat, whose tracks could be seen by
dozens, like small open doorways, looking out on to the river,
through which ran mysterious little paths into the rush-
wilderness beyond.

The sun was now going down behind the copse, through
which his beams came aslant, chequered and mellow. The
stream ran dimpling down by him, sleepily swaying the masses
of weed, under the surface and on the surface ; ond the trout
rose under the banks, as some moth or gnat or gleaming beetle
fell into the stream ; here and there one more frolicsome than
his brethren would throw himself joyously into the air. The
swifts rushed close by him, in companies of five or six, and
wheeled, and screamed, and dashed away again, skimming
along the water, baffling his eye as he tried to follow their
flight. Two kingfishers shot suddenly up on to their supper
station, on a stunted willow stump, some twenty yards below ,
him, and sat there in the glory of their blue backs and cloudy
red waistcoats, watching with long sagacious beaks pointed, to
the water beneath, and every now and then dropping like
flashes of light into the stream, and rising again, with what
410 _ TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

seemed one motion, to their perches. A heron or two were
fishing about the meadows; and he watched them stalking
about in their sober quaker coats, or rising on slow heavy
wing, and lumbering away home with a weird cry. He heard
the strong pinions of the wood pigeon in the air, and then
from the trees above his head came the soft call, “Take-two-
cow-Taffy, take-two-cow-Taffy,” with which that fair and false
bird is said to have beguiled the hapless Welchman to the
‘gallows. Presently, as he lay motionless, the timid and
.graceful little water-hens peered out from their doors in the
tushes opposite, and, seeing no cause for fear, stepped daintily
into the water, and were suddenly surrounded by little bundles
of black soft down, which went paddling about in and out of
the weeds, encouraged by the occasional sharp, clear, parental
.“ keck—keck,” and merry little dabchicks popped up in mid-
stream, and looked round, and nodded at him, pert and voice-
less, and dived again ; even old cunning water-rats sat up on
the bank with round black noses and gleaming eyes, or took
solemn swims out, and turned up their tails and disappeared
‘for his amusement, A comfortable low came at intervals from
the cattle, revelling in the abundant herbage. All living things
seemed to be disporting themselves, and enjoying, after their
kind, the last gleams of the sunset, which were making the
whole vault of heaven glow and shimmer ; and, as he watched
them, Tom blessed his stars as he contrasted the river-side with
the glare of lamps and the click of balls in the noisy pool-room.

Before it got dark he bethought him of making sure
of his position once more; matters might have changed since
he chose it before dinner. With all that he could extract
from the keeper, and his own experience in such matters, it
had taken him several hours’ hunting up and down the river
that afternoon before he had hit on a night-line. But he had -
persevered, knowing that this was the only safe evidence to
start from, and at last had found several, so cunningly set that
it was clear that it was a first-rate artist in the poaching line
against whom he had pitted himself. These lines must have
been laid almost under his nose on that very day, as the fresh-
ness of the baits proved. The one which he had selected to
watch by was under the bank, within a few yards of the
clump of alders where he was now sitting. There was no
satisfactory cover near the others ; so he had chosen this one,
where he would be perfectly concealed behind the nearest
trunk from any person who might come in due time to take
up the line. With this view, then, he got up, and, stepping
carefully on the thickest grass, where his foot would leave no
mark, went to the bank, and felt with the hook of his stick
‘
'
i

"THE NIGHT WATCH. 411

after the line. It was all right, and he returned to his old
seat.

And then the summer twilight came on, and the birds dis-
appeared, and the hush of night settled down on river, and
copse, and meadow—cool and gehtle summer twilight after
the hot bright day. He welcomed it too, as it folded up the
landscape, and the trees lost their outline, and settled into
soft black masses rising here and there out of the white mist, -
which seemed to have crept up to within a few yards all round
him unawares. There was no sound now but the gentle
murmur of the water, and an occasional rustle of reeds, or of
the leaves over his head, as a stray wandering puff of air
passed through them on its way home to bed. Nothing to
listen to, and nothing to look at; for the moon had not risen,
and the light mist hid everything except a star or two right
up above him. So, the outside world having left him for the
present, he was turned inwards on himself. BY ee WE

This was all very well at first ; and he wrapped the plaid
round his shoulders and leant against his tree, and indulged
in a little self-gratulation. There was something of strangeness
and adventure in his solitary night-watch, which had its
charm for a youngster of twenty-one; and the consciousness
of not running from his word, of doing what he had said he
would do, while others shirked and broke down, was decidedly
pleasant. +

But this satisfaction did not last very long, and the night
began to get a little wearisome, and too cool to be quite com-
fortable. By degrees doubts as to the wisdom of his self-
imposed task crept into his head. He dismissed them for a
time by turning his thoughts to other matters. The neigh-
bourhood of Englebourn, some two miles up above him,
reminded him of the previous summer; and he wondered
how he should get on with his cousin when they met. He
should probably see her the next day, for ho would lose no
time in calling. Would sho receive him well? ‘Would sho
have much to tell him about Mary? a

Hoe had been more hopeful on this subject of late, but the
loneliness, the utter solitude and silence of his position, as he
sat there in the misty night, away from all human habitations,
was not favourable somehow to hopefulness. He found him-
self getting dreary and sombre in heart—more and more so
ag the minutes rolled on, and the silence and loneliness pressed
on him more and more heavily. He was surprised at his own
down-heartedness, and tried to remembet*how he had spent |
former nights so pleasantly out of doors. Ah, he had always
had a companion within call, and something to do—cray
t
412 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

fishing, bat fowling, or something of the kind! Sitting there
doing nothing, he fancied, must make it so heavy to-night.
By a strong effort of will he shook off the oppression. He
moved, and hummed a tune to break the silence; he got up
and walked up and down, lest it should again master him. If
wind, storm, pouring rain, anything to make sound or move-
ment, would but come !

But neither of them came, and there was little help in
sound or movement made by himself. Besides, it occurred
to him that much walking up and down might defeat the
object of his watch. No one would come near while he was
on the move; and he was probably making marks already
which might catch the eye of the setter of the night-lines at
some distance, if that cunning party waited for the morning
light, and might keep him away from the place altogether.

So he sat down again on his old seat, and leant hard against
the alder trunk, as though to steady himself, and keep all
troublesome thoughts well in front of him. In this attitude
of defence he reasoned with himself on the absurdity of
allowing himself to be depressed by the mere accidents of
place, and darkness, and silence ; but all the reasoning at his
command didn’t alter the fact. He felt the enemy advancing
again, and, casting about for help, fell back on the thought
that he was going through a task, holding to his word, doing
what he had said he would do; and this brought him some
relief for the moment. He fixed his mind steadily on this
task of: his; but alas, here again, in his very last stronghold,
the enemy began to turn his flank, and the position every
minute became more and more untenable.

He had of late fallen into a pestilent habit of cross-ques-
tioning himself on anything which he was about—setting up
himself like a cock at Shrovetide, and pelting himself with
inexorable “ whys?” and ‘‘wherefores?” A pestilent habit
truly he had found it, and one which left a man no peace of
his life—a relentless, sleepless habit, always ready to take
advantage of him, but never so viciously alert, that he re-
membered, as on this night,

And s0 this questioning self, which would never be denied
for long, began to examine him as to his proposed night’s
work. This precious task which he was so proud of going
through with, on the score of which he had been in his heart
crowing over others, because they had not taken it on them, -
or had let it drop, what then was the meaning of it?

“What was he out there for? What had he come out to
doi” They were awkward questions, He tried several
answers, and was driven from one to another till he was
THE NIGHT WATOH. 413

bound to admit that he was out there that night partly out
of pique, and partly out of pride: and that his object (next
to earning the pleasure of thinking himself a better man than
his neighbours) was, if so be, to catch a poacher. “To catch
a poacher ? at business had he to be catching poachers ?
Tf all poachers were to be caught, he would have to be caught
himself.” He had just had an unpleasant reminder of this
fact from him of the heather mixtures—a Parthian remark
which he had thrown over his shoulder as he went off, and
which had stuck. “But then,” Tom argued, “it was a very
different thing, his poaching—going out for a day’s lark
after game, which he didn’t care a straw for, but only for the
sport—and that of men making a trade of it, like the
man the keeper spoke of” ‘Why? How different? If
there were any difference, was it one in his favour?” Avoid-
ing this suggestion, he took up new ground. “ Poachers were
always the greatest blackguards in their neighbourhoods, pests
of society, and ought to be put down.” ‘ Possibly—at any
tate he had been one of the fraternity in his time, and was
scarcely the man to be casting stones at them.” “ But his
poaching had always been done thoughtlessly.” ‘“ How did
he know that others had worse motives 1”

And so he went on, tossing the matter backwards and
forwards in his mind, and getting more and more uncomfort-
able, and unable to answer to his own satisfaction the simple
question, “ What right have you to be out here on this
errand ?”

He got up e second time and walked up and down, but
with no better success than before. The change of position,
and exercise, did not help him out of his difficulties. And
now he got a step further. If he had no right to be there,
hadn’t he better go up to the house and say so, and go to bed
like the rest? No, his pride couldn't stand that. But, if
he couldn’t go in, he might turn into a barn or outhouse ;
nobody would be any the wiser then, and after all he was not
pledged to stop on one spot all night? It was a tempting
suggestion, and he was very near yielding to it ab once.
While ho wavered, a new set of thoughts came up to back it,
How, if he stayed there, and 2 gang of night-poachers came ?
He knew that many of them were desperate men. He had
no arms; what could he do against them? Nothing; but
he might be maimed for life in a night row which he had no
business to be in—murdered, perhaps. He stood still and
listened long and painfully. :

Every moment, as he listened, the silence mastered him
more and more, and his reason became more and more power-
414 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

less. , It was such a silence—a great illimitable, vague silence !
The silence of a deserted house, where he could at least have
felt that he was bounded somewhere, by wall, and floor, and
roof—where men must have lived and worked once, though
they might be there no longer—would have been nothing ; but
this silence of the huge, wide out-of-doors world, where there
was nothing but air and space around and above him, and the
ground beneath, it was getting irksome, intolerable, awful !
The great silence seemed to be saying to him, “You are
alone, alone, alone!” and he had never known before what
horror lurked in that thought, 7

Every moment that he stood still the spell grew stronger
on him, and yet he dared not move; and a strange, wild
feeling of fear—unmistakeable physical fear, which made his
heart beat and his limbs tremble—seized on him... He was
ready to cry out, to fall down, to run, and yet there he stood
listening, still and motionless.

The critical moment in all panics must come at last. A
wild and grewsome hissing and snoring, which seemed to come
from the air just over his head, made him start and spring
forward, and gave him the use of his limbs again at any rate,
though they would not have been worth much to him had
the ghost or hobgoblin appeared whom he half expected to
see the next moment. Then came a screech, which seemed to
flit along the rough meadow opposite, and come towards
him. He drew a long breath, for he knew that sound well
enough ; it was nothing after all but the owls.

The mere realized consciousness of the presence of some
living creatures, were they only owls, brought him to his
senses, And now the moon was well up, and the wayward
mist had cleared away, and he could catch glimpses of the
solemn birds every now and then, beating over the rough
meadow backwards and forwards, and over the shallow water,
as regularly as trained pointers.

He threw himself down again under his tree, and now
bethought himself of his pipe. Here was a companion which,
wonderful to say, he had not thought of before since the
night set in. He pulled it out, but paused before lighting,
Nothing was so likely to betray his whereabouts as tobacco.
True, but anything was better than such another fright as he
had had, “so here goes,” he thought, “if I keep off all the
poachers in Berkshire ;” and he accordingly lighted up, and,
with the help of his pipe, once more debated with himself the
question of beating a retreat.

After a sharp inward struggle, he concluded to stay and
see it out, He should despise himeclf, more than he cared
THE NIGHT WATCH. 415

to face, if he gave in now. If he left that spot before morn-
ing, the motive would be sheer cowardice. There might be
fifty other good reasons for going ; but, if ho went, Azs reason.
would be fear and nothing else. It might have been wrong
and foolish to come out ; it must be to goin now. “ Fear never
-made a man do aright action,” he summed up to himself ; “so
here I stop, come what may of it. I think I’ve seen the
worst of it now. I was in a real blue funk, and no mistake.
Let’s see, wasn’t I laughing this morning at the watcher who
didn’t like passing a night by the river? Well, ho has got
the laugh of me now, if he only knew it. I’ve learnt one
lesson to-night at any rate; I don’t think I shall ever be very
hard on cowards again.”

By the time he had finished his pipe, he was a man again,
and, moreover, notwithstanding the damp, began -to feel
sleepy, now that his mind was thoroughly made up, and his
nerves were quiet. So he made the best of his plaid, and
picked a softish place, and went off into a sort of dog-sleep,
which lasted at intervals through the short summer night.
A poor thin sort of sleep it was, in which he never altogether
lost his consciousness, and broken by short intervals of actual
wakefulness, but a blessed release from the self-questionings
and panics of the early night.

He woke at last with a shiver. It was colder than hoe had
yet felt it, and it seemed lighter. He stretched his half-torpid
limbs, and sat up. Yes, it was certainly getting light, for he
could just make out the figures on the face of his watch which
he pulled out. The dawn was almost upon him, and his
night watch was over. Nothing had come of it as yet, except
his fright, at which he could now laugh comfortably enough ;
probably nothing more might come of it after all, but
he had done the task he had set himself without flinching,
and that was a satisfaction. He wound up his watch, which
he had forgotten to do the night before, and then stood up,
and threw his damp plaid aside, and swung his arms across
his chest to restore circulation. The crescent moon was high
up in the sky, faint and white, and he could scarcely now
make out the stars, which were fading out as the glow in the
north-east got stronger and broader.

Forgetting for a moment the purpose of his vigil, he was
thinking of a long morning’s fishing, and had turned to pick
up his plaid and go off to the house for his fishing-rod,
when he thought he heard the sound of dry wood snapping.
He listened intently ; and the next moment it came again,
some way off, but plainly to be heard in the intense stillness
of the morning. Some living thing was moving down the
416 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

stream. Another moment’s listening, and he was convinced
that the sound came from a hedge some hundred yards below.

He had noticed the hedge before: the keeper had stopped
up a gap in it the day before, at the place where it came down
to the water, with some old hurdles and dry thorns. He drew
himeelf up behind his alder, looking out from behind it cauti.
ously towards the point from which the sound came. He could
just make out the hedge through the mist, but saw nothing.

But now the crackling began again, and he was sure that
a man was forcing his way over the keeper's barricade. A
moment afterwards he saw a figure drop from the hedge into
the slip in which he stood. He drew back his head hastily,
and his heart beat like a hammer as he waited the approach
of the stranger. In a few seconds the suspense was too much
for him, for again there was perfect silence. He peered out
a second time cautiously round the tree, and now he could
make out the figure of a man stooping by the water-side just
above the hedge, and drawing in a line. This was enough,
and he drew back again, and made himself small behind the
tree; now he was sure that the keeper's enemy, the man he
had come out to take, was here. His next halt would be at
the line which was set within a few yards of the place where
he stood. So the struggle which he had courted was come!
All his doubts of the night wrestled in his mind for a minute ;
but, forcing them down, he strung himself up for the encounter,
his whole frame trembling with excitement, and his blood
tingling through his veins as though it would burst them.
The next minute was as severe a trial of nerve as he had ever
been put to, and the sound of a stealthy tread on the grass just
below came to him as a relief. It stopped, and he heard the
man stoop, then came a stir in the water, and the flapping as
of a fish being landed.

Now was-his time! He sprang from behind the tree, and,
the next moment, was over the stooping figure of the poacher.
Before he could seize him the man sprang up, and grappled
‘with him. They had come to a tight lock at once, for the
poacher had risen so close under him that he could not catch
his collar and hold him off. Too close to strike, it was a des-
.perate trial of strength and bottom. :

Tom knew in a moment that he had his work cut out for
him. He felt the nervous power of the frame he had got
hold of as he-drove his chin into the poacher’s shoulder, and
arched his back, and strained every ‘muscle in his body to
force him backwards, but in vain. It was all he could do to
hold his own; but he felt that he might hold it yet, as they
staggered on the brink of the back ditch, stamping the grass
MARY IN MAYFAIR, 417

and marsh marigolds into the ground, and drawing deep breath
through their set teeth. A slip, a false foot-hold, a failing
muscle, and it would be over; down they must go—who
would be uppermost ?

The poacher trod on a soft place and Tom felt it, and,
throwing himself forward, was reckoning on victory, but
reckoning without his host. For, recovering himself with a
twist of the body which brought them still closer together, the
poacher locked his leg behind Tom’s, in a crook which brought
the wrestlings of his boyhood into his head with a flash, as
they tottered for another moment, and then losing balance
went headlong over with a heavy plunge and splash into the
deep back ditch, locked tight in each other’s arms.

The cold water closed over them, and for a moment Tom
held as tight as ever. Under or above the surface it was all
the same, he couldn’t give in first. But a gulp of water, and
the singing in his ears, and a feeling of choking, brought him
to his senses, helped, too, by the thought of his mother, and
Mary, and love of the pleasant world up above. The folly
and uselessness of being drowned in a ditch on a point of
honour stood out before him as clearly as if he had beer
thinking of nothing else all his life ; and he let go his hold—
much relieved to find that his companion of the bath seemed
equally willing to be quit of him—and struggled to the surface,
and seized the bank, gasping and exhausted.

His first thought was to turn round and look for his ad-
versary. The poacher was by the bank too, a few feet from
him. His cap had fallen off in the struggle, and, all chance
of concealment being over, he too had turned to face the
matter out, and their eyes met.

“ Good God! Harry ! is it you?”

Harry Winburn answered nothing ; and the two dragged
their feet out of the soft muddy bottom, and scrambled on to
the bank, and then with a sort of common instinct sat down,
dripping and foolish, each on the place he had reached, and
looked at one another. Probably two more thoroughly
bewildered lieges of her Majesty were not at that moment
facing one another in any corner of the United Kingdom.

 

CHAPTER XXXVIIL
MARY IN MAYFAIR,

On the night which our hero spent by the side of the river,
with the results detailed in the last chapter, there was a great
EE
418 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

pall in Brook-street, Mayfair. It was the height of the season;
and, of course, balls, concerts, and parties of all kinds were
going on in all parts of the Great Babylon, but the entertain-
ment in question was the event of that evening. Persons
behind the scenes would have told you at once, had you
happened to meet them, and enquire on the subject during
the previous ten days, that Brook-street was the place in which
everybody who went anywhere ought to spend some hours
between eleven and three on this particular evening. If you
did not happen to be going there, you had better stay quietly
at your club, or your home, and not speak of your engagements
for that night.

A great awning had sprung up in the course of tho day
over the pavement in front of the door, and as the evening
closed in, tired lawyers and merchants, on their return from
the City, and the riders and drivers on their way home from
the Park, might have seen Holland’s men laying red drugget
over the pavement, and Gunter’s carts coming and going,
and the police “moving on” the street-boys and servant-
maids, and other curious members of the masses, who paused
to stare at the preparations.

Then came the lighting up of the rooms, and the blaze of
pure white light from the uncurtained ballroom windows
spread into the street, and the musicians passed in with their
instruments. Then, after a short pause, the carriages of a
few intimate friends, who came early at the hostess’s express
desire, began to drive up, and the Hansom cabs of the con-
temporaries of the eldest son, from which issued guardsmen
and Foreign-office men, and other dancing-youth of the most
approved description. Then the crowd collected again round
the door—a sadder crowd now to the eye of any ono who
has time to look at it; with sallow, haggard-looking men
here and there on the skirts of it, and tawdry women joking
and pushing to the front, through the powdered footmen,
and linkmen in red waistcoats, already clamorous and redolent
of gin and beer, and scarcely kept back by the half-dozen
constables of the A division, told off for the special duty of
attending and keeping order on so important an occasion.

Then comes a rush of carriages, and by eleven o’clock the
line stretches away half round Grosvenor Square, and moves
at a foot’s-pace towards the lights, and the music, and the
shouting street. In the middle of the line is the comfortable
chariot of our friend Mr. Porter—the corners occupied by
himself and his wife, while Miss Mary sits well forward
between them, her white muslin dress looped up with sprigs
of heather spread delicately on either side over their knees,
MARY IN MAYFAIR. 419

and herself in a pleasant tremor of impatience and excite-
ment,

“How very slow Robert is to-day, mamma! wo shall never
get to the house.”

“ He cannot get on faster, my dear. The carriages in front
of us must set down, you know.”

“But I wish they would be quicker. I wonder whether
we shall know many people? Do you think I shall get
partners?”

Not waiting for her mother’s reply, she went on to name
some of her acquaintance who she knew would be there, and
bewailing the hard fate which was keeping her out of the
first dances. Mary’s excitement and impatience were natural
enough. The ball was not like most balls, It was a great
battle in the midst of the skirmishes of the season, and she
felt the greatness of the occasion.

Mr. and Mrs. Porter had for years past dropped into a
quict sort of dinner-giving life, in which they saw few but
thoir own friends and contemporaries. They genorally left
London before the season was at its height, and had altogether
fallen out of the ball-giving and party-going world. Mary’s
coming out had changed their way of life. For her sake
they had spent the winter at Rome, and, now that they were
at home again, were picking up the threads of old acquaint-
ance, and encountering the disagreeables of a return into
habits long disused and almost forgotten. ‘Tho giver of the
ball was a stirring man in political life, rich, clever, well-
connected, and much sought after. He was an old school-
fellow of Mr. Porter’s, and their intimacy had never been
wholly laid aside, nowithstanding the severance of their
paths in life. Wow that Mary must be taken out, the Brook.
street house was one of the first to which the Porters turned,
and the invitation ‘to this ball was one of the first conse.
quences.

If the truth must be told, neither her father or mother
were in sympathy with Mary as they gradually neared tho
place of setting down, and would far rather have been going
to a much less imposing place, where they could have driven
up at once to the door, and would not have been made un-
comfortable by the shoutings of their names from servant to
servant. However, after the first plunge, when they had
made their bows to their kind and smiling hostess, and had
passed on into the already well-filled rooms, their shyness
began to wear off, and they could in some sort enjoy the
beauty of the sight from a quiet corner. They were not long
troubled with Miss Mary. She had not been in the ball-

pEQ
420 ° * TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

room two minutes before the eldest son of the house had
found her out and engaged her for the next waltz. They
had met several times already, and were on the best terms ;
and the freshness and brightness of her look and manner,
and the evident enjoyment of her partner, as they laughed
and talked together in the intervals of the dance, soon at-
tracted the attention of the young men, who began to ask
one another, “ Who is Norman dancing with?” and to ejacu-
late with various strength, according to their several tempera-
ments, as to her face, and figure, and dress.

As they were returning towards Mrs. Porter, Norman was
pulled by the sleeve more than once, and begged to be allowed
to introduce first one and then another of his friends.

Mary gave herself up to the fascination of the scene. She
had never been in rooms so perfectly lighted, with such a
floor, such exquisite music, and so many pretty and well-bred
looking people, and she gave herself up to enjoy it with all
her heart and soul, and danced and laughed and talked her-
self into the good graces of partner after partner, till she
began to attract the notice of some of the ill-natured people
who are to be found in every room, and who cannot pardon
the pure, and buoyant, and unsuspecting mirth which carries
away all but themselves in its bright stream. So Mary
passed on from one partner to another, with whom we have
no concern, until at last a young lieutenant in the guards,
who had just finished his second dance with her, led up a
friend whom he begged to introduce. ‘“ Miss Porter—Mr.
St. Cloud ;” and then, after the usual preliminaries, Mary
left her mother’s side again and stood up by the side of her
new partner.

“Tt is your first season I believe, Miss Porter ?”

“Yes, my first in London.”

“T thought so; and you have only just come to town ?”

“We came back from Rome six weeks ago, and have been
in town ever since.”

“But I am sure I have not seen you anywhere this season
until to-night. You have not been out much yet?”

“Yes, indeed. Papa and mamma are very good-natured,
and go whenever we are asked to a ball, as I am fond of
dancing.”

“ How very odd! and yet I am quite sure I should have
remembered it if we had met befcre in town this year.”

“Ts it so very odd?” asked Mary, laughing: “ London is
a very large place. It seems very natural that two people
should be able to live in it for a long time without meeting.”

“Indeed, you are quite mistaken. You will find out very
MARY IN MAYFAIR. . 421

soon how small London is—at least how smal] society is ;
and you will get to know every face quite well—I mean the
face of every one in society.”

“You must have a wonderful memory !”

“Yes, I have a good memory for faces, and, by the way, I
am sure I have seen you before; but not in town, and I
cannot remember where. But it is not at all necessary to have
a memory to know everybody in society by sight; you meet
every night almost; and altogether there are only two or
three hundred faces to remember. And then there is some-
thing in the look of people, and the way they come into a
room or stand about, which tells you at once whether they
are amongst those whom you need trouble yourself about.”

“Well, I cannot understand it. I seem to be in a whirl
of faces, and can hardly ever remember any of them.”

“You will soon get used to it. By the end of the season
you will see that I am right. And you ought to make a
study of it, or you will never feel at home in London.”

“T must make good use of my time then. I suppose I
ought to know everybody here, for instance ?”

“ Almost everybody.”

“ And I really do not know the names of a dozen people.”

“Will you let me give you a lesson ?”

“Oh, yes; I shall be much obliged.”

“Then let us stand here, and we will take them as they
pass to the supper-room.”

So they stood near the door-way of the ball-room, and he
ran on, exchanging constant nods and remarks with tho
passers-by, as the stream flowed to and from the ices and
cup, and then rattling on to his partner with the names and
short sketches of the characters and peculiarities of his large
acquaintance. Mary was very much amused, and had no
time to notice the ill-nature of most of his remarks ; and he
had the wit to keep within what he considered the most inno-
cent bounds.

“There, you know him of course,” he said, as an elderly
soldier-like looking man with a star passed them.

“Yes ; at least, I mean I know him by sight. I saw him
at the Commemoration at Oxford last year. They gave him
an honorary degree on his return from India.”

“ At Oxford! Were you at the Grand Commemoration,
then ?”

“Yes. The Commemoration Ball was the first public ball
I was ever at.”

“Ah! that explains it all. I must have seen you there.
I told you we had met before. I was perfectly sure of it.”
422 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“What! wero you there, then ?”

“Yes. I had the honour of being present at your first
ball, you see.” :

“ But how curious that you should remember me !”

“Do you really think so? Surely there are some faces
which, once seen, one can never forget.”

“T am so glad that you know dear Oxford.”

“T know it too well, perhaps, to share your enthusiasm.”

“ How do you mean ?”

“T spent nearly three years there.”

“What, were you at Oxford last year ?”

“Yes, I left before Commemoration : but I went up for
the gaieties, and I am glad of it, as I shall have one pleasant
memory of the place now.”

“Oh, I wonder you don’t love it! But what college were
you of ?”

‘“Why, you talk like a graduate. I was of St. Ambrose.”

“St. Ambrose! That is my college |”

“Tndeed! I-wish wo had been in residenco at the same
time.” ‘

“T mean that we almost lived thore at the Commomora-
tion.”

“ Have you any relation there, then ?”

“No, not a relation, only a distant connexion.”

“ May I ask his name ?”

“Brown, Did you know him ?”

“Yes. We were not in the same set. He was a boating
man, I think?”

She felt that he was watching her narrowly now, and had
great difficulty in keeping herself reasonably composed. As
it was she could not help showing a little that she felt em-
barrassed, and looked down ; and changed colour slightly,
busying herself with her bouquet. She longed to continue
fhe conversation, but somehow the manner of her partner
«ept her from doing so. She resolved to recur to the subject
earelessly, if they met again, when she knew him better.
The fact of his having been at St. Ambrose made her wish to
know him better, and gave him a good start in her favour.
But for the moment she felt that she must change the subject;
so, looking up, she fixed on the first people who happened to
be passing, and asked who they were.

“Oh, nobody, constituents probably, or something of that
sort.”

“T don’t understand.”

“Why, you see, we are in a political house to-night. So
you may set down the people whom nobody knows, as trouble-
MARY IN MAYFAIR. 423

some ten-pounders, or that kind of thing, who would be dis-
agreeable at the next election, if they were not asked.”

“Then you do not include them in society ?”

“ By no manner of means.”

“And I need not take the trouble to remember their
faces ?”

“Of course not. There is a sediment of rubbish at almost
overy houso. At the parties hore it is political rubbish. To-
morrow night, at Lady Aubrey’s—you will be there, I hope?”

“No, we do not know her.”

“T am sorry for that. Well, there we shall have the
scientific rubbish ; and at other houses you see queer artists,
and writing people. In fact, it is the rarest thing in the
world to get a party where there is nothing of the kind, and,
after all, it is rather amusing to watch the habits of the
different species.”

“Well, to me the rubbish, as you call it, seems much like
the rest, Iam sure those people were ladies and gentlemen.”

“Very likely,” he said, lifting his eyebrows ; “but you
may see at a glance that they have not the air of society.
Here again, look yourself. You can see that these are con-
stituents.”

To the horror of St. Cloud, the advancing constituents
made straight for his partner.

“Mary, my dear!” exclaimed the lady, “where have you
been? We have lost you ever since the last dance.”

“T have been standing here, mamma,” she said; and then,
slipping from her late partner’s arm, she made a demure little
bow, and passed into the ball-room with her father and
mother.

St. Cloud bit his lip, and swore at himself under his breath
as he looked after them. “What an infernal idiot I must
have been not to know that her people would be sure to turn
out something of that sort!” thought he. “ By Jove, I'll go
after them, and set myself right before tho little minx has time
to think it over!” ILe took a step or two towards the ball-
room, but then thought better of it, or his courage failed
him. At any rate, he turned round again, and sought the
refreshment-room, where he joined a knot of young gentlemen
indulging in delicate little raised pies and salads, and liberal
potations of iced claret or champagne cup. Amongst them
was the guardsman who had introduced him to Mary, and
who received him, a8 he came up, with—

“Well, St. Cloud, I hope you are alive to your obligations
to me.”

“For shunting your late partner on to me? Yes, quite.”
424 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“You be hanged!” replied the guardsman; “you may
pretend what you please now, but you wouldn’t let me alone
till I had introduced you.”

“Are you talking about the girl in white muslin with fern
leaves in her hair ?” asked another.

“Yes, what do you think of her?”

“Devilish taking, I think. I say, can’t you introduce me?
They say she has tin.”

“T can’t say I think much of her looks,” said St. Cloud,
acting up to his principle of telling a lie sooner than let his
real thoughts be seen.

“Don’t you?” said the guardsman. “Well, I like her
form better than anything out this year. Such a clean
stepper! ‘You should just dance with her.”

And go they, went on criticizing Mary and others of their
partners, exactly as they would have talked of a stud of racers,
till they found themselves sufficiently refreshed to encounter
new labours, and broke up returning in twos and threes to-
wards the ball-room.

St. Cloud attached himself to the guardsman, and returned
to tho charge.

“You seem hit by that girl,” he began ;—“‘ have you known
her long?”

‘“‘ About a week—I met her once before to-night.”

“Do you know her people? Who is her father 4”

“A plain-headed old party—you wouldn’t think it to look
at her—but I hear he is very solvent.”

“ Any sons %”

“Don’t know. I like your talking of my being hit, St.
Cloud. There she is; I shall go and try for another waltz.”

The guardsman was successful, and carried off Mary from
her father and mother, who were standing together watching
the dancing. St. Cloud, after looking them well over, sought
out the hostess, and begged to be introduced to Mr. and Mrs.
Porter, gleaning, at the same time, some particulars of who
they were. The introduction was effected in a minute, the
lady of the house being glad to get any one to talk to the
Porters, who were almost strangers amongst her other guests.
She managed, before leaving them, to whisper to Mrs. Porter
that he was a young man of excellent connexions,

St. Cloud made the most of his time. He exerted himself
to the utmost to please, and, being fluent of speech, and
thoroughly satisfied with himself, had no shyness or awkward-
ness to get over, and jumped at once into the good graces of
Mary’s parents. When she returned after the waltz, she
found him, to her no small astonishment, deep in conversa-

i
MARY IN MAYFAIR, 425

tion with her mother, who was listening with a pleased expres-
sion to his small talk. He pretended not to see her at first,
and then begged Mrs. Porter to introduce him formally to
her daughter, though he had already had the honour of
dancing with her.

Mary put on her shortest and coldest manner, and thought
she had never heard of such impertinence. That he should
be there talking so familiarly to her mother aftcr the slip he
had made to her was almost too much even for her temper.
But she went off for another dance, and again returned and
found him still there; this time entertaining Mr. Porter with
political gossip. The unfavourable impression began to wear
off, and she soon resolved not to make up her mind about
him without some further knowledge.

In due course he asked her to dance again, and they stood
up in a quadrille. She stood by him looking straight before
her, and perfectly silent, wondering how he would open the
conversation. He did not leave her long in suspense.

“What charming people your father and mother are, Miss
Porter!” he said ; “ I am so glad to have been introduced to
them.”

“Indeed! You are very kind. We ought to be flattered
by your study of us, and I am sure I hope you will find it
amusing.” :

St. Cloud was a little embarrassed by the rejoinder, and
was not sorry at the moment to find himself called upon to
perform the second figure. By the time he was at her side
again ho had recovered himself.

“You can’t understand what a pleasure it is to meet some
one with a little freshness”—he paused to think how he
should end his sentence.

“Who has not the air of society,” she suggested. Yes, I
quite understand.”

“Indeed, you quite mistake me. Surely, you have not
taken seriously the nonsense I was talking just now ?”

“Tam a constituent, you know—I don’t understand how
to take the talk of society.” ,

“ Oh, I see, then, that you are angry at my joke, and wilk
not believe that I knew your father perfectly by sight. You
really cannot seriously fancy that I was alluding to any one
connected with you ;” and then he proceeded to retail the
particulars he had picked up from the lady of’ the house, as
if they had been familiar to him for years, and to Jaunch out
again into praises of her father and mother. Mary looked
straight up in his face, and, though he did not meet her eye,
his manner was so composed, that she began to doubt hor
426 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

own senses, and then ho suddenly changed the subject to
Oxford and the Commemoration, and by the end of the set
could flatter himself that he had quite dispelled the cloud
which had looked so threatening. .

Mary had a great success that evening. She danced every
dance, and might have had two or three partners at once, if
they would have been of any use to her. When, at last,
Mr. Porter insisted that he would keep his horses no longer,
St. Cloud and the guardsman accompanied her to the door,
and were assiduous in the cloak-room, Young men are pretty
much like a drove of sheep; any one who takes a decided
line on certain matters, is sure to lead all the rest. The
guardsman left the ball in the firm belief, as he himself ex-
pressed it, that Mary “had done his business for life ;” and,
being quite above concealment, persisted in singing her
praises over his cigar at the club, to which many of the
dancers adjourned ; and from that night she became the
fashion with the set in which St. Cloud lived. The more
enterprising of them, he amongst the foremost, were soon
intimate in Mr, Porter’s house, and spoke well of his dinners.
Mr. Porter changed his hour of riding in the park at their
suggestion, and now he and his daughter were always sure of
companions. Invitations multiplied, for Mary’s success was
so decided, that she floated her astonished parents into a
whirl of balls and breakfasts. Mr. Porter and his wife
were flattered themselves, and pleased to see their daughter
admired and enjoying herself; and in the next six weeks
Mary had the opportunity of getting all the good and the
bad which a girl of eighteen can extract from a London
season,

The test was a severe one. Two months of constant ex-
citement, of pleasure-seeking pure and simple, will not leave
people just as they found them; and Mary’s habits, and
thoughts, and ways of looking at and judging of people and
things, were much changed by the time that the gay world
melted away from Mayfair and Belgravia, and it was time
for all respectable people to pull down the blinds and shut
the shutters of their town houses.

o

 

CHAPTER XXXIX,

WHAT OAME OF THE NIGHT-WATOH,

Tax last knot of the dancers came out of the club, and
were strolling up St. James's Street, and stopping to chaff the -
itinerant coffee vendor, who was preparing his stand at the
WHAT CAME OF THE NIGH'T-WATCH. 427

corner of Piccadilly for his early customers, just about the
time that Tom was beginning to rouse himself under the
alder-tree, and stretch his stiffened limbs, and sniff the morn-
ing air. By the time the guardsman had let himself into
his lodgings in Mount Street, our hero had undergone his
unlooked for bath, and was sitting in a state of utter be-
wilderment as to what was next to be said or done, dripping
and disconcorted, opposite to the equally dripping, and, to
all appearance, equally disconcerted, poacher.

At first he did not look higher than his antagonist’s boots
and gaiters, and spent a few seconds by the way in consider-
ing whether the arrangement of nails on the bottom of
Harry’s boots was better than his own. He settled that it
must be better for wading on slippery stones, and that he
would adopt it, and then passed on to wonder whether
Harry’s boots were as full of water as his own, and whether
corduroys, wet through, must not be very uncomfortable so
early in the morning, and congratulated himself on being in
flannels. .

And so he hung back for second after second, playing with
any absurd little thought that would come into his head and
give him ever so brief a respite from the effort of facing the
situation, and hoping that Harry might do or say something
to open the ball. This did not happen. He felt that the
longer he waited the harder it would be. Ho must begin
himself. So he raised his head gently, and took a sidelong
look at Harry’s face, to see whether he could not get some
hint for starting, from it. But scarcely had ho brought his
eyes to bear, wher they met Harry’s, peering dolefully up
from under his eyebrows, on which the water was standing
unwiped, while a piece of green weed, which he did not seem
to have presence of mind enough to remove, trailed over his
dripping locks. There was something in the sight which
tickled Tom’s sense of humour. He had been prepared for
sullen black looks and fierce words ; instead of which he was
irresistibly reminded of schoolboys caught by their master
using a crib, or in other like flagrant delict.

Harry lowered his eyes at once, but lifted them the next
monient with a look of surprise, as he heard Tom burst into
a hearty fit of laughter. After a short struggle to keep
serious, he joined in it himself.

“ By Jove, though, Harry, it’s no laughing matter,” Tom
said at last, getting on to his legs, and giving himself a shake.

Harry only replied by looking most doleful again, and
picking the weed out of his hair, as he too got up.

“What in the word's to be done ?”

1
428 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“T’m sure I don’t know, Master Tom.”

“Vm vory much surprised to find you at this work,
Harry.” :

“I’m sure, so be I, to find you, Master Tom.”

Tom was not prepared for this line of rejoinder. It seemed
to be made with perfect innocence, and yet it put him ina
corner at once. He did not care to inquire into the reason
of Harry’s surprise, or to what work he alluded ; so he went
off on another tack.

“Let us walk up and down a bit to dry ourselves. Now,
Harry, you'll speak to me openly, man to man, as an old
friend should—won't you ?”

“ Ay, Master Tom, and glad to do it.”

“ How long have you taken to poaching?”

“Since last Michaelmas, when they turned me out o’ our
cottage, and tuk away my bit o’ land, and did all as they
could to break me down.”

“Who do you mean }”

“ Why, Squire Wurley as was then—not this one, but the
last—and his lawyer, and Farmer Tester.”

“Then it was through spite to them that you took to
it?”

“ Nay, ’twarn’t altogether spite, tho’ I won’t say but what
I might ha’ thought o’ bein’ upsides wi’ them.”

‘“‘ What was it then besides spite ?”

“Want o’ work. I haven't had no more ’n a matter o’ six
weeks’ reg’lar work ever since last fall.”

“ How’s that? Have you tried for it?”

“Well, Master Tom, I won't tell a lie about it. I don’t
see as I wur bound to go round wi’ my cap in my hand a
beggin’ for a day’s work to the likes o’ them. They knowed
well enough as I wur there, ready and willing to work, and
they knowed as I wur able to do as good a day’s work as e’er
aman in the parish ; and ther’s been plenty o’ work goin’.
But they thought as I should starve, and have to come and
beg for’t from one or to’ther on’em. ‘They would ha’ liked
to ha’ seen me clean broke down, that’s wut they would, and
in the house,” and he paused as if his thoughts were getting
a little unmanageable.

“But you might have gone to look for work else- .
where.”

“T can’t see as I had any call to leave the place where I
wur bred up, Master Tom. That wur just,wut they wanted.
Why should I let ’em drive m’out ?”

“Well, Harry, I’m not going to blame you. I only want
to know more about what has been happening to you, that I

4
WHAT OAME OF THE NIGHT-WATOH. 429

may be able to advise and help you. Did you ever try for
work, or go and tell your story, at the Rectory 1”

“Try for work there! No, I never went arter work
there.”

Tom went on without noticing the change in Harry’s tone
and manner—

“Then I think you ought to have gone. I know my
cousin, Miss Winter, is so anxious to help any man outof
work, and particularly you; for—’ The whole story of
Patty flashed into his mind, and made him stop short, and
stammer, and look anywhere except at Harry. How he could
have forgotten it for a moment in that company was a wonder.
All his questioning and patronizing powers went out of him,
and he felt that their positions were changed, and that he
was the culprit. It was clear that Harry knew nothing yet
of his own relations with Patty. Did he even suspect them ?
It must all come out now at any rate, for both their sakes,
however it might end. So he turned again, and met Harry’s
eye, which was now cold and keen, and suspicious.

“You knows all about it, then ?” ;

“Yes; I know that you have been attached to Simon’s
daughter for a long time, and that he is against it. I wish I
could help you, with all my heart. In fact, I did feel my
way towards speaking to him about it last year, when I was
in hopes of getting you the gardener’s place there. But I
could sce that I should do no good.”

“T’ve heard say as you was acquainted with her, when she
was away?”

“Yes, I was, when she was with her aunt in Oxford.
What then?”

“Twas there as she larnt her bad ways.”

“Bad ways! What do you mean?”

“T means as she larnt to dress fine, and to gee herself airs
to them as ‘she’d known from a child, and as’d ha’ gono
through fire to please her.”

“JT never saw anything of the kind in her. She was a
pleasant, lively girl, and dressed neatly, but never above her
station. And I’m sure she has too good a heart to hurt an
old friend.”

“Wut made her keep shut up in the house when she cum
back ? ah, for days and weeks ;—and: arter that, wut made
her so flighty and fickle? carryin’ of herself as proud as a
lady, a mincin’ and a trapesin’ along, wi’ all the young farmers
a follerin’ her, like a fine gentleman’s miss.”

“Come, Harry, I won’t listen to that. You don’t believe
what you're saying, you know her better.”
430. “TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

, “You knows her well enough by all-séeming:”.,’ . —- ;

“T know her too well to believe any harm of her,” . -° .
“What gall have you and the likes a’ you wi’. her? ‘’Tis
no good comes o’ such company keepin’.” ae

“T tell you again, no harm has conte of it to her.”:

“Whose hair does she carry about then in that gold thing
as she hangs round herneck?” ~=5 «© °°: -

, Tom blushed scarlet, and lowered his eyes without.answer-
ing. : ; oo
a Dost know? ’Tis thine, by ——.”’ The words came
hissing out between his set teeth. ‘Tom put his hands
behind him, expecting to be.struck, as he lifted his eyes, and
said,—

“Yes, it is mine; and, I tell you again, no harm has come

of it.” | 8 oe
“Tis a lie. ‘ I knowed how ‘twas, and ’tis thou hast done
46,” ; :
_ Tom’s blood tingled in his veins, and wild words rushed
to his tongue, as he stood opposite the man who had just
given him the lie, and who waited his reply with clenched
hands, and labouring breast, and fierce eye. But the disci-
pline of the last year stood him in good stead. He stood for
a moment or two crushing his hands together behind his
back, drew a long breath, and answered,—

“Will you believe my oath then? I stood by your side
at your mother’s grave. A man who did that won’t lie to
you, Harry. I swear to you there’s no wrong between me
and her. There never was fault on her side. I sought her.
She never‘ cared for me, she doesn’t care for me. As for that
locket, I forced it on her. I own I have wronged her, and
wronged you. TI have repented it bitterly. I ask your for-
giveness, [Iarry ; for the sake of old times, for tho sako of
your mother!” He spoke from the heart, and saw that his
words went home.. ‘Come, Harry,” he went on, “you won’t
turn from an old playfellow, who owns the wrong he has
done, and will do all he can to make up for it. You'll shake
hands, and say you forgive me.”

Tom paused, and held out his hand.

The poacher's face worked violently for a moment or two,
and he seemed to struggle once or twice to get his hand out
in vain. At last he struck it suddenly into Tom’s, turning
his head away at the same time. “’Tis what mother would
ha’ done,” he said, “thou cassn’t say more, There ’tis then,
though I never thought to do’t.” 3

The curious and unexpected explanation, brought thus to
a happy issue, put Tom into high spirits, and at once roused
isin)

4
ple
ds

 

“Vs a He. I knowed how ' twas, and 'tis thou hast done it." — P. 430.
WHAT CAME OF THE NIGHT-WATCH. 431

the castle-building power within him, which was always
ready enough to wako up.

His first care was to persuade Harry that he had better
give up poaching, and in this he had much less difficulty
than he expected. Harry owned himeelf sick of the life he
was leading already. He admitted that some of the men
with whom he had been associating more or less for the last
year were the greatest blackguards in the neighbourhood.
He asked nothing better than to get out of it. But how?

This was all Tom wanted. He would see to that; nothing
could be easier.

“T shall go with you back to Englebourn this morning.
I'll just leave a note for Wurley to say that I’ll be back some
time in the day to explain matters to him, and then we will
be off at once. We shall be at the rectory by breakfast time.
Ah, I forgot ;—well, you can stop at David’s while I go and
speak to my uncle and to Miss Winter.”

Harry didn’t seem to see what would be the good of this;
and David, he said, was not so friendly to him as he had
been.

“Then you must wait at the Red Lion. Don’t see the
good of it! Why, of course, the good of it is that you must
be set right with the Englebourn people—that’s tho first
thing to do. I shall explain how the case stands to my uncle,
and I know that I can get him to let you have your land
again if you stay in the parish, even if he can’t give you
work himself. But what he must do is, to take you up, to
show people that he is your friend, Harry. Well then, if
you can get good work—mind it must be real, good, regular
work—at farmer Grove’s, or one of the best farmers, stop
here by all means, and I will take myself the first cottage
which falls vacant and let you have it, and meantime you
must lodge with old David. Oh, I'll go and talk him round,
never fear. But if you can’t get regular work here, why you
go off with flying colours; no snoaking off under a cloud
and leaving no addross. You'll go off with mo, as my sorvant,
if you like. But just as you please about that. At any rate,
you'll go with me, and I'll take care that it shall be known
that I consider you as an old friend. My father has always
got plenty of work and will take you on. And then, Harry,
after a bit you may be sure all will go right, and I shall be
your best man, and dance at your wedding before a year’s
out.” ;

There is something in this kind of thing which is contagi--
ous and irresistible. Tom thoroughly believed all that he
was saying ; and faith, even of such a poor kind as believing
432 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

in one’s own castles, has its reward. Common sense in vain
suggested to Harry that all the clouds which had been gather-
ing round him for a year were not likely to melt away in a
morning, Prudence suggested that the sooner he got away
the better ; which suggestion, indeed, he handed on for what
it was worth. But Tom treated prudence with sublime
contempt. They would go together, he said, as soon as any
one was up at the house, just to let him in to change his
things and write a note. Harry needn’t fear any unpleasant
consequences. Wurley wasn’t an ill-natured fellow at bottom,
and wouldn’t mind a few fish. Talking of fish, where was
the one he had heard kicking just now as Harry hauled in
the line. They went to the place, and, looking in the long
grass, soon found the dead trout, still on the night-line, of
which the other end remained in the water. Tom seized hold
of it, and pulling it carefully in, landed another fine trout,
while Harry stood by, looking rather sheepish. Tom inspected
the method of the lines, which was simple but awfully de-
structive. The line was long enough to reach across the
stream. At one end was a heavy stone, at the other a short
stake cut sharp, and driven into the bank well under the
water. At intervals of four feet along the line short pieces of
fine gimp were fastened, ending in hooks baited alternately
with lob-worms and gudgeon. Tom complimented his com-
panion on the killing nature of his cross-line.

“Where are your other lines, Harry?” he asked; “we
may as well go and take them up.”

“A bit higher up stream, Master Tom;” and so they
walked up stream and tcok up the other lines.

“They'll have the finest dish of fish they’ve seen this long
time at the house to-day,” said Tom, as each line came out
with two or three fine thick-shouldered fish on it; “T’ll tell
you what, Harry, they’re deuced well set, these lines of yours,
and do you credit. They do; I’m not complimenting you.”

“T should rather like to be off, Master Tom, if you don’t
object. The mornin’s gettin’ on, and the men’ll be about.
*Twould be unked for I to be caught.”

“Well, Harry, if you’re so set on it off with you, but "—

“Tis too late now ; here’s keeper.”

Tom turned sharp round, and, sure enough, there was the
keeper coming down the bank towards them, and not a couple
of hundred yards off.

“So it is,” said Tom; “well, only hold your tongue, and
do just what I tell you.”

The keeper came up quickly, and touching his hat to Tom,
looked inquiringly at him, and then at Harry. Tom nodded
WHAT CAME OF THE NIGHT-WATCH. 433

to him, as if everything were just as it should be. He was
taking a two-pound fish off tho Inst line; having finished
‘which feat ho throw it on the ground by the rest. “There,
keeper,” he said, “there’s a fine dish of fish. Now, pick ’em
up and come along.”

Never was keeper more puzzled. He looked from one to
the other, lifting the little short hat from the back of his
head, and scratching that somewhat thick skull of his, as his
habit was when engaged in what he called thinking, conscious
that somebody ought to be tackled, and that he, the keeper,
was being mystified, but quite at sea as to how he was to set
himself straight.

“Wet, bain’t ’ee, sir?” he said at last, nodding at Tom’s
clothes.

“Dampish, keeper,” answered Tom ; “I may as well go and
change, the servants will be up at the house by this time.
Pick up the fish and come along. You do up the lines,
Harry.”

The keeper and Harry performed their tasks, looking at one
another out of the corners of their eyes, like the terriers of
rival butchers when the carts happen to stop suddenly in the
street close to one another. Tom watched them, mischiev-
ously delighted with the fun, and then led the way up to the
house. When they came to the stable-yard he turned to
Harry, and said, “Stop here; I shan’t be ten minutes ;”
adding, in an under tone, “Hold your tongue now;” and
then vanished through the back door, and, hurrying up to his
room, changed as quickly as ho could.

He was within the ten minutes, but, as ho descended the
back stairs in his dry things, became aware that his stay had
been too long. Noise and laughter came up from the stable-
yard, and shouts of, “Go it, keeper,” ‘Keeper's down,” “No
he bain’t,” greeted his astonished ears. He sprang down the
last steps and rushed into the stable-yard, where ho found
Harry at his sccond wrestling match for tho day, whilo two
or three stablomon, and a footman, and the gardener, looked
on and cheered the combatants with the remarks he had heard
on his way down. '

Tom made straight to them, and tapping Harry on the |
shoulder, said— ‘

“ Now then, come along, I’m ready.”

Whereupon the keeper and Harry disengaged, and the
latter picked up his cap.

“You bain’t goin’, sir?” said the keeper.

“Yes, keeper.”

“ Not along wi’ he?”

; FF
434 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“Yes, keeper.”

“ What, bain’t I to take un?”

“Take him! No, what for?”

“For night poachin’, look at all them fish,” said the keeper
indignantly, pointing to the shining heap.

“No, no, keeper, you've nothing to do with it. You may
give him the lines though, Harry. I've left a note for your
master on my dressing-table,” Tom said, turning to the footman,
“Jet him have it at breakfast. I’m responsible for him,”
nodding at Harry. “TI shall be back in a few hours, and
now come along.”

And, to the keeper’s astonishment, Tom left the stable-yard,
accompanied by Ilarry.

They were scarcely out of hearing before the stable-yard
broke out into uproarious laughter at the keeper’s expense,
and much rude banter was inflicted on him for letting the
poacher go. But the keeper’s mind for the moment was full
of other things. Disregarding their remarks, he went .on
scratching his head, and burst out at last with,

“Dang un; I knows I should ha’ drowed un.”

“Drow your grandmother,” politely remarked one of the
stablemen, an acquaintance of Harry Winburn, who knew his
repute as a wrestler.

“T should, I tell ’ee,” said the keeper as he stooped to
gather up the fish, “‘and to think as he should ha’ gone off.
Master Il be like any wild beast when he hears on’t. How-
s’mever, ’tis Mz. Brown’s doin’s. ’Tis a queer start for a
gen’l’man like he to be goin’ off wi’ a poacher chap, and
callin’ of un Harry. ’Tis past me altogether. But I s’pose he
bain’t right in ’s’ead ;” and, so soliloquizing, he carried off
the fish to the kitchen.

Meantime, on their walk to Englebourn, Harry, in answer
to Tom’s inquiries,.explained that in his absence the stable-
man, his acquaintance, had come up and begun to talk. The
keeper had joined in and accused him point blank of being
the man who had thrown him into the furze bush. The story
of the keeper's discomfiture on that occasion being well known,
a laugh had been raised in which Harry had joined. This
brought on a challenge to try a fall then and there, which
Harry had accepted, notwithstanding his long morning’s work
and the ducking he had had. They laughed over the story,
though Harry could not help expressing his fears as to how
it might all end. They reached Englebourn in time for
breakfast. Tom appeared at the rectory, and soon he and
Katie were on their old terms. She was delighted to find
that he had had an explanation with Harry Winburn, and
WHAT CAME OF THE NIGHT-WATOH. 485

that there was some chance of bringing that sturdy offender
once more back into decent ways ;—more delighted perhaps
to hear the way in which he spoke of Patty, to whom after
breakfast she paid a visit, and returned in due time with the
unfortunate locket.

Tom felt as if another coil of the chain he had tied about
himself had fallen off. He went out into the village, con-
sulted again with Harry, and returned to the rectory to con-
sider what steps were to be taken to get him work. Katie |
entered into the matter heartily, though foreseeing the diffi-
culties of the case. At luncheon the rector was to be sounded
on the subject of the allotments. But in the middle of their
plans they were startled by the news that a magistrate’s
warrant had arrived in the village for the arrest of Harry as a
night poacher.

Tom returned to the Grange furious, and .before night had
had a worse quarrel with young Wurley than with his uncle
before him. Had duelling been in fashion still in England
they would probably have fought in a quiet corner of the park
before night. As it was they only said bitter things, and
parted, agreeing not to know one another in future.

Three days afterwards, at petty sessions, where Tom brought
upon himself the severe censure of the bench for his conduct
on the trial, Harry Winburn was committed to Reading gaol
for three months.

Readers who will take the trouble to remember the picture
of our hero’s mental growth during the past year, attempted
to be given in a late chapter, and the state of restless dis-
satisfaction into which his experiences and thoughts and
readings had thrown him by the time long vacation had come
round again, will perhaps be prepared fot the catastrophe
which ensued on the conviction and sentence of Harry
Winburn at petty sessions.

Hitherto, notwithstanding the strength of the new and
revolutionary forces which were mustering round it, there had
always been a citadel holding out in his mind, garrisoned by
all that was best in the toryism in which he had been brought
up—by loyalty, reverence for established order and established
institutions ; by family traditions, and the pride of an in-
herited good name. But now the walls of that citadel went
down with a crash, the garrison being put to the sword, or
making away, to hide in out, of the way corners, and wait for
a reaction.

It was much easier for a youngster, whose attention was
once turned to such subjects as had been occupying Tom, to
get hold of wild and violent beliefs and notions in those days

FFQ2
436 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

than now. The state of Europe generally was far more dead
and hopeless, There were no wars, certainly, and no expecta-
tions of wars. But there was a dull, beaten-down, pent-up
feeling abroad, as if the lid were screwed down on the nations,
and the thing which had been, however cruel and heavy and
mean, was that which was to remain to the end. England
was better off than her neighbours, but yet in bad case. In
the south and west particularly, several causes had combined
to spread a very bitter feeling abroad amongst the agricultural
poor. First among these stood the new poor law, the pro-
visions of which were rigorously carried out in most districts.
The poor had as yet felt the harshness only of the new system.
Then the land was in many places in the hands of men on
their last legs, the old sporting farmers, who had begun
business as young men while the great war was going on, had
made money hand over hand for a few years out of the war
prices, and had tried to go on living with greyhounds and
yeomanry uniforms—“horse to ride and weapon to wear”—
through the hard years which had followed. These were bad
masters in every way, unthrifty, profligate, needy, and narrow-
minded. The younger men who were supplanting them were
introducing machinery, threshing machines and winnowing
machines, to take the little bread which a poor man was still
able to earn out of the mouths of his wife and children—so
at least the poor thought and muttered to one another ; and
the mutterings broke out every now and then in the long
nights of the winter months in blazing ricks and broken
machines. Game preserving was on the increase. Australia
and America had not yet become familiar words in every
English village, and the labour market was everywhere over-
stocked ; and last, but not Icast, the corm laws were still in
force, and the bitter and exasperating strife in which they
went out was at its height. And while Swing and his myr-
midons were abroad in the counties, and could scarcely be
kept down by yeomanry and poor law guardians, the great
towns were in almost worse case. Here too emigration had
not yet set in to thin the labour market; wages were falling,
and prices rising ; the corn-law struggle was better understood
and far keener than in the country ; and Chartism was gaining
force every day, and rising into a huge threatening giant,
waiting to put forth his strength, and eager for the occasion
which seemed at hand.

You generation of young Englishmen, who were too young
then to be troubled with such matters, and have grown into
manhood since, you little know—may you never know |—
what it is to be living the citizens of a divided and distracted
HUE AND CRY. g 437

nation. For tho time that danger is past. In a happy hour,
and so far as man can judge, in time, and only just in time,
came the repeal of the corn laws, and the great cause of strife
and the sense of injustice passed away out of men’s minds.
The nation was roused by the Irish famine, and the fearful
distress in other parts of the country, to begin looking steadily
and seriously at some of the sores which were festering in its
body, and undermining health and life. And so the tide had
turned, and England had already passed the critical point,
when 1848 came upon Christendom, and the whole of Europe
leapt up into a wild blaze of revolution.

Is any one still inclined to make light of the danger that
threatened England in that year, to sneer at the 10th of April,
and the monster petition, and the monster meetings on
Kennington and other commons? Well, if there be such
persons amongst my readers, I can only say that they can
have known nothing of what was going on around them and
below them, at that time, and I earnestly hope that their
vision has become clearer since then, and that they are not
looking with the same eyes that see nothing, at the signs of
to-day. For that there are questions still to be solved by us
in England, in this current half-century, quite as likely to
tear the nation in pieces as the corn laws, no man with half
an eye in his head can doubt. They may seem little clouds
like a man’s hand on the horizon just now, but they will
darken the whole heaven before long, unless we can find
wisdom enough amongst us to take tho little clouds in hand
in time, and make them descend in soft rain.

But such matters need not be spoken of here. All I want
to do is to put my younger readers in a position to understand
how it was that our hero fell away into beliefs and notions,
at which Mrs. Grundy and all decent people could only lift
up eyes and hands in pious and respectable horror, and became,
soon after the incarceration of his friend for night poaching,
little better than a physical force Chartist at the age of
twenty-one.

 

CHAPTER XL
HUE AND CRY.

At the end of a gusty wild October afternoon, a man
leading two horses was marching up and down the little plot
of short turf at the top of the Hawk’s Lynch. Ivory now
and thon he would stop on tho brow of tho hill to look over
438 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

the village, and seemed to be waiting for somebody from that
quarter. After being well blown he would turn to his
promenade again, or go in under the clump of firs, through
which the rising south-west wind, rushing up from the vale
below, was beginning to make a moan ; and, hitching the
horses to some stump or bush, and patting and coaxing them
to induce them, if so might be, to stand quiet for a while,
would try to settle himself to leeward of one of the larger
trees.

But the fates were against all attempts at repose. He had
scarcely time to produce a cheroot from his case and light it
under many difficulties, when the horses would begin fidget-
ing, and pulling at their bridles, and shifting round to get
their tails to the wind. They clearly did not understand the
necessity of the position, and were inclined to be moving
stablewards. So he had to get up again, sling the bridles
over his arm, and take to his march up and down the plot of:
turf ; now stopping for a moment or two to try to get his
cheroot to burn straight, and pishing and pshawing over its
perverseness ; now going again and again to the brow, and
looking along the road which led to the village, holding his
hat on tight with one hand—for by this time it was blowing
half a gale of wind.

Though it was not yet quite the hour for his setting, the
sun had disappeared behind a heavy bank of wicked slate-
coloured cloud, which looked as though it were rising straight
up into the western heavens, while the wind whirled along
and twisted into quaint shapes a ragged rift of light vapour,
which went hurrying by, almost touching the tops of the
moaning firs. Altogether an uncanny evening to bo keeping
tryst at the top of a wild knoll ; and so thought our friend
with the horses, and showed it, too, clearly enough, had any
one been there to put a construction on his impatient move-
menis.

There was no one nearer than the village, of which the
nearest house was half-a-mile and ‘more away; so, by way
of passing the time, we must exercise our privilege of put-
ting into words what he is half thinking, half muttering
to himself :—

“A pleasant night I call this, to be out on a wild goose
chase. If ever I saw a screaming storm brewing, there it
comes. I'll be hanged if I stop up here to be caught in it
for all the crack-brained friends I ever had in the world ; and
Iseem to have a faculty for picking up none but crack-brained
ones. I wonder what the plague can keep him so long ; ho
must have been gone an hour. Thore steady, steady, old

’
HUE AND ORY. 439

horse. Confound this weed! What rascals tobacconists are !
You never can get a cheroot now worth smoking. very one
of them goes spluttering up the side, or charring up the
middle, and tasting like tow soaked in saltpetre and tobacco
juice. Well, I suppose I shall get the real thing in India.

“India! In a month from to-day we shall be off. To hear
our senior major talk, one might as well be going to the
bottomless pit at once. Well, he'll sell out, that’s a comfort.
Gives us a step, and gets rid of an old ruffian. I don’t seem
to care much what the place is like if we only get some work ;
and there will be some work there before long, by all accounts.
‘No more garrison-town life, at any rate. And if I have any
luck—a man may get a chance there.

“What the deuce can he be about? This all comes of

sentiment, now. Why couldn’t I go quietly off to India
without bothering up to Oxford to seehim? Not but what
it’s a pleasant place enough. I’ve enjoyed my three days
there uncommonly. Food and drink all that can be wished,
and plenty of good fellows and fun. The look of the place,
too, makes one feel respectable. But, by George, if their
divinity is at all like their politics, they must turn out a
queer set of parsons—at least if Brown picked up his precious
notions at Oxford. He always was a headstrong beggar.
What was it he was holding forth about last night? Let’s
see. ‘The sacred right of insurrection.’ Yes, that was it,
and he talked as if he believed it all too; and, if there
should be a row, which don’t seem unlikely, by Jove I think
he’d act on it in the sort of temper he’s in. How about the
sacred right of getting hung or transported? I shouldn't
wonder to hear of that some day. Gad! suppose he should
be in for an instalment of his sacred right to-night. He’s
capable of it, and of lugging me in with him. What did he
say we were come here for? To get some fellow out of a
scrape, he said—some sort of poaching radical foster-brother
of his, who- had been in gaol, and deserved it too, I'll be
bound. And we couldn’t go down quietly into the village
and put up at the public, where I might have sat in the tap,
and not run the chance of having my skin blown over my
ears, and my teeth down my throat, on this cursed look-out
place, because he’s too well known there. What does that
mean? Upon my soul it looks bad. They may be lynching
a J.P. down there, or making a spread eagle of the parish-
constable at this minute, for anything I know, and as sure as
fateif they are I shall get my foot in it.

“It will read sweetly in the naval and military intelligence
—‘A court-martial was held this day at Chatham, president,
440 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

Colonel Smith, of Her Majesty's 101st Regiment, to try
Henry East, a lieutenant in the same distinguished corps, who
has been under arrest since the 10th ult, for aiding and
abetting the escape of a convict, and taking part in a riot in
the village of Englebourn, in the county of Berks. The
defence of the accused was that he had a sentimental friend-
ship for a certain Thomas Brown, an undergraduate of St.
Ambrose College, Oxford, &c. &c. ; and the sentence of the
Court—

“ Hang it! It’s no laughing matter. Many a fellow has
been broken for not making half such a fool of himself as I
have done, coming out here on this errand. Tl tell T. Bia
bit of my mind as sure as

Hullo! didn’t I hear a shout? Only the wind, I believe.
How it does blow! One of these firs will be down, I expect,
just now. The storm will burst in a quarter of an hour.
Here goes! I shall ride down into the village, let what will
come of it. Steady now, steady. Stand still, you old fool ;
can’t you }—

“There, now I’m all right. Solomon said something about
a beggar on horseback. Was it Solomon, though? Never
mind. He couldn't ride. Never had a horse till he was
grown up. But he said some uncommon wise things about
having nothing to do with such friends as T. B. So, Harry
East, if you please, no more tomfoolery after to-day. You've
got a whole skin, and a lieutenant’s commission to make your
way in the world with, and are troubled with no particular
crotchets yourself that need ever get you into trouble. So
just you keep clear of other people’s. And if your friends
must be mending the world, and poor man’s plastering, and
running their heads against stone walls, why, just you let go
of their coat tails.”

So muttering and meditating, Harry Fast paused a moment
after mounting, to turn up the collar of the rough shooting-
coat which he was wearing, and button it up to the chin,
before riding down the hill, when, in the hurly-burly of the
wind, a shout came spinning past his ears, plain enough this
time ; he heard the gate at the end of Englebourn-lane
down below him shut with a clang, and saw two men running
at full speed towards him, straight up the hill. '

* Oh! here you are at last,” he said, as he watched them.
“Well, you don’t lose your time now. Somebody must be
after them. What's he shouting and waving his hand for ?
Oh, I’m to bring the cavalry supports down the slope, I sup-
pose. Well, here goes: he has brought -off his pal the
convict I see—

 
HUE AND CRY. a 441

Says he, you've ’scaped from transportation
All upon the briny main ;

So nevor give way to no temptation,
And don’t get drunk nor prig again !

There goes the gate again. By Jove, what’s that? Dragoons,
as I'm a sinner! There’s going to be the d——=st bear-
fight.”

Saying which, Harry East dug his heels into his horse’s
sides, holding him up sharply with the curb at the same
time, and in another moment was at the bottom of the
solitary mound on which he had been perched for the last
hour, and on the brow of the line of hill out of which it
rose so abruptly, just at the point for which the two runners
were making. He had only time to glance at the pursuers,
and saw that one or two rode straight on the track of the
fugitives, while the test skirted away along a parish road
which led up the hill side by an easier ascent, when Tom and
his companion were by his side. Tom seized the bridle of the
led horse, and was in the saddle with one spring.

“Jump up behind,’ he shouted; “now then, come
along.”

“Who are they ?” roared East—in that wind nothing but
a shout could be heard—pointing over kis shoulder with his
thumb as they turned to the heath.

“ Yeomanry.”

“ After you?”

Tom nodded, as-they broke into a gallop, making straight
across the heath towards the Oxford road. They were some
quarter of a mile in advance before any of their pursuers
showed over the brow of the hill behind them. It was
already getting dusk, and the great bank of cloud was by this
time all but upon them, making the atmosphere denser and
darker every second. Then, first one of the men appeared
who had ridden straight up the hill undot the Hawk’s Lynch,
and, pulling up for a moment, caught sight of them and gave
chase. Half a minute later, and several of those who had
kept to the road were also in sight, some distance away on the
left, but still near enough to be unpleasant; and they too,
after 2 moment’s pause, were in full pursuit. At first the
fugitives held their own, and the distance between them and
their pursuers was not lessened, but it was clear that this
could not last. Anything that horse-flesh is capable of, a real
good Oxford hack, such as they rode, will do ; but to carry
two full-grown men at the end of a pretty long day, away
from fresh horses and moderate weights, is too much to expect
even of Oxford horse-flesh ; and the gallant beast which Tom
442 ¢ TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

rode was beginning to show signs of distress when they struck
into the road. There was a slight dip in the ground at this
place, and a little further on the heath rose suddenly again,
and the road ran between high banks for a short distance.

As they reached this point they disappeared for the moment
from the yeomanry, and the force of the wind was broken by
the banks, so that they could breathe more easily, and hear
one another's voices. :

Tom looked anxiously round at the lieutenant, who shrugged
his shoulders in answer to the look, as he bent forward to
ease his own horse, and said—

“Can't last another mile.”

“What's to be done?”

East again shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing.

“T know, Master Tom,” said Harry Winburn.

“What ?”

“ Pull up a bit, sir.”

Tom pulled up, and his horse fell into a walk willingly
enough, while East passed on a fow strides ahead. Harry
‘Winburn sprang off.

“You ride on, now, Master Tom,” he said, “I knows the
heath well ; you let me bide.”

“No, no, Harry,,not I. I won’t leave you now; so let
them come, and be hanged.”

East had pulled up, and listened to their talk.

“Took here, now,” he said to Harry ; “ put your arm over
the hind part of his saddle, and run by the side ; you'll find
you can go as fast as the horse. . Now, you two push on, and
strike across the heath. I'll keep the road, and take off this
joker behind, who is the only dangerous customer.”

“That's like you, old boy,” said Tom, “then we'll meet at
the first public beyond the heath ;” and they passed ahead in
their turn, and turned on to the heath, Harry running by the
side, as the lieutenant had advised. ‘

East looked after them, and then put his horse into a steady
trot, muttering—

“Like me! yes, devilish like me; I know that well
enough. Didn’t I always play cat’s-paw to his monkey at
“oC but that convict don’t seem such a bad lot, after

Meantime Tom and Harry struck away over the heath, as
the darkness closed in, and the storm drove down. They
stumbled on over the charred furze roots, and splashed through
the sloppy peat cuttings, casting anxious, hasty looks over
their shoulders as they fled, straining every nerve to get on,
and longing for night and the storm.
HUE AND. ORY. 443

“Hark, wasn’t that a pistol-shot ?” said Tom, as they floun-
dered on. The sound came from the road they had left.

“Look ! here’s some on ’em, then,” said Harry ; and Tom
was aware of two horsemen coming over the brow of the hill
on their left, some three hundred yards to the rear. At the
same instant his horse stumbled, and came down on his nose
and knees. Tom went off over his shoulder, tumbling
against Harry, and sending him headlong to the ground,
but keeping hold of the bridle; they were up again in a
moment.

“ Are you hurt 1”

“No.”

“ Come along, then,” and Tom was in the saddle again, when
the pursuers raised a shout. They had caught sight of them
now, and spurred down the slope towards them. ‘Tom was
turning his horse’s head straight away, but Harry shouted,—

“ Keep to the left, Master Tom, to the left, right on.”

It seemed like running into the lion’s jaws, but he yielded,
and they pushed on down the slope on which they were.
Another shout of triumph rose on the howling wind ; Tom’s
heart sank within him. The enemy was closing on them at
every stride ; another hundred yards, and they must meet
at the bottom of the slope. What could Harry be dreaming
of? The thought had scarcely time to cross his brain, when
down went the two yeomen, horse and man, floundering in a
bog above their horses’ girths. At the same moment the
storm burst on them, the driving mist and pelting rain. The
chase was over. They could not have seen a regiment of men
at fifty yards’ distance.

“ You let me lead the horse, Master Tom,” shouted Harry
Winburn ; “I knowed where they was going ; ’twill take they
the best part o’ the night to get out o’ that, I knows.”

“ All right, Jet’s get back to the road, then, as soon as we
can,” said Tom, surrendoring his horse’s head to Harry, and
turning up his collar, to meet the pitiless deluge which was
driving on their flanks. They were dronched to the skin in
two minutes; Tom jumped off, and plodded along on the
opposite side of his horse to Harry. They did not speak ;
there was very little to be said under the circumstances, and
a great deal to be thought about.

Harry Winburn probably knew the heath as well as any
man living, ‘but even he had much difficulty in finding his
way back to the road through that storm. However, after
some half-hour, spent in beating about, they reached it, and
turned their feces northwards towards Oxford. By this time
night had come on ; but the fury of the storm had passed
444 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

over them, and the moon began to show every now and then
through the driving clouds. At last Tom roused himself out
of the brown study in which he had been hitherto plodding
along, and turned down his coat collar, and shook himself,
and looked up at the sky, and across at his companion, who
was still leading the horse along mechanically. It was too dark
to see his face, but his walk and general look were listless and
dogged ; at last Tom broke silence.

“You promised not to do anything, after you came out,
without speaking to me.” Harry made no reply ; so presently
he went on :-—

“T didn’t think you'd havo gono in for such a business as
that to-night. I shouldn’t have minded so much if it had
only been machine-breaking; but robbing the cellar and
staving in ale casks and maiming cattle—”

“Td no hand in that,” interrupted Harry.

“Tm glad to hear it. You were certainly leaning against
the gate when I came up, and taking no part in it; but you
were one of the leaders of the riot.”

‘Te brought it on hisself,” said Harry, doggedly.

“Tester is a bad man, I know that; and the people have
much to complain of: but nothing can justify what was done
to-night.” Harry made no answer.

“You're known, and they'll be after you the first thing in
the morning. I don’t know what’s to be done.”

“Tis very little odds what happens to me.”

“ You’ve no right to say that, Harry. Your friends—”

“T ain’t got no friends.”

“Well, Harry, I don’t think you ought to say that after
what has happened to-night. I don’t mean to say that my
friondship has done you much good yet ; but I’ve done what
I could, and oe

“So you hev’, Master Tom, so you hey’.”

“ And I'll stick by you through thick and thin, Harry. But
you must take heart and stick by yourself, or we shall never
pull you through.” Harry groaned, and then, turning at
once to what was always uppermost in his mind ; said,—

‘Tis no good now I’ve been in gaol. Her father wur allus
agin me. And now, how be I ever to hold up my head at
whoam ? I seen her once arter I came out.”

“Well, and what happened?” said Tom, after waiting a
moment or two.

“She just turned red and pale, and was all flustered like,
and made as though she’d have held out her hand : and then
tuk and hurried off like a frighted hare, as though she heerd
somebody a comin’. Ah! ’tis no good! ’tis no good !”

 
HUE AND ORY. 445

“T don’t see anything very hopeless in that,” said Tom.

“T’'ve knowed her since she wur that high,” went on Harry,
holding out his hand about as high as the bottom of his
waistcoat, without noticing the interruption, “when her and
I went a gleanin’ together. ’Tis what I’ve thought on, and
lived for. ’Tis four year and better since she and I broke a
sixpence auver't. And at times it sim’d as tho’ ’twould ali
cum right, when my poor mother wur livin’,—tho’ her never
tuk to it kindly, mother didn’t. But ’tis all gone now! and
I be that mad wi’ myself, and mammered, and down, I be
ready to hang myself, Master Tom ; and if they just teks and
transpworts me ”

“Oh, nonsense, Harry! You must keep out of that. We
shall think of some way to get you out of that before morning.
And you must get clear away, and go to work on the railways
or somewhere, There’s nothing to be downhearted about as
far as Patty is concerned.”

“Ah! ’tis they as woars it as knows whiore tho shoo pinchos.
You'd say difloront if ’twas you, Master Tom.”

“Should I?” said Tom; and, after pausing a moment or -
two, he went on. ‘ What I’m going to say is in confidence.
I’ve never told it to any man yet, and only one has found it
out. Now, Harry, I’m much worse off than you at this minute.
Don’t I know where the shoe pinches! Why I haven’t seen
—I’ve scarcely heard of—of—well, of my sweetheart—there,
you'll understand that—for this year and more. I don’t know
when I may see her again. I don’t know that she hasn’t clean
forgotten me. I don’t know that she ever cared a straw for
me. Now, you know quite well that you are better off than
that.”

“JT bean’t so sure o’ that, Master Tom. But I be terrible
vexed to hear about you.”

“Never mind about me. You say you're not sure, Harry.
Come, now, you said, not two minutes ago, that you two had
broken a sixpence over it. What does that mean, now ?”

“Ah! but ’tis four years gone. Her’s bin a leadin’ 0’ me
up and down, and a dancin’ o’ me round and round purty
nigh ever since, let alone the time as she wur at Oxford,
when——”

“ Well, we won’t talk of that, Harry. Come, will yesterday
do for you? If you thought she was all right yesterday, would
that satisfy you?” ,

“ Kes ; and summat to spare.” i

“You don’t believe it, I see. Well, why do you think I
came after you to-night? How did I know what was going
on 1”

 
446 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“That's just what I've been a axin’ o’ myself as we cum
along.”

“Well, then, I'll tell you. I came because I got a note
from her yesterday at Oxford.” Tom paused, for he heard a
muttered growl from the other side of the horse’s head, and
could see, even in the fitful moonlight, the angry toss of the
head with which his news was received. “TI didn’t expect
this, Harry,” he went on presently, “after what I told you
just now about myself. It was a hard matter to tell it at all ;
but, after telling you, I didn’t think you'd suspect me any
more. However, perhaps I’ve deserved it. So, to go on with
what I was saying, two years ago, when I came to my senses
about her, and before I cared for any one else, I told her to
write if evor I could do her a service. Anything that a man
could do for his sister I was bound to do for her, and I told
her so. She never answered till yesterday, when I got this
note,” and he dived into the inner breast pocket of his
shooting-coat. ‘If it isn’t soaked to pulp, it’s in my pocket
now. Yes, here it is,” and he produced a dirty piece of paper,
and handed it across to his companion. “When there’s light
enough to read it, you'll see plain enough what she means,
though your name is not mentioned.”

Having finished his statement, Tom retired into himself,
and walked along watching the hurrying clouds. After they
had gone some hundred yards, Harry cleared his throat once
or twice, and at last brought out,—

“ Master Tom.”

“Well.”

“You bean’t offended wi’ me, sir, I hopes $”

“No, why should I be offended ?”

“Cause T knows I be go all-fired jealous, I can’t abear to
hear o’ her, talkin’, let alone writin’ t-—

“Out with it. “To me, you were going to say.”

“Nay, ’tis mwore nor that.”

“All right, Harry, if you only lump me with the rest of
mankind, I don’t care. But you needn’t be jealous of me,
and you musn’t be jealous of me, or I shan’t be able to help
you as I want to do. I'll give you hand and word on it, as
man to man, there’s no thought in my heart towards her that
you mightn’t see this minute. ,, Do you believe me?”

“Tes, and you'll forgie:

“ There’s nothing to oe Harry. But now you'll allow
your case isn’t such a bad one. She must keep a good look-
out after you to know what you were likely to be about to-day.
And if she didn’t care for you she wouldn't have written to
me, That’s good sense, 1 think.”

 
THE LIEUTENANT’S SENTIMENTS AND PROBLEMS, 44:7

Harry assented, and then Tom went into a consideration of
what was to be done, and, as usual, fair castles began to rise
in the air. Harry was to start down the Hne at once, and take
work on the railway. In a few weeks he would be captain of
a gang, and then what was to hinder his becoming a con-
tractor, and making his fortune, and buying a farm of his own
at Englebourn? To all which Harry listened with open ears
till they got off the heath, and came upon a small hamlet of
some half-dozen cottages scattered along the road.

“There’s a public here, I suppose,” said Tom, returning to
the damp realities of life. Harry indicated the humble place
of entertainment for man and horse.

“ That’s all right. I hope we shall find my friend here ;”
and they went towards the light which was shining tempt-
ingly through the latticed window of the road-side inn.

 

CHAPTER XLL
THE LIEUTENANT’S SENTIMENTS AND PROBLEMS.

“Srop! It looks so bright that there must be something
going on. Surely the yeomanry can never have come on here
already 2”

, Tom laid his hand on the bridle, and they halted on the
road opposite the public-house, which lay a little back, with
an open space of ground before it. The sign-post, and a long
water-trough for the horses of guests to drink at, were pushed
forward to the side of the road to intimate the whereabouts
of the house, and the hack which Harry led was already
drinking eagerly.

“Stay here for a minute, and I'll go to the window, and
see what’s up inside. It’s very unlucky, but it will never do
for us to go in if there are any people there.”

Tom stole softly up to the window out of which the light
came. A little scrap of a curtain was drawn across a portion
of it, but he could see easily into the room on either side of
the curtain. The first glance comforted him, for he saw at
once that there was only one person in the kitchen; but who
and what he might be was a puzzle. The only thing which
was clear at a first glance was, that he was making himself at
home.

The room was a moderate-sized kitchen, with a sanded floor,
and a large fire-place; a high wooden screen, with a narrow
seat in front of it, ran along the side on which the door from
the entrance-passage opened. In the middle there was a long,
448 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

rough, walnut table, on which stood a large loaf, some cold
bacon and cheese, and a yellow jug; a few heavy rush-
bottomed chairs and a settle composed the rest of the furni-
ture. On the wall were a few samplers, a warming pan, and
shelves with some common delf plates, and cups and saucers.
But though the furniture was meagre enough, the kitchen had
a look of wondrous comfort for a drenched mortal outside.
Tom felt this keenly, and, after a glance round, fixed his
attention on the happy occupant, with the view of ascertain-
ing whether he would be a safe person to intrude on under
the circumstances. He was seated on a low, three-cornered
oak seat, with his back to the window, steadying a furze faggot
on the fire with tho poker, The faggot blazed and crackled,
and roared up the chimney, sending out the bright flickering
light which had attracted them, and forming a glorious top to
. the glowing clear fire of wood embers beneath, into which
was inserted a long, funnel-shaped tin, out of which the figure
helped himself to some warm compound, when he had settled
the faggot to his satisfaction. He was enveloped as to his
shoulders in a heavy, dirty-white coat, with huge cape and
high collar, which hid the back of is head, such as was then
in use by country carriers ; but the garment was much too
short for him, and his bare arms came out a foot beyond the
end of the sleeves. The rest of his costume was even more
eccentric, being nothing more or less than a coarse flannel
petticoat ; and his bare feet rested on the mat in front of the
fire,

Tom felt a sudden doubt as to his sanity, which doubt was
apparently shared by the widow woman, who kept the house,
and her maid-of-all-work, one or other of whom might be seen
constantly keeping an eye on their guest from behind the end
of the wooden screen. However, it was no time to be over
particular ; they must rest before going further, and, after all,
it was only one man. So Tom thought, and was just on the
point of calling Harry to come on, when the figure turned
round towards the window, and the face of the lieutenant dis-
closed itself between the highpeaked gills of the carrier’s coat.
Tom burst out into a loud laugh, and called out,

“Tt’s all right, come along.”

“Tl just look to the hosses, Master Tom.”

“Very well, and then come into the kitchen ;” saying which,
he hurried into the house, and after tumbling against the
maid-of-all-work in the passage, emerged from behind ‘the
screen.

“Well, here we are at last, old fellow,” he said, slapping
East on the shoulder,
THE LILUTENANT’S SENTIMENTS AND PROBLEMS. 449

“Oh, it’s you, is it? I thought you were in the lock-up by
this time.”

East's costume, as he sat looking up, with a hand on each
knee, was even more ridiculous ona close inspection, and Tom
roared with laughter again.

“T don’t see the joke,” said East without moving a muscle.

“ You would, though, if you could see yourself. You won-
derful old Guy, where did you pick up that toggery ?”

“ The late lamented husband of the widow Higgs, our land-
lady, was the owner of the coat. He also bequeathed to her
several pairs of breeches, which I have vainly endeavoured to
get into. The late lamented Higgs was an abominably small
man. He must have been very much her worse half. So, in
default of other clothing, the widow has kindly obliged me
by the Joan of one of her own garments.”

“ Where are your own clothes ?”

“There,” said East, pointing to a clothes’ horse, which Tom
had not hitherto remarked, which stood well into the chimney
corner ; “and they are dry, too,” he went on, feeling them ;
“at least the flannel shirt and trousers are, so I’ll get into them
again.”

“T say, ma’am,” he called. out, addressing the screen, ‘I’m
going to change my things. So you had better not look in
just now. In fact, we can call now, if we want anything.”

At this strong hint the widow Higgs was heard bustling
away behind the screen, and after her departure East got into
some of his own clothes again, offering the cast-off garments
of the Higgs family to Tom, who, however, declined, content-
ing himself with taking off his coat and waistcoat, and hanging
them upon the horse. He had been blown comparatively dry
in the last half-hour of his walk. os ,

While East was making his toilet, Tom turned to the table,
and made an assault on the bread and bacon, and then poured
himself out a glass of beer and began to drink it, but ‘was
pulled up half way, and put it down with a face all drawn
up into puckers by its sharpness.

“TI thought you wouldn’t appreciate the widow’s tap,” said
East, watching him with a grin. “Regular whistle-belly
vengeance, and no mistake! Here, I don’t mind giving you
some of my compound, though you don’t deserve it.”

So Tom drew his chair to the fire, and smacked his lips
over the long-necked glass, which East handed to him.

“Ah! that’s not bad tipple after such a ducking as we've
had. Dog’s-nose, isn’t it?”

East nodded. |

“Well, old fellow, I will say you are the best hand I know

aq
450 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

at making the most of your opportunities. I don’t know of
any one else who could have made such a good brew out of
that stuff and a drop of gin.”

East was not to be mollified by any such compliment,

“Have you got many more such jobs as to-day’s on hand?
I should think they must interfere with reading.”

“No. But T call to-day’s a real good job.”

“Do you? I don’t agree. Of course it’s a matter of taste.
I have the honour of holding Her Majesty's commission ; so
I may be prejudiced, perhaps.”

“What difference does it make whose commission you hold?
You wouldn’t hold any commission, I know, which would bind
you to be a tyrant and oppress the weak and the poor.”

“Humbug about your oppressing? Who is the tyrant, I
should like to know, the farmer, or the mob that destroys his
property ? I don’t call Swing’s mob the weak and the poor.”

“That's all very well ; but I should like to know how you'd
feel if you had no work and a starving family. You don’t
know what people have to suffer. The only wonder is that
all the country isn’t in a blaze; and it will be if things last
as they are much longer. It must be a bad time which makes
such men as Harry Winburn into rioters.”

“T don’t know anything about Harry Winburn. But I
know there’s a good deal to be said on the yeomanry side of
the question.”

“Well, now, East, just consider this ”

‘No, I’m not in the humour for considering. -I don’t want
to argue with you.” _ 5

“Yes, that’s always the way. You won't hear what a
fellow’s got to say, and then set him down for a mischievous
fool, because he won’t give up beliefs founded on the evidence
of. his own eyes, and ears, and reason.”

“T don’t quarrel with any of your beliefs. You've got ’em
—TI haven’t—that’s just the difference between us. You’ve
got some sort of faith to fall back upon, in equality, and
brotherhood, and a lot of cursed nonsense of that kind. So,
I dare say, you could drop down into a navigator, or a shoe-
black, or something in that way to-morrow, and think it
pleasant. You might rather enjoy a trip across the water at
the expense of your country, like your friend the convict here,”

“Don’t talk such rot, man. In the first place, he isn’t a
convict—you know that, well enough.”

“Ho is just out of prison, at any rate. However, this sort
of thing isn’t my line of country at all. So the next time
you want to do a bit of goal-delivery on your own hook, don’t
ask me to help you.”

 
THE LIEUTENANT'S SENTIMENTS AND PROBLEMS, 451 »

“Woll, if I had known oll that was going to happen, I
wouldn't have ask you to come, old fellow. Come, give us
another glass of your dog’s-nose, and no more of your sermon,
which isn’t edifying.”

The lieutenant filled the long-necked glass which Tom
held out, with the creaming mixture, which he was nursing
in the funnel-shaped tin. But he was not prepared to waive
his right to lecture, and so continued, while Tom sipped his
liquor with much relish, and looked comically across at his
old schoolfellow.

“ Some fellows have a call to set the world right—I haven't.
My gracious sovereign pays me seven and sixpence a day ; for
which sum I undertake to be shot at on certain occasions and
by proper persons, and I hope when the time comes I shall
take it as well as another. But that doesn’t include turning
out to be potted at like = woodcock on your confounded
Borkshire wilds by a turnip-headed yeoman. It isn’t to be
done at the figure.”

“ What in the world do you mean?”

“I mean just what I say.”

“That one of those ‘unspeakable yeomanry has been
shooting at you?”

“Just so.”

“ No, you don’t really mean it? Wh-e-e-w! Then that shot
we heard was fired at you. ’Pon my honour I’m very sorry.”

“Much good your sorrow would have done me if your
precious countryman had held straight.”

“Well, what can I say more, East? If there’s anything I
can do to show you that I really am very sorry and ashamed at
having brought you into such a scrape, only tell me what it is.”

“J don’t suppose your word would go for much at the
Horse Guards, or I’d ask you to give me a character for cool-
ness under fire.”

“ Come, I see you're joking now, old fellow. Do tell us how
it happened.”

“Well, when you turned off across the common I pulled
up for half ‘a minute, and then held on at a steady slow trot.
If Thad pushed on ahead, my friends behind would have been
just as likely to turn after you as after me. Presently I heard
number One coming tearing along behind ; and as soon as he
got from between the banks, ho saw me, and came straight
after mo down the road. You were well away to the left, so
now I just clapped on a bit, to lead him further away from
the right scent, and on he came, whooping and halloving to
me to pull up. Ididn’t seo why I hadn't just as good a right
to ride along the road at my own pace as ho ; so the moro hoe

aa2
452 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

shouted, the more I didn’t stop. But the beggar had the legs
of me. He was mounted on something deuced like a thorough-
bred, and gained on me hand over hand. At last when I
judged he must be about twenty yards behind, I thought I
might as well have a look at him—so I just turned for a
moment, and, by Jove, there was my lord, lugging a pistol
out of his right holster. He shouted again to me to stop. I
turned, ducked my head, and the next moment he pulled
trigger, and missed me.”

“And what happened then,” said Tom, drawing a long
breath.

“Why, I flatter myself I showed considerable generalship.
If I had given him time to get at his othor pistol, or his
toasting fork, it was all up. I dived into my pocket, where
by good luck there was some loose powder, and copper caps,
and a snuff-box ; upset the snuff, grabbed a handful of the
mixture, and pulled hard at my horse. Next moment he was
by my side, lifting his pistol to knock me over. So I gave
him the mixture right in his face, and let him go by. Up
went both his hands, and away went he and his horse, some-
where over the common out of sight. I just turned round,
and walked quietly back. I didn’t see the fun of accepting
any more attacks in rear. Then up rides number Two, a
broad-faced young farmer on a big grey horse, blowing like a
grampus. He pulled up short when we met, and stared, and
’ Iwalked past him. You never saw a fellow look more puzzled,
I had regularly stale-mated him. However, he took heart, and
shouted, ‘Had I met the Captain?’ I said, ‘A gentleman had
ridden by on a bright bay?’ ‘That was he; which way had
he gone?’ So I pointed generally over the common, and
number Two departed; and then down came the storm, and
I turned again, and came on here.”

“The Captain! It must have been Wurley, then, who
fired at you.”

“T don’t know who it was. I only hope he won't be
blinded.”

“Tt’s a strange business altogether,” said Tom, looking
into the fire; “I scarcely know what to think of it. We
should never have pulled through but for you, that’s certain.”

“TI know what to think of it well enough,” said East.
“But now let’s hear what happened to you. They didn’t
catch you, of course ?”

“No, but it was touch and go. I thought it was all up
at one time, for Harry would turn right across their line.
But he knew what he was about ; there was a bog between us,
and they came on right into it, and we left them floundering.”
THE LIEUTENANT’S SENTIMENTS AND PROBLEMS. 453

“The convict seems to have his head about him, then.
Where is he, by the way? Tm curious to have a look
at him.”

“ Looking after the horses. T’'ll call him in. He ought to
have something to drink.”

Tom went to the door, and called Harry, who came out
from the rough shed which served as a stable, in his shirt,
with a wisp of hay in his hand. He had stripped off coat,
and waistcoat, and braces, and had been warming himself by
giving the horses a good dressing.

“ Why, Harry, you haven’t had anything,” said Tom ;
© come across, and have a glass of something hot.”

Harry followed into the kitchen, and stood by the end of
the screen, looking rather uncomfortable, while Tom poured
him out a glass of the hot mixture, and the lieutenant looked
him over with keen eyes.

“ There, take that off. How are the horses?”

* Pretty fresh, Master Tom. But they'd be the better of a
bran mash, or somethin’ cumfable. I’ve spoke to the missus
about it, and ’tis ready to put on the fire.”

“That's right, then. Let them have it as quick as you can.”

“ Then I med fetch it and. ‘warm it up here, sir?” said
Harry.

“To be sure ; the sooner the better.”

Harry took off his glass, making a shy sort of duck with
his head, accompanied by “ Your health, sir,” to each of his
entertainers, and then disappeared into the back- kitchen,
returned with the mash, which he put on the fire, and went
off to the stable again.

“ What do you think of him?” said Tom.

T like to see a fellow let his braces down when he goes
to work,” said East.

“It’s not every fellow who would be strapping away at
those horses, instead of making himself at home in the back-
kitchen.”

“ No, it isn’t,” said East.

« Don't you like his looks now?”

“ He’s not a bad sort, your convict.”

“ T say, I wish you wouldn’t call him names.”

“Very good; your unfortunate friend, then. What are
you going to do with him?”

“That’s just what I’ve been puzzling about all the way
here: what do you think?” And then they drew to the fire
again, and began to talk over Harry’s prospects. In some
ten minutes he returned to the kitchen for the mash, and this
time drew a complimentary remark from the lieutenant.
454 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

Harry was passionately fond of animals, and especially of
horses, and they found it out quickly enough, as they always
do. The two hacks were by this time almost fresh again,
with dry coats, and feet well washed and cleansed ; and, while
working at them, Harry had been thinking over all he had
heard that evening, and what with the work and what with
his thoughts, found himself getting more hopeful every
minute. No one who had seen hi§ face an hour before on
the heath would have believed it was the same man who was
now patting and fondling the two hacks as they disposed of
the mash he had prepared for them. He leant back against
the manger, rubbing the ears of Tom’s hack—the one which
had carried double so well in their first flight—gently with
his two hands, while the delighted beast bent down its head,
and pressed it against him, and stretched its neck, expressing
in all manner of silent ways its equine astonishment and
satisfaction. By the light of the single dip Harry’s face grew
shorter and shorter, until at last a quiet humorous look began
to creep back into it.

As we have already taken tho liberty of putting the thoughts
-of his betters into words, we must now do so for him ; and, if
he had expressed his thoughts in his own vernacular as he

‘rubbed the hack’s ears in the stable, his speech would have
been much as follows :—

“ How cums it as I be all changed like, as tho’ sum un
had tuk and rubbed all the downheartedness out o’ me?—
Here I be, two days out o’ gaol, wi’ nothin’ in the world but
the things I stands in—for in course I med just give up the
bits o’ things as is left at Daddy Collins’s—and they all
draggled wi’ the wet—and I med be tuk in the mornin’ and
sent across the water—and yet I feels sum how as peert as a
yukkel. So fur as I can see, ’tis jest nothin’ but talkin’ wi’
our Master Tom. What a fine thing ’tis to be a schollard.
And yet seemin'ly ’tis nothin’ but talk arter all’s said and
done, But ’tis allus the same ; whenever I gets talkin’ wi’ he,
it all cums out as smooth as crame. Fust time as ever I seen
him since we wur bwys he talked just as a do now; and then
my poor mother died. Then he cum in arter the funeral, and
talked me up agen, till I thought as I wur to hev our cottage
and all the land as I could do good by. But our cottage wur
took away, and my ’lotment besides. Then cum last summer,
and ’twur just the same agen arter his talk, but I got dree
months auver that job. And now here I be wi’ un agen,
a runnin’ from ¢the constable, and like to be tuk up and
transpworted, and ’tis just the same—and I s’pose ’twill be
just the same if ever I gets back, and sees un, and talks wi
THE LIEUTENANT’S SENTIMENTS AND PROBLEMS. 455

un, if I be gwine to be hung. "Tis a wunnerful thing to be a
schollard, to be able to make things look all straight when |
they be ever so akkerd and unked.” ;

And then Harry left off rubbing the horse’s ears; and,
pulling the damp piece of paper which Tom had given him,
out of his breeches’ pocket, proceeded to flatten it out ten-
derly on the palm of his hand, and read it by the light of the
dip, when the landlady came to inform him that the gentlefolk
wanted him in the kitchen. So he folded his treasure up
again, and went off to the kitchen. He found Tom standing
with his back to the fire, while the lieutenant was sitting at
the table, writing on a scrap of paper, which the landlady had
produced after much hunting over of drawers. Tom began,
with some little hesitation :-—

“ Oh Harry, I’ve been talking your matters over with my
friend here, and I’ve changed my mind. It won’t do after
all for you to stay about at railway work, or anything of that
sort. You see you wouldn’t be safe. They'd be sure to trace
you, and you'd get into trouble about this day’s work. And
then, after all, it’s'a very poor opening for a young fellow
like you. Now, why shouldn't you enlist into Mr. East’s
regiment? You'll be in his company, and it’s a splendid
profession. What do you say now?”

East looked up at poor Harry, who was quite taken aback
at this change in his prospects, and could only mutter, that he
had never turned his mind to “ sodgerin.”’

“Tt’s just the thing for you,” Tom went on. “You can
write and keep accounts, and you'll get on famously. Ask
Mr. East if you won't. And don’t you fear about matters at
home. You'll see that'll all come right. TU pledge you my
word it will and I’ll take care that you shall hear every-
thing that goes on there: and, depend upon it, it’s your best -
chance. You'll be back at Englebourn as a sergeant in no
time, and be able to snap your fingers at them all. Youll
come with us to Steventon station, and take the night train
to London, and then in the morning go to Whitehall, and
find Mr. East’s sergeant. He'll give you a note to him, and
they'll send you on to Chatham, where the regiment is. You
think it’s the best thing for him, don’t you?” said Tom,
turning to East. ; .

“Yes; I think you'll do very well if you only keep steady.
Here’s a note to the sergeant, and I shall be back at Chatham
in a day or two myself.”

Harry took the note mechanically ; he' was quite unable
yet to make any resistance,

“ And now get something to eat as quick as you can,
456 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

for we ought to be off. The horses are all right, I sup-
pose %”
'  Yos, Master Tom,” said Harry, with an appealing look.

“ Where are your coat and waistcoat, Harry ?”

“ They be in the stable, sir.”

“ In the stable! Why, they’re all wet then still?”

“ Oh, ’tis no odds about that, Master Tom.”

“No odds! Get them in directly, and put them to dry
here.”

So Harry Winburn went off to the stable to fetch his
clothes.

“ Fle’s a fine fellow,” said East, getting up and coming to
the fire ; “I’ve taken a fancy to him, but he doesn’t fancy
enlisting.”

“ Poor fellow! he has to leave his sweetheart. It’s a sad
business, but it’s the best thing for him, and you'll see
he'll go.”

Tom was right. Poor Harry came in and dried his clothes,
and got his supper; and while he was eating it, and all along
the road afterwards, till they reached the station at about
eleven o'clock, pleaded in his plain way with Tom against
leaving his own country side. And East listened silently,
and liked him better and better.

Tom argued with him gently, and turned the matter round
on all sides, putting the most hopeful face upon it ; and, in
the end, talked first himself, and then Harry, into the belief
that it was the very best thing that could have happened to
him, and more likely than any other course of action to bring
everything right between him and all folk at Englebourn.

So Harry got into the train at Steventon in pretty good
heart, with his fare paid, and half-a-sovereign in his pocket,
more and more impressed in his mind with what a wonderful
thing it was to be “a schollard.”

The two friends rode back to Oxford ata good pace. They
had both of them quite enough to think about, and were not
in the humour for talk had place and time served, so that
scarce a word passed between them till they had left their
horses at the livery stables, and were walking through the
silent streets, a few minutes before midnight. Then East
broke silence.

“ T can’t make out how you do it. I'd givo half-a-year’s
pay to get the way of it.”

* The way of what? What are you talking about?”
Hina your way of shutting your eyes, and ‘going in

ind.’

“Well, that’s a queer wish for a fighting man,” said Tom,
THE LIEUTENANT’S SENTIMENTS AND PROBLEMS, 4517

laughing. ‘“ We always thought a rusher no good at school,
and that the thing to learn was, to go in with your own eyes
open, and shut up other people’s.”

“ Ah, but we hadn’t cut our eye-teeth then. I look at
these things from a professional point of view. My business
is to get fellows to shut their eyes tight, and I hegin to think
you can’t do it as it should be done, without shutting your
own first.”

-“T don’t take.”

“Why, look at the way you talked your convict—I beg
your pardon—your unfortunate friend—into enlisting to-
night. You talked as if you believed every word you were
saying to him.”:

“So I did.”

“Well, I should like to have you for a recruiting sergeant,
if you could only drop that radical bosh. If I had had to do
it, instead of enlisting, he would have gone straight off and
hung himself in the stable.”

“Tm glad you didn’t try your hand at it then.”

“ Look again at me. Do you think any one but such a—
well, I don’t want to say anything uncivil—a headlong dog
like you could have got me into such a business as to day's ?
Now I want to be able to get other fellows to make just such
fools of themselves as I’ve made of myself to-day. How do
you do it?”

“T don’t know, unless it is that I can’t help always looking
at the best side of things myself, and so—”

“ Most things haven’t got a best side.”

“Well, at the pretty good side, then.”

“Nor a pretty good one.”

“If they haven’t got a pretty good one, it don’t matter
how you look at them, I should think.”

“No, I don’t believe it does—much. Still, I should like
to be able to make a fool of myself, too, when I want—with
the view of getting others to do ditto, of course.”

“T wish I could help you, old fellow; but I don’t see my
way to it,” :

“T shall talk to our regimental doctor about it, and get put
through a course of fool’s-diet before we start for India.”

“ Flap-doodle, they call it, what fools are fed on. But it’s
odd that you should have broken out in this place, when all
the way home I’ve been doing nothing but envying you your
special talent.”

“What's that?”

“Just the opposite one—the art of falling on your feet,
I should like to exchange with you.”
458 “TOM BROWN AT OXFORD. {

“You'd make a precious bad bargain of it, then.”

“ There's twelve striking, I must knock in. Good night.
You'll be round to breakfast at nine.”

“All right. I believe in your breakfasts, rather,” said
East, as they shook hands at the gate of St. Ambrose, into

which Tom disappeared, while the lieutenant strolled back to
the Mitre.

CHAPTER XLII.
THIRD YEAR.

East returned to his regiment in a few days, and at the
end of the month the gallant 101st embarked for India.
Tom wrote several letters to the lieutenant, inclosing notes
to Harry, with gleanings of news from‘ Englebourn, where
his escape on the night of the riot had been a nine-days’
wonder ; and, now that he was fairly “’listed,” and out of
tho way, public opinion was boginning to tum in his favour.
In due course a letter arrived from the lieutenant, dated Cape
Town, giving a prosperous account of the voyage so far. Hast
did not say much about “your convict,” as he still insisted on
calling Harry ; but the little he did say was very satisfactory,
and Tom sent off this part of the letter to Katie, to whom he
had confided the whole story, entreating her to make the best
use of it in the interests of the young soldier. And, after
this out-of-the-way beginning, he settled down into the usual
routine of his Oxford life.

The change in his opinions and objects of interest brought
him now into more intimate relations with a set of whom he
had as yet seen little. For want of a better name, we may
call them “the party of progress.” At their parties, instead
of practical jokes, and boisterous mirth, and talk of boats,
and bats, and guns, and horses, the highest and deepest
questions of morals, and politics, and metaphysics, were dis-
cussed, and discussed with a freshness and enthusiasm which
is apt to wear off when doing has to take the place of talking,
but has a strange charm of its own while it lasts, and is
looked back to with loving regret by those for whom it is no
longer a possibility.

With this set Tom soon fraternized, and drank in many
new ideas, and took to himself also many new crotchets
besides those with which he was already weighted. Almost
all his new acquaintance were Liberal in politics, but a few
only were ready to go all lengths with him, They wore all
THIRD YEAR. 459

Union men, and Tom, of course, followed the fashion, and
soon propounded theories in that institution which gained
him the name of Chartist Brown.

There was a strong mixture of self-conceit in it all. He
had a kind of idea that he had discovered something which
it was creditable to have discovered, and that it was a very
fine thing to have all these feelings for, and sympathies with,
“the masses,” and to believe in democracy, and “glorious
humanity,” and “a good time coming,” and I know not what
other big matters. And, although it startled and pained him
at first to hear himself called ugly names, which he had
hated and despised from his youth up, and to know that
many of his old acquaintance looked upon him, not simply
as a madman, but as a madman with snobbish proclivities;
yet, when the first plunge was over, there was a good deal on
the other hand which tickled his vanity, and was far from
being unpleasant.

To do him justice, however, the disagreeables were such
that, had there not been some genuine belief at the bottom,
he would certainly have been headed back very speedily into
the fold of political and social orthodoxy. As it was, amidst
the cloud of sophisms, and platitudes, and big one-sided ideas
half-mastered, which filled his. thoughts and overflowed in
his talk, there was growing in him and taking firmer hold on
him daily a true and broad sympathy for men as men, and
especially for poor men as poor men, and a righteous and
burning hatred against all laws, customs, or notions, which,
according to his light, either were or seemed to be setting
aside, or putting anything else in the place of, or above the
man. It was with him the natural outgrowth of the child’s
and boy’s training (though his father would have been much
astonished to be told so), and the instincts of those early days
were now getting rapidly set into habits and faiths, and be-
coming a part of himself.

In this stage of his life, as in so many former ones, Tom
got great help from his intercourse with Hardy, now the
rising tutor of the college. Hardy was travelling much the
same road himself as our hero, but was somewhat further on,
and had come into it from a different country, and through
quite other obstacles, Their early lives had been so different;
and, both by nature and from long and severe self-restraint
and discipline, Hardy was much the less impetuous and de-
monstrative of the two. He did not rush out, therefore (as
Tom was too much inclined to do), the moment he had seized
hold of the end of a new idea which he felt to be good for
him and what he wanted, and brandish it in the face of all
460 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

comers, and think himself a traitor to the truth if he wasn’t
trying to make everybody he met with eat it. Hardy, on
the contrary, would test his new idea, and turn it over, and
prove it as far as he could, and try to get hold of the whole
of it, and ruthlessly strip off any tinsel or rose-pink sentiment
with which it might happen to be mixed up. -

Often and often did Tom suffer under this severe method,
and rebel against it, and accuse his friend, both to his face
and in his own secret thoughts, of coldness, and want of
faith, and all manner of other sins of omission and commis-
sion. In the end, however, he generally came round, with
more or ‘less of rebellion, according to the severity of the
treatment, and acknowledge that, when Hardy brought him
down from riding the high horse, it was not without good
reason, and that the dust in which he was rolled was always
most wholesome dust.

For instance, there was no phrase more frequently in the
mouths of the party of progress than “the good cause.” It
was a fine big-sounding phrase, which could be used with
great offect in perorations of speeches at the Union, and was
sufficiently indefinite to be easily defended from ordinary
attacks, while it saved him who used it the trouble of ascer-
taining accurately for himself or settling for his hearers what
it really did mean. But, however satisfactory it might be
before promiscuous audiences, and so long as vehement
assertion or declaration was all that was required to uphold
it, this same “ good cause” was liable to come to much grief
when it had to get itself defined. Hardy was particularly
given to persecution‘on this subject, when he could get Tom,
and, perhaps, one or two others, in a quiet room by themselves.
While professing the utmost sympathy for “the good cause,”
and a hope as strong as theirs that all its enemies might find
themselves suspended to lamp-posts as soon as possible, he
would pursue it into corners from which escape was most
difficult, asking it and its supporters what it exactly was, and
driving them from one cloud-land to another, and from “ the
good cause” to the “people’s cause,” “the cause of labour,”
and other like troublesome definitions, until the great idea
seemed to have no shape or existence any longer even in their
own brains.

But Hardy’s persecution, provoking as it was for the time,
never went to the undermining of any real conviction in the
minds of his juniors, or the shaking of anything which did
not need shaking, but only helped them to clear their ideas
and brains as to what they were talking and thinking about,’
and gave them glimpses—soon clouded over again, but most
THIRD YEAR. 461°"

useful, nevertheless—of the truth, that there were a good
many knotty questions to be solved before a man could be
quite sure that he had found out the way to set the world
‘thoroughly to rights,.and heal all the ills that flesh is heir to.

Hardy treated another of his friend’s most favourite notions
even with less respect than this one of “the good cause.”
Democracy, that “ universal democracy,” which their favourite
author had recently declared to be “an inevitable fact of the
days in which we live,” was, perhaps, on the whole the pet
idea of the small section of liberal young Oxford, with whom
Tom was now hand and glove. They lost no opportunity of
worshipping it, and doing battlo for it ; and, indeed, did most
of them very truly beliove that that state of tho world which
this universal democracy was to bring about, and which was
coming no man could say how soon, was to be in fact that
age of peace and good-will which men had dreamt of in all
times, when the lion should lie down with the kid, and nation
should not vex nation any more.

After hearing something to this effect from Tom on several
occasions, Hardy cunningly lured him to his rooms on the
pretence of talking over the prospects of the boat club, and
then, having seated him by the fire, which he himself pro-
ceeded to assault gently with the poker, propounded suddenly
to him the question,

“Brown, [ should like to know what you mean by ‘de-
moctacy ?’”

Tom at once saw the trap into which he had fallon, and
made several efforts to break away, but unsuccessfully ; and,
being seated to a cup of tca, and allowed to smoke, was then
and there grievously oppressed, and mangled, and sat upon,
by his oldest and best friend. He took his ground carefully,
and propounded only what he felt sure that Hardy himself
would at once ‘accept,—what no man of any worth could
possibly take exception to. “He meant much moro,” he said,
“than this ; but for the present purpose it would be enough
for him to say that, whatever else it might mean, democracy
in his mouth always meant that every man should have a
share in the government of his country.”

Hardy, seeming to acquiesce, and making a sudden change
in the subject of their talk, decoyed his innocent guest away
from the thought of democracy for a few minutes, by holding
up to him the flag of hero-worship, in which worship Tom
was, of course, a sedulous believer. Then, having involved
him in most difficult country, his persecutor opened fire upon
him from masked batteries of the most deadly kind, the guns
being all from the armoury of his own prophets.

‘f
4,
462 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“You long for the rule of the ablest man, everywhere, at
all times? To find your ablest man, and then give him power,
and obey him—that you hold to be about the highest act of
wisdom which a nation can be capable of ?”

“Yes ; and you know you believe that too, Hardy, just as
firmly as I do.”

“T hope so. But then, how about our universal democracy,
and every man, having a share in the government of his
country ?”

Tom felt that his flank was turned ; in fact, the contrast of
’ his two beliefs had never struck him vividly before, and he
was consequently much confused. But Hardy went on tapping
a big coal gently with the poker, and gave him time to recover
himself and collect his thoughts. ‘

“T don’t mean, of course, that every man is to have an
actual share in the government,” he said at last. :

“But every man is somehow to have a share; and, if not
an actual one, I can’t see what the proposition comes to.”

“T call it having a share in the government when a man
has share in saying who shall govern him.”

“Well, you'll own that’s a vory differont thing. But, let’s
see ; will that find our wisest governor for us—letting all the
foolishest men in the nation have a say as to who he is to be ?”

“Come now, Hardy, I’ve heard you say that you are for
manhood suffrage.”

“That's another question ; you let in another idea there.
At present we are considering whether the vox populi is the
best test for finding your best man. I’m afraid all history is

, against you.”

“That's a good joke. Now, there I defy you, Hardy.”

“ Begin at the beginning, then, and let us see.”

“T suppose you'll say, then, that the Egyptian and Baby-
lonian empires were better than the little Jewish republic.”

“Republic! well, let that pass: But I never:heard that
the Jews elected Moses, or any of the judges.”

“Woll, never mind the Jews ; they’re an exceptional case ;
you can’t argue from them.”

“T don’t admit that. I believe just the contrary. But
go on.”

“Well, then, what do you say to the glorious Greek re-
publics, with Athens at the head of them 3” ’

“T say that no nation ever treated their best men so badly.
I see I must put on a lecture in Aristophanes for your special
benefit. Vain, irritable, shallow, suspicious old Demus, with
his two oboli in his cheek, and doubting only between Cleon
and the sausage-seller, which he shall choose for his wisest
raitip Year. 463

man—not to goverh, but to serve his whims and caprices.
You must call another witness, I think.”

“ But that’s a caricature.” .

“Take the picture, then, out of Thucydides, Plato, Xeno-
phon, how you will—you won't mend the matter much. You
shouldn't go so fast, Brown ; you won’t mind my saying so, I
_ know. You don’t get clear in your own mind before you ‘
' pitch into every one who comes across you, and so do your ,
own side (which I admit is mostly the right one) more harm |
' than good.” 28

Tom couldn’t stand being put down so summarily, and
fought over the ground from ono country to another, from Rome
to the United States, with all the arguments he could muster,
but with little success. That unfortunate first admission of
his, he felt it throughout, like a mill-stone round his neck,
and could not help admitting to himself, when he left, that
there was a good deal in Hardy’s concluding remark, —‘‘ You'll
find it rather a tough business to get your ‘universal demo-
cracy,’ and ‘government by the wisest, to pull together in
one coach.”

Notwithstanding all such occasional reverses and cold baths,
however, Tom went on strengthening himself in his new
opinions, and maintaining them with all the zeal of a convert.
The shelves of his bookcase, and the walls of his rooms, soon
began to show signs of the change which was taking place in
his ways of looking at men and things. Hitherto a framed
engraving of George III. had hung over his mantel-piece ;
but early in this, his third ycar, the framo had disappeared
for a few days, and when it reappeared, the solemn face of
John Milton looked out from it, while the honest monarch had
retired into a portfolio. A facsimile of Magna Charta soon
displaced a large coloured print of “A Day with the Pyche-
ley ;” and soon afterwards the death-warrant of Charles I.
with its grim and resolute rows of signaturos and seals, ap-
peared on the wall in a place of honour, in the neighbourhood
of Milton.

Squire Brown was passing through Oxford, and paid his |
son a visit soon after this last arrangement had been com- .
pleted. He dined in hall, at the high table, being still a
member of the college, and afterwards came with Hardy to
Tom’s rooms to have a quiet glass of wine, and spend the
evening with his son and a few of his friends, who had been
asked to meet “the governor.” ,

Tom had a struggle with himself whether he should not
remove the death-warrant into his bedroom for the evening,
and had actually taken it down with this view; but in the
464 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

end he could not stomach such a backsliding, and so restored
it to its place. “I have never concealed my opinions from
my father,” he thought, “though I don’t think he quite knows
what they are. But if he doesn’t, he ought, and the sooner
the better. I should be a sneak to try to hidethem. I know
he won't like it, but he is always just and fair, and will make
allowances. At any rate, up it goes again.”

And go he re-hung the death-warrant, but with the devout
secret hope that his father might not see it.

The wine-party went off admirably. The men were nice,
gentlemanly, intelligent fellows; and the squire, who had
been carefully planted by Tom with his back to the death-
warrant, enjoyed himself very much. At last they all went,
except Hardy; and now the nervous time approached. For
a short time longer the three sat at the wine-table, while
the squire enlarged upon the great improvement in young
men, and the habits of the University, especially in the
matter of drinking. ‘Tom had only opened three bottles
of port. In his time the men would have drunk certainly
not less than a bottle a man ; and other like remarks he made,
as he sipped his coffee, and then, pushing back his chair, said,
“ Well, Tom, hadn’t your servant better clear away, and then
we can draw round the fire, and have a talk.”

“Wouldn’t you like to take a turn while he is clearing?
There’s the Martyrs’ Memorial you haven't seen.”

“No, thank you. I know the place well enough. I don’t
come to walk about in the dark. Wesha’n’t be in your man’s
way.”

And so Tom’s scout came in to clear away, took out the
extra leaves of his table, put on the cloth, and laid tea. Dur-
ing these operations Mr. Brown was standing with his back
to the fire, looking about him as he talked : when there was
more space to move in, he began to walk up and down, and
very soon took to remarking the furniture and arrangements
of the room. One after another the pictures came under his
notice,—most of them escaped without comment, the squire
simply pausing a moment, and then taking up his walk again.
Magna Charta drew forth his hearty approval. It was a
capital notion to hang such things on your walls, instead of
bad prints of steeple-chases, or trash of that sort. ‘Ah,
here’s something else of the same kind. Why, Tom, what’s
this?” said the squire, as he paused before the death-warrant.
There was a moment or two of dead silence, while the squire’s
eye ran down the names, from Jo: Bradshaw to Miles Corbet ;
and then he turned, and came and sat down opposite to his
son. Tom expected his father to be vexed, but was not the
THIRD YEAR, 465

least prepared for the tone of pain, and sorrow, and anger, in
which he first inquired, and then remonstrated.

For some time past the squire and his son had not felt so
comfortable together as of old. Mr. Brown had been annoyed
by much that Tom had done in the case of Harry Winburn,
though he did not know all. There had sprung up a barrier
somehow or other between them, neither of them knew how.
Thoy had ofton felt ombarrassed at being left alone together
during the last year, and found that there were certain topics
which they could not talk upon, which they avoided by mutual
consent. Every now and then the constraint and embarrass-
ment fell off for a short time, for at bottom they loved and
appreciated one another heartily ; but the divergences in their
thoughts and habits’ had become very serious, and seemed
likely to increase rather than not. They felt keenly the chasm
between the two generations ; as they looked at one another
from the opposite banks, each in his secret heart blamed the
other in great measure for that which was the fault of neither.
Mixed with the longings which each felt for a better under-
standing was enough of reserve and indignation to prevent
them from coming to it. The discovery of their differences
was too recent, and they were too much alike m character and.
temper, for either to make large enough allowances for, or to
be really tolerant of the other.

This was the first occasion on which they had come to out-
spoken and serious difference ; and, though the collision had
been exceedingly painful to both, yet, when they parted for
the night, it was with a feeling of relief that the ice had been
thoroughly broken. Before his father left the room, Tom had
torn the facsimile of the death-warrant out of its frame, and
put it in the fire, protesting, however, at the same time, that,
though “he did this out of deference to his father, and was
deeply grieved at having given him pain, he could not and
would not give up his honest convictions, or pretend that they
were'changed, or even shaken.”

The squire walked back to his hotel deeply moved. Who
can wonder? He was a man full of living and vehement
convictions. One of his early recollections had been the
arrival in England of the news of the beheading of Louis
XVI. and the doings of the reign of terror. He had been
bred in the times when it was held impossible for a gentleman
or a Christian to hold such views as his son had been main-
taining, and, like many of the noblest Englishmen of his time
had gone with and accepted the creed of the day.

Tom remained behind, dejected and melancholy ; now ac-
cusing his father of injustice and bigotry, now longing to go

HH
466 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

after him, and give up everything. What were all his opinions
and convictions compared with his father’s confidence and
love? At breakfast the next morning, however, after cach of
them had had timo for thinking over what had passed, they
met with a cordiality which was as pleasant to cach as it was
unlooked for ; and from this visit of his father to him at
Oxford Tom, dated a new and more satisfactory epoch in their
intercourse. :

The fact had begun to dawn on the squire that the world
had changed a good deal since his time. He saw that young
men were much improved in some ways, and acknowledged
the fact heartily ; on the other hand, they had taken up with
a lot of new notions which he could not understand, and
thought mischievous and bad. Perhaps Tom might get over
them as he got to be older and wiser, and in the meantime he
must take the evil with the good. At any rate he was too fair
a man to try to dragoon his son out of anything which he
really belioved. Tom on his part gratefully accepted the
change in his father’s manner, and took all means of showing
his gratitude by consulting and talking freely to him on such
subjects as they could agree upon, which were numerous,
keeping in the back-ground the questions which had provoked
painful discussions between them. By degrees these even
could be tenderly approached ; and, now that they were ap-
proached in a different spirit, the honest beliefs of the father
and son no longer looked so monstrous to one another, the hard
and sharp outlines began to wear off, and the views of each of
them to be modified. Thus, bit by bit, by a slow but sure
process, a better understanding than ever was re-established
between them.

This beginning of a better state of things in his relations
with his father consoled Tom for many other matters that
seemed to go wrong with him, and was a constant bit of bright
sky to turn to when the rest of his horizon looked dark and
dreary, as it did often enough,

For it proved a very trying year to him, this his third and
last year at the University ; a year full of large dreams and
small performances, of unfulfilled hopes, and struggles to set
himself right, ending ever more surely in failure and dis-
appointment. The common pursuits of the place had lost
their freshness, and with it much of their charm. He was
beginning to feel himself in a cage, and to beat against the
bars of it,

Often, in spite of all his natural hopefulness, his heart
seemed to sicken and turn cold, without any apparent reason ;
his old pursuits palled on him, and he scarcely cared to turn
THIRD YEAR. 467

to new ones. What was it that made life so blank to him at
these times? How was it that he could not keep the spirit
within him alive and warm ?

It was easier to ask such questions than to get an answer.
Was it not this place he was living in, and the ways of it?
No, for the place and its ways were the same as ever, and his
own way of life in it better than ever before. Was it the
want of sight or tidings of Mary? Sometimes he thought so,
and then cast the thought away as treason. His love for her
was ever sinking deeper into him, and raising and purifying
him. Light and strength and life came from that source ;
craven weariness and coldness of heart, come from whence
they might, were not from that quarter. But precious as his
love was to him, and deeply as it affected his whole life, he
felt that there must be something beyond it—that its full
satisfaction would not be enough for him. The bed was too
narrow for a man to stretch himself on. What he was in
search of must underlie and embrace his human love, and
supportit. Beyond and above all private and personal desires
and hopes and longings, he was conscious of a restless crav-
ing and feeling about after something which he could not
grasp, and yet which was not avoiding him, which seemed
to be mysteriously laying hold of him and surrounding

The routine of chapels, and lectures, and reading for degree,
boating, cricketing, Union-debating—all well enough in their
way—left this vacuum unfilled. There was a groat outer
visible world, the problems and puzzles of which were rising
before him and haunting him more and more; and a great
inner and invisible world opening round him in awful depth.
He seemed to be standing on the brink of each—now, shiver-
ing and helpless, feeling like an atom about to be whirled into
the great flood and carried he knew not where—now, ready
to plunge in and take his part, full of hope and belief that
ho was meant to buffet in the strength of a man with the seen
and the unseen, and to be subdued by neither.

In such a year as this a bit of steady, bright blue sky was
a boon beyond all price, and so he felt it to be. And it was
not only with his father that Tom regained lost ground in this
year. He was in a state of mind in which he could not bear
to neglect or lose any particle of human sympathy, and so he
turned to old friendships, and revived the correspondence with
several of his old school-fellows, and particularly with Arthur,
to the great delight of the latter, who had mourned bitterly
over the few half-yearly lines, all he had got from Tom of
late, in answer to his own letters, which had themselves, under

HH2
468 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

.the weight of neglect, gradually dwindled down to mere formal
matters. A specimen of the later correspondence may fitly
close the chapter :—

‘St. AMBROSE.

“Dear Grorpie,—I can hardly pardon you for having
gone to Cambridge, though you have got a Trinity scholar-
ship—which I suppose is, on the whole, quite as good a thing
as anything of the sort you could have got up here. I had so
looked forward to having you here though, and now I feel
that we shall probably scarcely ever meet. You will go your
way and I mine; and one alters so quickly, and gets into such
strange new grooves, that unless one sees 2 man about once a
week at least, you may be just like strangers when you are
thrown together again. If you had come up here it would
have been all right, and we should have gone on all through
life as we were when I left school, and as I know we should
be again in no time if you had come here. But now, who can
tell 4

“What makes me think so much of this is a visit of a few
days that East paid me just before his regiment went to India,
I feel that if he hadn’t done it, and we had not mot till he
came back—years hence perhaps—we should never have
been to one another what we shall be now. The break would
have been too great. Now it’s all right. You would have
so liked to see the old fellow grown into a man, but not‘a
bit altered—just the quiet, old way, pooh-poohing you, and
pretending to care for nothing, but ready to cut the nose off
his face, or go through fire and water for you at a pinch,
if you'll only Jet him go his own way about it, and have
his grumble, and say that he does it all from the worst
possible motives. ’

“ But we must try not to lose hold of one another, Geordie.
It would be a bitter day to me if I thought anything of the
kind could ever happen again. We must write more to one
another. I’ve been awfully lazy, I know, about it for this
last year and more; but then I always thought you would be
coming up here, and so that it didn’t matter much. But now
I will turn over a new leaf, and write to you about ‘my
secret thoughts, my works and ways ;’ and you must do it too,
If we can only tide over the next year or two we shall get into
plain sailing, and I suppose it will all go right then. At
least, I can’t believe that one is likely to have many such up-
and-down years in one’s life as the last two. If one is, good:
ness knows where I shall end. You know the outline of what
has happened to me from my letters, and the talks we have
had in my flying visits to the old school; but you haven't a
i
' THIRD YEAR. 469

notion of the troubles of mind I’ve been in, and the changes
Pve gone through. I can hardly believe it myself when I
look back. However, I’m quite sure I have got on; that’s
my great comfort. It is a strange blind sort of world, that’s a
fact, with lots of blind alleys, down which you go blundering
in the fog after some seedy gas-light, which you. take for the
sun till you run against the wall at the end, and find out that
the light is a gas-light, and that there’s no thoroughfare. But
for all that one does get on. You get to know the sun’s light
better and better, and to keep out of the blind alleys ; and lam
surer and surer every day, that there’s always sunlight enough
for every honest fellow—though I didn’t think so a few
months back—and a good sound road under his feet, if he
will only step out on it.

“Talking of blind alleys puts me in mind of your last.
Aren’t you going down a blind alley, or something worse ?
There’s no wall to bring you up, that I can see, down the
turn you've taken; and then, what’s the practical use of it
all? What good would you do to yourself, or any one else, if
you could get to the end of it? Ican’t for the life of me fancy,
I confess, what you think will come of speculating about
necessity and free will. I only know that I can hold out my
hand before me, and can move it to the right or left, despite of
all powers in heaven or earth. As I sit here writing to you
I can let into my heart, and give the reins to, all sorts of
devils’ passions, or to the Spirit of God. ‘Well, that’s enough
forme. I know it of myself, and I believe you know it of'
yourself, and everybody knows it of themselves or himself;
and why you can’t be satisfied with that, passes my compre-
hension. As if one hasn’t got puzzles enough, and bothers
enough, under one’s nose, without going a-field after a lot of!
metaphysical quibbles. No, I’m wrong,—not going a-field,—
anything one has to go a-field for is all right. What a fellow
meets outside himself he isn’t responsible for, and must do
tho best he can with. But to go on for ever looking inside
of one self, and groping about amongst one’s own sensations,
and ideas, and whimsies of one kind and another, I can’t
conceive a poorer line of business than that. Don’t you get
into it now, that’s a dear boy.

“Very likely you'll tell me you can’t help it; that every
one has his own difficulties, and must fight them out, and that
mine are one sort, and yours another. Well, perhaps you
may be right. I hope I’m getting to know that my plummet
isn’t to measure all the world. But it does seem oa pity that
men shouldn’t be thinking ahout how to cure some of the
wrongs which poor dear old England is pretty near dying of,
470 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

instead of taking the edge off their brains, and spending all
their steam in speculating about all kinds of things, which
wouldn’t make any poor man in the world—or rich one either,
for that matter—a bit better off, if they were all found out,
and settled to-morrow. ‘But here I am at the end of my paper.
_ Don’t be angry at my jobation ; but write me a long answer
of your own free will, and believe me ever affectionately
‘yours, ’ “oT, B”

CHAPTER XLITI.
AFTERNOON VISITORS.

Miss Mary Porter was sitting alone in the front drawing-
room of her father’s house, in Belgravia, on the afternoon of a
summer's day in this same year. Two years and more have
passed over her head since we first met her, and she may be
a thought more sedate and better dressed, but there is no
other change to be noticed in her. The room was for the
most part much like other rooms in that quarter of the world.
There were few luxuries in the way of furniture which fallen
man can desire which were not to be found there ; but, over
and above this, there was an elegance in the arrangement of
all the nic-nacs and ornaments, and an appropriateness and
good taste in the placing of every piece of furniture and vase
of flowers, which showed that a higher order of mind than the
upholsterer’s or housemaid’s was constantly overlooking and
working there. Everything seemed to be in its exact place,
in the best place which could have been thought of for it, and
to be the best thing which could have been thought of for the
place. And yet this perfection did not strike you particularly
at first, or surprise you in any way, but sank into you gradu-
ally, so that, until you forced yourself to consider the matter,
you could not in the least say why the room had such a very
pleasant effect on you.

. The young lady to whom this charm was chiefly owing was
sitting by a buhl work-table, on which lay her embroidery and
a book, She was reading a letter, which seemed deeply to
interest her; for she did not hear the voice of the butler,
who had just opened the door and disturbed her solitude,
until he had repeated for the second time, “Mr. Smith.”
Then Mary jumped up, and, hastily folding her letter, put it
into her pocket. She was rather provoked at having allowed
herself to be caught there alone by afternoon visitors, and
with the servants for having let any one in; nevertheless,
AFTERNOON VISITORS. 471

she welcomed Mr. Smith with a cordiality of manner which
perhaps rathor moro than represented her real feclings, and,
with a ‘let mamma know,” to the butler, set to work to
entertain her visitor. She would have had no difficulty in
doing this under ordinary circumstances, as all that Mr. Smith
wanted was a good listener. He was a somewhat heavy and
garrulous old gentleman, with many imaginary, and a few real
troubles, the constant contemplation of which served to occupy
the whole of his own time, and as much of his friends’ as
he could get them to give him. But scarcely had he settled .
himself comfortably in an easy chair opposite to his victim,
when the butler entered again, and announced, “Mr. St.
Cloud.”

Mary was now no longer at’ her ease. Her manner of
receiving her new visitor was constrained ; and yet it was
clear that he was on easy terms in the house. She asked
the butler where his mistress was, and hoard with vexation
that she had gone out, but was expected home almost imme-
diately. Charging him to let her mother know the moment
she returned, Mary turned to her unwelcome task, and sat
herself down again with such resignation as she was capable
of at the moment. The conduct of her visitors was by no
means calculated to restore her composure, or make her
comfortable between them. She was sure that they knew
one another; but neither of them would speak to the other.
There the two sat on, each resolutely bent on tiring the other
out; the elder crooning on to her in an undertone, and ignoring
the younger, who in his turn put on an air of serene uncon-
sciousness of the presénce of his senior, and gazed about the
room, and watched Mary, making occasional remarks to her
as if no one else were present. On and on they sat, her only
comfort being the hope that neither of them would have the
conscience to stay on after the departure of the other.

‘Between them Mary was driven to her wits’ end, and looked
for her mother or for some new visitor to come to her help,
as Wellington looked for the Prussians on the afternoon of
June 18th. At last youth and insolence prevailed, and Mr.
Smith rose to go. Mary got up too, and after his departure
remained standing, in hopes that ber other visitor would take
the hint and follow the good example. But St. Cloud had
not the least intention of moving.

“ Really your good-nature is quite astonishing, Miss Porter,”
he said, leaniig forwards with his elbows on his knees, and
following the pattern of one of the flowers on the carpet with
his cane, which gave him the oppottunity of showing his
delicately gloved hand to advantage,
472 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

“ Indeed, why do you think so?” she asked, taking up her
embroidery, and pretending to begin working.

“ Have I not good reason, after sitting this half hour and
seeing you enduring old Smith—the greatest bore in London ?
I don’t believe there are three houses where the servants dare
let him in. It would be as much as their places are worth.
No porter could hope for a character who let him in twice in
the season.”

“Poor Mr. Smith,” said Mary, smiling. “But you know
we have no porter, and,” she suddenly checked herself, and
added gravely, “he is an old friend, and papa and mamma
like him.”

“But the wearisomeness of his grievances! Those three
sons in tho Plungers, and their eternal scrapes! How you
could manage to keep a civil face! It was a masterpiece of
polite patience.”

“ Indeed, I am very sorry for his troubles, I wonder where
mamma can be? We are going to drive. Shall you be in
the Park? I think it must be time for me to dress.”

“T hope not. It is so seldom that I see you except in
crowded rooms. Can you wonder that I should value such
a chance as this?”

“Were you at the new opera last night?” asked Mary,
carefully avoiding his eye, and sticking to her work, but
scarcely able to conceal her nervousness and discomfort.

“Yes, I was there ; but”——

“Oh, do tell me about it, then; I hear it was a great
success.”

* Another time. We can talk of the opera anywhere. Let
me speak now of something else. You must have seen, Miss
Porter” :

“ How can you think I will talk of anything till you have
told me about the opera?” interrupted Mary, rapidly and ner-
vously. “ Was Grisi very fine? The chief part was composed
for her, was it not? and dear old Lablache””——

“T will tell you all about it presently, if you will let me,
in five minutes’ time—TI only ask for five minutes ”

“Five minutes! Oh, no, not five seconds. I must hear
about the new opera before I will listen to a word of any-
thing else.”

“Indeed, Miss Porter, you must pardon me for disobey-
ing. But I may not have such a chance as this again for
months.” .

With which prelude he drew his chair towards hers, and
Mary was just trying to make up her mind to jump up and
run right out of the room, when the door opened, and the

 

 
AFTERNOON VISITORS. 473

butler walked in with o card on a waiter. Mary had never
felt so relieved in her life, and could have hugged the solemn
old domestic when he said, presenting the card to her,

“The gentleman asked -if Mrs. or you were in, Miss, and
told me to bring it up, and find whether you would see him
on particular business. He’s waiting in the hall.”

“Oh yes, I know. Of course. Yes, say I will see him
directly. I mean, ask him to come up now.”

“Shall I show him into the library, Miss ?”

“No, no; in here; do you understand ?”

“Yes, Miss,” replied the butler, with a deprecatory look at
St. Cloud, as much as to say, “You see I can’t help it,” in
answer to his impatient telegraphic signals. St. Cloud had
been very liberal to the Porters’ servants.

Mary’s confidence had all come back. Relief was at hand.
Sho could trust herself to hold St. Cloud at bay now, os it
could not be for more than a few minutes. Whon she turned
to him the nervousness had quite’ gone out of her manner,
and she spoke in her old tone again, as she laid her embroi-
dery aside.

“How lucky that you should be here. Look; I think
you must be acquainted,” she said, holding out the card
which the butler had given her to St. Cloud.

He took it mechanically, and looked at it, and then
crushed it in his hand, and was going to speak. She pre-
vented him,

' “T was right, I’m sure. You do know him?”

“T didn’t see the name,” be said, almost fiercely.

“The name on the card which I gave you just now 1—Mr.
Grey. He is curate in one of the poor Westminster districts.
You must remember him, for he was of your college. He was
at Oxford with you. I made his acquaintance at the Com-
memoration. He will be so glad to meet an old friend.” __

St. Cloud was too much provoked to answer; and the
next moment the door opened, and the butler announced
Mr. Grey.

Grey came into the room timidly, carrying his head a little
down as usual, and glancing uncomfortably about in the manner
which used to make Drysdale say that he always looked as
though he had just been robbing a hen-roost. Mary went
forward to meet him, holding out her hand cordially.

“‘T am so glad to see you,” she said. “ How kind of you
to call when you are so busy! Mamma will be here directly.
I think you must remember Mr. St. Cloud—Mr. Groy.”

St. Cloud’s patience was now quite gone. Ho drew him-
self up, making the slightest possible inclination towards
474 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

-Grey, and then, without taking any further notice of him,
turned to Mary with a look which he meant to be full of
pitying admiration for her, and contempt of her visitor ; but,
as she would not look at him, it.was thrown away. So he
made his bow and stalked out of the room, angrily debating
with himself, as he went down the stairs, whether she could

_ have understood him. He was so fully convinced of the
sacrifice which a man in his position was making in paying
serious attentions to a girl with little fortune and no con-
nexion, that he soon consoled himself in the belief that her
embarrassment only arose from shyness, and that the moment
he could explain himself she would be his obedient and
grateful servant. Meantime Mary sat down opposite to the
curate, and listened to him as he unfolded his errand awkwardly
enough, An execution was threatened in the house of a poor
struggling widow, whom Mrs. Porter had employed to do
needlework occasionally, aud who was behind with her rent
through sickness. He was afraid that her things would be
taken and sold in the morning, unless she could borrow two
sovereigns. He had so many claims on him that he could
not lend her the money himself, and so had come out to see
what he could do amongst those who knew her.

By the time Grey had arrived at the end of his story,
Mary had made up her mind—not without a little struggle
—to sacrifice the greater part of what was left of her quarter’s
allowance. After all, it would only be wearing cleaned gloves
instead of new ones, and giving up her new riding-hat till
next quarter. So she jumped up, and said gaily, “Is that
all, Mr. Grey? I have the money, and I will lend it her
with pleasure. I will fetch it directly.” She tripped off to
her room, and soon came back with the money; and just then
the butler came in with tea, and Mary asked Mr. Grey to take

‘ some. He looked tired, she said, and, if he would wait a
little time, he would see her mother, who would be sure to
do something more for the poor woman.

Grey had risen to leave, and was standing, hat in hand,
ready to go. He was in the habit of reckoning with him-
self strictly for every minute of his day, and was never quite
satisfied with himself unless he was doing the most disagree-
able thing which circumstances for the time being allowed him
to do, But greater and stronger men than Grey, from Adam
downwards, have yielded to the temptation before which he
now succumbed. He looked out of the corners of his eygs ;
and there was something so fresh and bright in the picture of
the dainty little tea-service and the young lady behind it, the
tea which she was beginning to pour out smelt so refreshing,
AFTERNOON VISITORS. "AWB

and her hand and figure looked so pretty in the operation,
that, with a sigh of departing resolution, he gave in, put his
hat on the floor, and sat down opposite to the tempter.

Grey took a cup of tea, and then another. He thought he
had never tasted anything so good. The delicious rich cream,
and the tempting plate of bread and butter, were too much
for him. He fairly gave way, and resigned himself to physical
enjoyment, and sipped his tea, and looked over his cup at
Mary, sitting there bright and kind, and ready to go on
pouring out for him to any extent. It seemed to him as if
an atmosphere of light and joy surrounded hey, within the
circlé of which he was sitting and absorbing. ‘Tea was the
only stimulant that Grey ever took, and he had more need
of it than usual, for he had given away the chop, which was
his ordinary dinner, to a starving woman. He was faint with
fasting and the bad air of the hovels in which he had been
spending his morning. The elegance of the room, the smell
of the flowers, the charm of companionship with a young
woman of his own rank, and the contrast of the whole to
his common way of life, carried him away, and hopes and
thoughts began to creep into his head to which he had long
been a stranger. Mary did her very best to make his visit
pleasant to him. She had a great respect for the self-denying
life which she knew he was leading; and the nervousness
and shyness of his manners were of a kind, which, instead
of infecting her, gave her confidence, and made hor feel quite
at her ease with him. She was so grateful to him for having
delivered her out of her recent embarrassment, that she was
more than usually kind in her manner.

She saw how he was enjoying himself, and thought what
good it must do him to forget his usual occupations for a
short time. So she talked positive gossip to him, asked his
opinion on riding-habits, and very soon was telling him the
plot of a new novel which she had just been reading, with an
animation and playfulness which would have warmed the
heart of an anchorite. For a short quarter of an hour Grey
resigned himself; but at the end of that time he became
suddenly and painfully conscious of what he was doing, and
stopped himself short in the middle of an altogether worldly
compliment, which he detected himself in the act of paying
to his too fascinating young hostess. He felt that retreat was
his only chance, and so grasped his hat again, and rose with a
deep sigh, and a sudden change of manner which alarmed

ef hope you are not ill, Mr. Grey? ” she said, anxiously.
“No, not the least, thank you. But—but—in short, I
476 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

must go to my work. I ought to apologize, indeed, for having
stayed so long.”

“Oh, you have not been here more than twenty minutes,
Pray stay, and see mamma; she must be in directly.”

“Thank you; you are very kind. I should like it very
much, but indeed [ cannot.”

Mary felt that it would be no kindness to press it further,
and so rose herself, and held out her hand. Grey took it,
and it is not quite certain to this day whether he did not press
it in that farewell shake more than was absolutely necessary.
If he did, we may be quite sure that he administered exem-
plary punishment to himself afterwards for so doing. He
would gladly have left now, but his over sensitive conscience
forbade it. He had forgotten his office, he thought, hitherto,
but there was time yet not to be altogether false to it. So he
looked grave and shy again, and said,—

“You will not be offended with me, Miss Porter, if I speak
to you as a clergyman %”

Mary was a little disconcerted, but answered almost i imme-
diately, —

i. Oh, no. Pray say anything which you think you ought
to sa,

“T am afraid there must be a great temptation in living
always in beautiful rooms like this, with no one but prosperous
people. Do you not think so?”

‘ “But one cannot help it. Surely, Mr. Grey, you do not
think it can be wrong?”

“No, not wrong. But it must be very trying. It must be
Very necessary to do something to lessen the temptation of
such a life.”

“T do not understand you. What could one do?”

“Might you not take up some work which would not be
pleasant, such as visiting the poor?”

“T should be very glad ; but we do not know any poor.
people in London.”

“There are very miserable districts nocar here.”

‘Yes, and papa and mamma are very kind, I know, in
helping whenever they can hear of a proper case. But it is
so different from the country, There it is so easy and pleasant
to go into the cottages where every one knows you, and most
of the people work for papa, and one is sure of being welcomed,
and that nobody will be rude. But here I should be afraid.
It would seem so impertinent to go to people's houses of
whom one knows nothing. I should never know what to
say. »

“Tt is not easy or pleasant duty which is the best for us,
AFTERNOON VISITORS. AUT

Great cities could never be evangelized, Miss Porter, if all
ladies thought as you do.”

“T think, Mr. Grey,” said Mary, rather nettled, “that every
one has not the gift of lecturing the poor, and setting them
‘right ; and, if they have not, they had better not try to do it.
And as for all the rest, there is plenty of the same kind of
work to be done, I believe, amongst the people of one’s own
class.”

“You are joking, Miss Porter.” '

“No, Iam not joking at all. I believe that rich people
are quite as unhappy as poor. Their troubles are not the
same, of course, and are generally of their own making. But
one of the mind are worse, surely, than troubles of the

10 yt »”

“Certainly ; and it is the highest work of the ministry to
deal with spiritual trials. But, you will pardon me for saying
that I cannot think this is the proper work for—for—”

“For me, you would say. We must be speaking of quite
different things, I am sure. I only mean that I can listen to
the troubles and grievances of any one who likes to talk of
them to me, and try to comfort them a little, and to make
things look brighter, and to keep cheerful. It is not easy
always even to do this.”

“Tt is not, indeed. But would it not be easier if you could
do as I suggest? Going out of one’s own class, and trying to
care for and to help the poor, braces the mind more than any-
thing else.”

«You ought to know my cousin Katie,” said Mary, glad to
make a diversion ; “that is just what she would say. Indeed,
I think you must have seen her at Oxford ; did you not?”

“T believe I had the honour of meeting her at the rooms
of a friend. I think he said she was also a cousin of his.”

“Mr. Brown, you mean? Yes; did you know him?”

“Oh, yes. You will think it strange, as we are so very
unlike ; but I knew him better than I knew almost any one.”

“Poor Katie is very anxious about him. I hope you
thought well of him. You do not think he is likely to go
very wrong?”

“No, indeed. I could wish he were sounder on Church
questions, but that may come. Do you khow that he is in
London?”

“T had heard go.”

“He has been several times to my schools. He used to
help me at Oxford, and has a capital way with the boys.”

At this moment the clock on tho mantel-pieco struck o
quarter. Ihe sound touched some chord in Grey which made
A78 TOM BROWN ‘AT OXFORD.

him grasp his hat again, and prepare for another attempt to
get away. :

“T hope you will pardon—”’ He pulled himself up short,
in the fear lest he were going again to be false (as he
deemed it) to his calling, and stood the picture of nervous
discomfort.

Mary came to his relief. “I am sorry you must go, Mr.
Grey,” she said; “I should so like to have talked to you
more about Oxford. You will call again soon, I hope?”

At which last speech Grey, casting an imploring glance at
her, muttered something which she could not catch, and fled
from the room.

Mary stood looking dreamily out of the window for a few
minutes, till the entrance of her mother roused her, and she
turned to pour out a cup of tea for her.

“Tt is cold, mamma dear; do let me make some fresh.”

“No, thank you, dear; this will do very well,”.said Mrs.
Porter ; and she took off her bonnet and sipped the cold tea.
Mary watched her silently for a minute, and then, taking the
letter she had been reading, out of her pocket, said,

“T have a letter from Katie, mamma.”

Mrs, Porter took the letter and read it; and, as Mary still
watched, she saw a puzzled look coming over her mother’s
face. Mrs. Porter finished the letter, and then looked stealthily
at Mary, who on her side was now busily engaged in putting
up the tea-things.

“Tt is very embarrassing,” said Mrs. Porter.

‘What, mamma?”

“Oh, of course, my dear, I mean Katie's telling us of her
cousin’s being in London, and sending us his address—~” and
then she paused.

“Why, mamma?”

“Your papa will have to make up his mind whether he
will ask him to the house. Katie would surely never have
told him that she has written.”

“Mr, and Mrs. Brown were so very kind. It would seem
so strange, so ungrateful, not even to ask him.”

“T am afraid he is not the sort of young man—in short, I
must speak to your papa.”

Mrs, Porter looked hard at her daughter, who was still
busied with the tea-things. She had risen, bonnet in hand,
to leave the room ; but now changed her mind, and, crossing
to’her daughter, put her arm round her neck. Mary looked
up steadily into her eyes, then blushed slightly, and said
quietly,

“No, mamma ; indeed, it is not as you think.”
AFTERNOON VISITORS. 479

Her mother stooped and kissed her, and left the room,
telling her to get dressed, as the carriage would be round in a
few minutes.

Her trials for the day were not over. She could see b
their manner at dinner that her father and mother had been
talking about her. Her father took her to a ball in the
evening, where they met St. Cloud, who fastened himself to
them. She was dancing a quadrille, and her father stood near
her, talking confidentially to St. Cloud. In the intervals of
the dance scraps of their conversation reached her.

“You knew him, then, at Oxford?”

“Yes, very slightly.” 4

“T should like to ask you now, as a friend—” Here Mary’s
partner reminded her that she ought to be dancing. When
she had returned to her place again she heard—

“You think, then, that it was a bad business ?”

“Tt was notorious in the college. We never had any doubt
on the subject.”

“My niece has told Mrs. Porter that there really was
nothing wrong in it.”

“Indeed? Iam happy to hear it.”

“T should like to think well of him, as he is a connexion
of my wife. In other respects now—” Here again she was
carried away by the dante, and, when she returned, caught
the end of a sentence of St. Cloud’s, “‘ You will consider what
I have said in confidence?”

“Certainly,” answered Mr. Porter; “and I am exceedingly
obliged to you;” and then the dance was over, and Mary
returned to her father’s side. She had never enjoyed a ball
less than this, and persuaded her father to leave early, which
he was delighted to do.

When she reached her own room Mary took off her wreath
and ornaments, and then sat down and fell into a brown
study, which lasted for some time. At last she roused herself
with a sigh, and thought she had never had so tiring a day,
though she could hardly tell why, and felt half inclined to
have a good cry, if she could only have made up her mind
what about. However, being a sensible young woman, she
resisted the temptation, and, hardly taking the trouble to rolt
up her hair, went to bed and slept soundly.

Mr. Porter found his wife sitting up for him; they were
evidently both full of the same subject.

“Well, dear?” she said, as he entered the room.

Mr. Porter put down his candle, and shook his head.

“You don think Katie can bo right then? Sho must
have capital opportunities of judging, you know, dear.”
480 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“But she is no judge. What cana girl like Katie know
about such things 7”

“Well, dear, do you know I really cannot think there was
anything very wrong, though I did think so at first, I own.”

“But I find that his character was bad—decidedly bad—
always. Young St. Cloud didn’t like to say much to me;
which was natural, of course. Young men never like to
betray one another; but I could see what he thought. He is
a right-minded young man, and very agreeable.”

“1 do not take to him very much.”

“His connexions and prospects, too, are capital.. I some-
times think he has a fancy for Mary. Haven't you remarked
it?”

“Yes, dear. But as to the other matter? Shall you ask
him here?”

“Well, dear, I do not think there is any need. He is only
in town, I suppose, for a short time, and it is not at all likely
that we should know where he is, you see.”

“But if he should call?”

“Of course then we must be civil. We can consider then
what is to be done.”

 

CHAPTER XLIV.
THE INTERCEPTED LETTER-BAG.

“Dear Katiz,—At home, you see, without having an-
swered your last kind letter of counsel and sympathy. But
I couldn’t write in town, I was in such a queer state all the
time. I enjoyed nothing, not even the match at Lord’s, or
the race; only walking at night in the square, and watching
her window, and seeing her at a distance in Rotten Row.

“T followed your advice at last, though it went against the
grain uncommonly. It did seem so unlike what I had a right
to expect from them—after all the kindness my father and
mother had shown them when they came into our neighbour-
hood, and after I had been so intimate there, running in and
out just like a son of their own—that they shouldn’t take the
slightest’ notice of me all the time I was in London. I
shouldn’t have wondered if you hadn’t explained ; but after
that, and after you had told them my direction, and when
they knew that I was within five minutes’ walk of their house
constantly (for they knew all about Grey’s schools, and that I
was there three or four times a-week), I do think it was too
bad. However, as I was going to tell you, I went at last, for
THE INTERCEPTED LETTER-BAG. 481

I couldn’t leave town without trying to see her ; and I believe
I have finished it all off. I don’t know. I’m very low about
it, at any rate, and want to tell you all that passed, and to
hear what you think. I have no one to consult but you,
Katie. What should I do without you? But you were born
to help and comfort all the world. JI shan’t rest till I know
what you think about this last crisis in my history.

“T put off going till my last day in town, and then called
twice. The first time, ‘not at home.’ But I was determined
now to see somebody and make out something ; so I left my
card, and a message that, as I was leaving town noxt day, I
would call again. When I called again at about six o’clock,
I was shown into the library, and presently your uncle came
in. I felt very uncomfortable, and I think he did too; but
he shook hands cordially enough, asked why I had not called
before, and said he was sorry to hear I was going out of town
so soon. Do you believe he meant it? I didn’t. But it put
me out, because it made it look as if it had been my fault that
I hadn't been there before. I said I didn’t know that he
would have liked me to call, but I felt that he had got the
best of the start.

“Then he asked after all at home, and talked of his boys,

and how they were getting on at school. By this time I had
got my head again ; so I went back to my calling, and said that
IT had felt I could never come to their house as a common
acquaintance, and, as I did not know whether they would ever
let me come in any other capacity, I had kept away till
now.
“Your uncle didn’t like it, I know; for he got up and
walked about, and then said he didn’t understand me. Well,
T was quite reckless by this time. It was my last chance, I
felt ; so I looked hard into my hat, and said that I had been
over head and ears in love with Mary for two years. Of
course there was no getting out of the business aftor that. I
kept on staring into my hat; so I don’t know how he took
it; but the first thing he said was that he had had some sus-
picions of this, and now my confession gave him a right to
ask me several questions. In the first place, Had I ever
spoken to her? No; never directly. What did I mean by
directly? I meant that I had never either spoken or written
to her on the subject—in fact, I hadn’t seen her except at a
distance for the last two years—but I could not say that she
might not have. found it out from my manner. Had IJ ever
told any one else? No. And this was quite true, Katie, for
both you and Hardy found it out.: |

“ He took a good many turns before speaking again. Then

II
482 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

he said I had acted as a gentleman hitherto, and he should be
very plain with me. Of course I must seo that, looking at
my prospects and his daughter's it could not be an engagement
which he could look on with much favour from a worldly
point of view. Nevertheless, he had the highest respect and
regard for my family, so that, if in some years’ time I was in
a position to marry, he should not object on this score ; but
there were other matters which were in his eyes of more im-
portance. He had heard (who could have told him?) that I
had taken up very violent opinions—opinions which, to say
nothing more of them, would very much damage my prospects
of success in life; and that I was in the habit of associating
with the advocates of such opinions—persons who, he must
say, were not fit companions for a gentleman—and of writing
violent articles in low revolutionary newspapers, such as the
Wessex Freeman. Yes, I confessed I had written. Would T
give up these things? I had a great mind to say flat, No,
and I believe I ought to have; but as his tone was kind, I
couldn’t help trying to meet him. So I said I would give up
writing or speaking publicly about such matters, but I
couldn’t pretend not to believe what I did believe. Perhaps,
as my opinions had altered so much already, very likely they
might again.

“He seemed to be rather amused at that, and said he sin-
cerely hoped they might. . But now came the most serious
point : he had heard very bad stories of me at Oxford, but he
would not press me with them. There were too few young
men whose lives would bear looking into for him to insist
much on such matters, and he was ready to let bygones be
bygones. But I must remember that he had himself seen me
in one very awkward position. I broke in, and said I had
hoped that had been explained to him. I could not defend
my Oxford life; I could not defend myself as to this par-
ticular case at one time; but there had been nothing in it
that I was ashamed of since before the time I knew his
daughter.

“On my honour had I absolutely and entirely broken off
all relations with her? He had been told that I still kept up
a correspondence with her.

“Yes, I still wrote to her, and saw her occasionally ; but it
was only to give her news of a young man from her village,
who was now serving in India. He had no other way of
communicating with her.

“Tt waa a most curious arrangement ;, did I mean that this
young man was going to be married to her?

“T hoped so.
THE INTERCEPTED LETTER-BAG. 483

“ Why should he not write to her at once, if they were
engaged to be married ?

“They were not exactly engaged; it was rather hard to—
explain. Here your uncle seemed to lose patience, for he in-
terrupted me and said, ‘ Really it must be clear to me, as a
reasonable man, that, if this connexion were not absolutely
broken off, there must be an end of everything, so far as his
daughter was concerned. Would I give my word of honour
to break it off at once, and completely?’ I tried to explain
again ; but he would have nothing but ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Dear
Katie, what could Ido? I have written to Patty that, till I
dio, she may always reckon on mo as on a brother; and I have
promised Harry never to lose sight of her, and to let her know
everything that happens to him. Your uncle would not hear
me; so I said, No. And he said, ‘Then our interview had
better end,’ and rang the bell. Somebody, I’m sure, has been
slandering me to him; who can it be?

“J didn’t say another word, or offer to shake hands, but
got up and walked out of the room, as it was no good waiting
for the servant to come. "When I got into the hall the front
-door was open, and I heard her voice. I stopped dead short.
She was saying something to some people who had been riding
with her. The next moment the door shut, and she tripped
in in her riding-habit, and grey gloves, and hat, with the
dearest little grey plume in it. She went humming along, and
up six or eight steps, without seeing me. Then I moved a
stop, and she stopped and looked, and gavo a start. I don’t
know whether my face was awfully miserable, but, when our
eyes met, hers seemed to fill with pity, and uneasiness, and
inquiry, and the bright look to melt away altogether ; and then
she blushed, and ran down stairs again, and held out her hand,
saying, ‘I am so glad to see you, after all this long time.’ I
pressed it, but I don’t think I said anything. I forget; the
butler came into the hall, and stood by the door. She paused
another moment, looked confused, and then, as tho library
door opened, went away up stairs, with a kind ‘good-bye.’
She dropped a little bunch of violets, which she had worn in
the breast of her habit, as she went away. I went and picked
them up, although your uncle had now come out of the library,
and then made the best of my way into the street.

“There, Katie, I have told you everything, exactly as it
happened. Do write to me, dear, and tell me, now, what you
think, Is it all over? What canI do? Can you do any-
thing for me? I feel it is better in one respect. Her father
can never say now that I didn’t tell him all about it. But
what is to happen? I amsoxestless. I can settle to nothing,

112
484. TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

and do nothing, but fish. I moon away all my time by the
water-side, dreaming. But I don’t mean to let it beat me
much longer. Here’s the fourth day since I saw her. I came
away the next morning. I shall give myself a week; and,
dear, do write me a long letter at once, and interpret it all to
me. A woman knows so wonderfully what things mean. But
don’t make it cut better than you really think. Nobody can
stop my going on loving her, that’s a comfort; and while I
can do that, and don’t know that she loves anybody else, I
ought to be happier than any other man in the world. Yes,
I ought to be, but I ain’t. I will be, though ; see if I won't.
Heigho! Do write directly, my dear counsellor, to your
affectionate cousin, T. B.

_“P.§.—I had almost forgotten my usual budget. I enclose
my last from India. You will see by it that Harry is getting
on famously. I am more glad than I can tell you that my
friend East has taken him as his servant. He couldn’t be
under a better master. Poor Harry! I sometimes think his
case is more hopeless than my own. How is it to come right?
or mine 4”

“( ENGLEBOURN.

“Derar Covsin,—You will believe how I devoured your
letter ; though, when I had read the first few lines and saw
what was coming, it made me stop and tremble. At first I
could have cried over it for vexation ; but, now I have thought
about it a little, I really do not see any reason to be dis-
couraged. At any rate, Uncle Robert now knows all about
it, and will get used to the idea, and Mary seems to have
received you just as you ought to have wished that she should.
Tam thankful that you have left off pressing me to write to
her about you, for Iam sure that would not be honourable ;
and, to reward you, I enclose a letter of hers, which came
yesterday. You will see that she speaks with such pleasure
of having just caught a glimpse of you that you need not
regret the shortness of the interview. You could not expect
her to say more, because, after all, she can only guess ; and I
cannot do more than answer as if I were quite innocent too.
I am sure you will be very thankful to me some day for not
having been your mouthpiece, as I was so very near being.
You need not return the letter. I suppose I am getting more
hopeful as I grow older—indeed, I am sure I am; for three
or four years ago I should have been in despair about you,
and now I am nearly sure that all will come right.

“Bat, indeed, cousin Tom, you cannot, or ought not to
wonder at Uncle Robort’s objecting to your opinions. And
THE INTERCEPTED LETTER-BAG. 485

then I am so surprised to find you saying that you think you
may very likely change them. Because, if that is the case, it
would be so much better if you would not write and talk
about them. Unless you are quite convinced of such things
as you write in that dreadful paper, you really ought not
4 go on writing them so very much as if you believed
them.

“ And now I am speaking to you about this, which I have
often had on my mind to speak to you about, I must ask you
not to send me that Wessex Freeman any more. I am always
delighted to hear what you think; and there is a great deal
in tho articles you mark for mo which seems very fine; and
I dare say you quite believe it all when you write it. Only
I am quite afraid lest papa or any one of the servants should
open the papers, or get hold of them after I have opened
them ; for I am sure there are a great many wicked things in
the other parts of the paper. So, please do not send it me,
but write and tell me yourself anything that you wish me to
know of what you are thinking about and doing. As I did
not like to burn the papers, and was afraid to keep them here,
I have generally sent them on to your friend Mr. Hardy.
He does not know who sends them ; and now you might send
them yourself straight to him, as I do not know his address
in the country. As you are going up again to keep a term, I
wish you would talk them over with him, and see what he
thinks about them. You will think this very odd of me, but
you know you have always said how much you rely on his
judgment, and that you have learnt so much from him.
So I am sure you would wish to consult him; and, if he
thinks that you ought to go on writing, it will be a great
help to you to know it.

“T am so very glad to be able to tell you how well
Martha is going on. I have always read to her the extracts
from the letters from India which you have sent mo, and
she is very much obliged to you for sending them. I think
there is no doubt that she is, and always has been, attached
to poor widow Winburn’s son, and, now that he is behaving
so well, I can see that it gives her great pleasure to hear
about him. Only, I hope he will be able to come back
before very long, because she is very much admired, and is
likely to have so many chances of settling in life, that it
is a great chance whether attachment to him will be strong
enough to keep’ her single if he should be absent for many

ears.
NG Do you know I have a sort of superstition, that your
fate hangs upon theirs in some curious manner—the two
486 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

stories have been so interwoven—and that they will both
be settled happily much sooner than we dare to hope even
just now.

“Don’t think, my dear cousin, that this lotter is cold,
or that I do not take the very deepest interest in all that
concerns you. You and Mary are always in my thoughts,
and there is nothing in the world I would not do for you
both which I thought would help you. I am sure it would
do you harm if I were only a go-between. Papa is much ~
as usual, He gets out a good deal in his chair in the sun
this fine weather. He desires me to say how glad he should
be if you will come over soon and pay us a visit, I hope
you will come very soon.

“ Ever believe me, dear Tom,
“ Your affectionate cousin,
“ Kati.”

‘© November.

“Dear Tom,—I hear that what you in England call a
mail is to leave camp this evening ; so, that you may have
no excuse for not writing to me constantly, I am sitting
down to spin you such a yarn as I can under the dis-
advantageous circumstances in which this will leave me.

“This time last year, or somewhere thereabouts, [ was
enjoying academic life with you at Oxford; and now here
I am, encamped at some unpronounceable place beyond
Umbala. You won’t be much the wiser for that. What
do you know about Umbala? I didn’t myself know that
there was such a place till a month ago, when we were
ordered to march up here, But one lives and learns,
Marching over India has its disagrceables, of which dysentery
and dust are about the worst. A lot of our fellows are
down with the former; amongst others my captain; so I’m
in command of the company. If it were not for the glorious
privilege of grumbling, I think we should all own that we
liked the life. Moving about, though one does get. frozen
and broiled regularly once in twenty-four hours, suits. me ;
besides, they talk of matters coming to a crisis, and no end
of fighting to be done directly. Yon’ll know more about
what’s going on from the papers than we do, but here they
say the ball may begin any day; so we are making forced
marches to be up in time. I wonder how I shall like it.
Perhaps, in my next, I may tell you how a bullet sounds
when it comes at you. If there is any fighting I expect our
regiment will make their mark. We are in tip-top order ; the
colonel is a grand fellow, and the regiment feels his hand
THE INTERCEPTED LETTER-BAG. 487, ‘

down to the youngest drummer boy. What a deal of good I
will do when I’m a colonel |

“TI duly delivered the enclosure in your last to your con-
vict, who is rapidly ascending the ladder of promotion. I
am disgusted at this myself, for I have had to give him up,
and there never was such a jewel of a servant; but, of course,
it’s a great thing for him. He is covering sergeant of my
company, and the smartest coverer we have too. I have got
a regular broth of a boy, an Irishman, in his place, who leads
me a dog of a life. I took him chiefly because he very nearly
beat me in a foot-race. Our senior major is a Pat himself,
and, it seems, knew something of Larry’s: powers. So, one
day at mess, he offered to back him against any one in the
regiment for 200 yards. My captain took him and named
me, and it came off next day ; and a precious narrow thing it
was, but I managed to win by a neck for the honour of the old
school. He is a lazy scatter-brained creature, utterly indif-
ferent to fact, and I am obliged to keep the brandy flask
under lock and key; but the humour and absolute good-
temper of the animal impose upon me, and I really think he
is attached to me. So I keep him on, grumbling horribly
at the change from that orderly, punctual, clean, accurate
convict. Depend upon it, that fellow will do. He makes
his way everywhere, with officers and men. He is a gentle-
man at heart, and, by the way, you would be surprised
at the improvement in his manners and speech. There is
hardly a taste of Berkshire left in his deealect. He has read
all the books I could lend him, or borrow for him, and is fast
picking up Hindustanee. So you see, after all, I am come
round to your opinion that we did a good afternoon’s work
on that precious stormy common, when we carried off the
convict from the authorities of his native land, and I was
first under fire. As you are a performer in that line, couldn’t
you carry off his sweetheart, and send her out here? After
the sea voyage there isn’t much above 1,000 miles to come by
dauk ; and tell her, with my compliments, he is well worth
coming twice the distance for. Poor fellow, it is a bad logk-
out for him I’m afraid, as he may not get home this ten years ;
and, though he isn’t a kind to be easily killed, there are
serious odds against him, even if he keeps all right. I almost
wish you had never told me his story.

“We are going into cantonments as soon as this expedition
is over, in a splendid pig district, and I look forward to some
real sport. All the men who have had any tell me it beats
the best fox-hunt all to fits for excitement. I have got my
eye on a famous native horse, who is to be had cheap. The
488 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD. .-

brute is in the habit of kneeling on his masters, and tearing
them with his teeth when he gets them off, but nothing can
touch him while you keep on his back. ‘Howsumdever,’
as your countrymen say, I shall have a shy at him, if I
can get him at my price. ‘

“Y’ve nothing more to say. There’s nobody you know here,
except the convict sergeant, and it’s awfully hard to fill a
letter home unless you’ve somebody to talk about. Yes, by
the way, there is one little fellow, an ensign, just joined, who
says he remembers us at school. He can’t be more than
eighteen or nineteen, and was an urchin in the lower school,
I suppose, when we were leaving. I don’t remember his face,
but it’s a very good one, and he is a bright gentlemanly
youngster as you would'wish to see. His name is Jones. Do
you remember him? He will bea godsend to me. I have
him to chum with me on this march.

“Keep up your letters as you love me. You at home
little know what it is to enjoy a letter. Never mind what you
put in it; anything will do from home, and I’ve nobody
else much to write to me.

“There goes the ‘assembly.’ Why, I can’t think, secing
we have done our day’s march. However, I must turn out
and see what’s up.

* * * * * *

** December.

“T have just fallen on this letter; which I had quite forgotten,
or, rather, had fancied I had sent off to you three weeks and
more ago. My baggage has just come to hand, and the scrawl
turned up in my paper case. Well, I have plenty to tell you
now, at any rate, if I have time to tell it. That ‘assembly’
which stopped me short sounded in consequence of the arrival
of one of the commander-in-chief’s aides in our camp with the
news that the enemy was over the Sutlej. "We were to march
at once, with two six-pounders and a squadron of cavalry, on
a fort occupied by an out-lying lot of them, which commanded
a ford, and was to be taken and destroyed, and the rascals who
hefd it dispersed ; after which we were to join the main army.
Our colonel had the command; so we were on the route.
within an hour, leaving a company and the baggage to follow
as it could ; and from that time to this, forced marching and
hard fighting have been the order of the day.

“We drew first blood next morning, The enemy were in
some force outside the fort, and showed fight in very rough
ground covered with bushes; out of which we had to drive
them—which we did after a sharp struggle, and the main body
THE INTERCEPTED LETTER-BAG. 489

drew off altogether. Then the fort had to be taken. Our
two guns worked away at it till dark. In the night two of’
the gunners, who volunteered for the service, crept close up
to the place, and reported that there was nothing to hinder
our running right into it. Accordingly the colonel resolved
to rush it at daybreak, and my company was told off to lead.
The captain being absent, I had to command. I was with
the dear old chief the last thing at night, getting his instruc-
tions: ten minutes with him before going into action would
make a hare fight.

“There was cover to within one hundred and fifty yards of
the place ; and there I, and poor little Jones, and the men,
spent the night in a dry ditch. An hour before daybreak we
were on the alert, and served out rations, and then they began
playing tricks on one another as if we were out for a junketing.
I sat with my watch in my hand, feeling queer, and wondering
whether I was a greater coward than the rest. Then came a
streak of light. I put up my watch, formed the men; up
went a rocket, my signal, and out into the open we went at
the double. We hadn’t got over a third of the ground when
bang went the fort guns, and the grape-shot were whistling
about our ears ; so I shouted ‘Forward !’ and away we went
as hard as we could go. I was obliged to go ahead, you see, *
because every man of them knew I had beaten Larry, their
best runner, when he had no gun to carry ; but I didn’t half
like it, and should have blessed any hole or bramble which
would have sont me over and given them time to catch me,
But tho ground was provokingly lovol ; and so I was at the
first mound and over it several lengths in front of the mon,
and among a lotof black fellows serving the guns. They came
at me like wild cats, and how I got off isa mystery. I parried
a cut from one fellow, and dodged a second ; a third rushed
at my left side. I just caught the flash of his tulwar, and
thought it was all up, when he jumped into the air, shot
through the heart by Sergeant Winburn; and the next.
moment Master Larry rushed by me and plunged his bayonet
into my friend in front. It turned me as sick as adog. I
can’t fancy anything more disagreeable than seeing the operation
for the first time, except being struck oneself. The supporting
companies were in in another minute, with the dear old chief
himself, who came up and shook hands with me, and said I
had done credit to the regiment. Then I began to look about,
and missed poor little Jones. We found him about twenty
yards from the place, with two grape-shot through him, stone
dead, and smiling like a child asleep. We buried him in the
fort. I cut off some of his hair, and sont it home to his
490 TOM BROWN AT OXFQRD.

mother. Her last letter was in his breast pocket, and a lock
of bright brown hair of some one’s. I sent them back, too,
and his sword,

“inco then we have been with the army, and had three
or four general actions ; about which I can tell you nothing,
except that we have lost about a third of the regiment, and
have always been told we have won. Steps go fast enough ;
my captain died of wounds and dysentery a week ago; so I
have the company in earnest. How long I shall hold it is
another question ; for, though there’s a slack, we haven’t
done with sharp work yet, I can see.

“ How often we've talked, years ago, of what it must feel
like going into battle! Well, the chief thing I felt when the
grape came down pretty thick for the first time, as we were
advancing, was a sort of gripes in the stomach which made
me want to go forward stooping. But I didn’t give in to it;
the chief was riding close behind us, joking the youngsters
who were ducking their heads, and so cheery and cool, that
he made old soldiers of us at once. What with smoke, and
dust, and excitement, you know scarcely anything of what is
going on. The finest sight I have seen is the artillery going
into action, Nothing stops those fellows. Places you would
crane at out hunting they go right over, guns, carriages, men,
and all, leaving any cavalry we've got out here well behind.
Do you know what a nullah is? Well, it’s a great gap, like
a huge dry canal, fifteen or twenty feet deep. We were halted
behind one in the last great fight, waiting the order to advance,
when a battery came up at full gallop. We all made sure
they must be pulled up by the nullah. They never pulled
bridle. ‘Leading gun, right turn |’ sang out the subaltern ;
and down they went sideways into the nullah. Then, ‘ Left
turn ;’ up the other bank, one gun after another, the horses
scrambling like cats up and down places that my men had to
use their hands to scramble up, and away on the other side to
within 200 yards of the enemy ; and then, round like light-
ning, and look out in front. :

“ Altogether it’s sickening work, though there’s a grand
sort of feeling of carrying your life in your hand. They say
the Sepoy regiments have behaved shamefully. There is no
sign of anything like funk amongst our fellows that I have
seen, Sergeant Winburn has distinguished himself every-
where. He is like my shadow, and I can see tries to watch
over my precious carcase, and get between me and danger.
He would be a deal more missed in the world than L Except
you, old friend, I don’t know who would care much if I were
knocked over to-morrow. Aunts and cousins are my nearest
THE INTERCEPTED LETTER-BAG. 491

relations. You know I never was a snuffler ; but this sort of
life makes one serious, if one has any reverence at all in one,
You'll be glad to have this line, if you don’t hear from me
again. I’ve often thought in the last month that we shall
never see one another again in this world. But, whether in
this world or any other, you know I am and always shall be
your affectionate friend, , “A. East.”

‘CAMP ON THE SUTLEY, .
“ January.

“Dear Master Tom,—The captain’s last words was, if
anything happened I was to be sure to write and tell you.
And so I take up my pen, though you will know as I am not
used to writing, to tell you the misfortune as has happened to
our regiment. Because, if you was to ask any man in our
regiment, let it be who it would, he would say as the captain
was the best officer as ever led men. Not but what there’s a
many of them as will go to the front as brave as lions, and
don’t value shot no more than if it was rotten apples ; and
men as is men will go after such. But ’tis the captain’s
manner and ways, with a kind word for any poor fellow as is
hurt, or sick and tired, and making no account of hisself,
and, as you may say, no bounce with him; that’s what makes
the difference.

“ As it might be last Saturday, we came upon the enemy
where he was posted very strong, with guns all along his front,
and served till we got right up to them, the gunners being cut
down and bayonoted whon we got right up amongst them, and
no quarter given ; and there was great banks of earth, too, to
clamber over, and more guns behind ; so, with the marching
up in front and losing so many officers and men, our regiment
was that wild when we got amongst them twas awful to see,
and, if there was any prisoners taken, it was more by mistake
than not.

“ Me and three or four moro settled, when the word came
to prepare for action, to keep with the captain, because ’twas
known to every one as no odds would stop him, and he would
never mind hisself. The dust and smoke and noise was that
thick you couldn’t see nor hear anything after our regiment
was in action ; but, so far as I seen, when we was wheeled
into line, and got the word to advance, there was as it might
be as far as from our old cottage to the Hawk’s Lynch to go
over before we got to the guns, which was playing into us all
the way. Our line went up very steady, only where men was
knocked down; and, when we come to within a matter of
aixty yards, the officers jumped out and waved their swords,
492 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

for ’twas no use to give words, and the ranks was broken by
reason of the running up to take the guns from the enemy.
Me and the rest went after the captain ; but he, being so light
of foot, was first, by may be ten yards or so, at the mound,
and so up before we was by him. But, though they was all
round him like bees when we got to him, ’twas not then as he
was hit. There was more guns further on, and we and they
drove on all together ; and, though they was beaten, being
_fine tall men and desperate, there was many of them fighting
hard, and, as you might say, a man scarcely knowed how he
‘got hit. I kept to the captain as close as ever I could, but
there was times when I had to mind myself. Just as we
come to the last guns, Larry, that’s the captain’s servant, was
trying by hisscelf to turn one of them round, so as to fire on
the enemy as they took the river to the back of their lines
all in a huddle. So I turned to lend him a hand ; and, when
IT looked round next moment, there was the captain a stag-
gering like a drunken man, and he so strong and lissom up to
then, and never had a scratch since the war begun, and this
the last minute of it pretty nigh, for the enemy was all cut to
pieces and drowned that day. I got to him before he fell,
and we laid him down gently, and did the best we could for
him. But he was bleeding dreadful with a great gash in his
side, and his arm broke, and two gunshot wounds. Our
surgeon was killed, and ’twas hours before his wounds was
dressed, and ’twill be God’s mercy if ever he gets round;
though they do say, if the fever and dysentery keeps off, and
he can get out of this country and home, there’s no knowing
but he may get the better of it all, but not to serve with the
regiment again for years to come,

“T hopo, Master Tom, asi I’ve told you all the captain
would like as you should know ; only, not being much used
to writing, I hope you will excuse mistakes, And, if so be
that it won’t be too much troubling of you, and the captain
should go home, and you could write to say how things was
going on at home as before, which the captain always gave
to me to read when the mail come in, it would be a great
help towards keeping up of a good heart in a foreign land,
which is hard at times to do. There is some things which I
make bold to send by a’comrade going home sick, I don’t
know as they will seem much, but I hope as you will accept
of the sword, which belonged to one of their officers, and the
rest to her, Also, on account of what was in the last piece
as you forwarded, I send a letter to go along with the things,
if Miss Winter, who have been so kind, or you, would deliver
the same. To whom I make bold to send my respects as well

*
THE INTERCEPTED LETTER-BAG. 493

as to yourself, and hoping this will find you well and all
friends, and “From your respecful,
“HENRY WINBuRN,
‘“Colour-sergeant, 101st Regiment.”

‘* March.
“My Dear Tom,—I begin to think I may see you again
yet, but it has been a near shave. I hope Sergeant Winburn’s
letter, and the returns, in which I see I was put down
“dangerously wounded,” will not have frightened you very
much, The war is over ; and, if I live to get down to Cal-
cutta you will see me in the summer, please God. The end
was like the beginning—going right up to guns. Our
regiment is frightfully cut up; there are only 300 men left
under arms—the rest dead or in hospital. I am sick at heart ,

at it, and weak in body, and can only write a few lines at a
time, but will get on with this as I can, in time for next mail

* * * * *

“Since beginning this letter I have had another relapse.
So, in case I should never finish it, I will say at once what I
most want to say. Winburn has saved my life more than
once, and is besides one of the noblest and bravest fellows in
the world ; so I mean to provide for him in case anything
should happen to me. I have made a will, and appointed
you my executor, and left him a legacy. You must buy his
discharge, and get him home and married to the Englebourn
beauty as: soon as possible. But what I want you to under-
stand is, that if tho legacy isn’t enough to do this, and make
‘All straight with her old curmudgeon of a father, it is my
first wish that whatever will do it should be made up to him.
He has been in hospital with a bad flesh wound, and has let
out to me the whole of his story, of which you had only
given me the heads. If that young woman does not wait for
him, and book him, I shall give up all faith in potticoats.
Now that’s done I feel more at ease.

“Let me see. I haven't written for six weeks and more,
just before our last great fight. Youll know all about it
from the papers long before you get this—a bloody business
—I am. loath to think of it. I was knocked over in the last
of their entrenchments, and should: then and there have bled
to death had it not been for Winburn. He never left me,
though the killing, and plundering, and roystering afterwards,
was going on all around, and strong temptation to a fellow
when his blood is up, and he sees his comrades at it, after
such work as wé had had. What's more, he caught my Irish
fellow and made him stay by me too, and between them they

‘
A494 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

managed to prop me up and stop the bleeding, though it was
touch and go. I never thought they would manage it. You
can’t think what a curious feeling it is, the life going out of
you. Iwas perfectly conscious, and knew all they were doing
and saying, and thought quite clearly, though in a sort of
dreamy way, about you, and a whole jumble of people and

_ things at home. It was the most curious painless mixture of
dream and life, getting more dreamy every minute. I don't
suppose I could have opened my eyes or spoken ; at any rate
T had no wish to do so, and didn’t try. Several times the
thought of death came close to me ; and, whether it was the
odd state I was in, or what else I don’t know, but the only.
feeling I had, was one of intense curiosity. I should think
I must have lain there, with Winburn supporting my head,
and moistening my lips with rum-and-water, for feur or five
hours, before a doctor could be got. He had managed to
drive Larry about till he had found, or borrowed, or stolen
the drink, and then kept him making short cruises in search
of help in the shape of hospital-staff, ambulances, or doctors,
from which Master Larry always came back without the
slightest success. My belief is, he employed those precious
minutes, when he was from under his serjeant’s eye, in looting.
At last, Winburn got impatient, and I heard him telling
Larry what he was to do while he was gone himself to find a
doctor ; and then I was moved as gently as if I had been a
sick girl, I heard him go off with a limp, but did not know
till long after of his wound.

“Larry had made such a wailing and to-do when they firs}
found me, that a natural reaction now set in, and he began
gently and tenderly to run over in his mind what could be
made out of ‘the captin,’ and what would become of his
things. I found out this, partly through his habit of talking
to himself, and partly from the precaution which he took of
ascertaining where my watch and purse were, and what else
I had upon me. It tickled me immensely to hear him.
Presently I found he was examining my boots, which he
pronounced ‘iligant entirely,’ and wondered whether he could
get them on. ‘The ‘serjint’ would never want them. And
he then proceeded to assert, while he actually began unlacing
them, that the ‘captin’ would never have ‘bet him’ but for
the boots, which ‘was worth ten feet in a furlong to any
man. ‘Shure ’tis too late now; but wouldn’t I like to run
him agin with the bare feet?’ I couldn’t stand that, and
just opened my eyes a little, and moved my hand, and said,
‘Done.’ I wanted to add, ‘ you rascal,’ but that was too much
for me. Larry’s face of horror, which I just caught through
MASTER'S TERM. 495

my half-opened oyes, would have madé me roar, if I had had
strength for it. I believe the resolution J made that he should
never go about in my boots helped me to pull through ; but,
as soon as Winburn came back with the doctor, Master Larry
departed, and I much doubt: whether I shall ever set eyes on
him again in the flesh. Not if he can help it, certainly. The
regiment, what’s left of it, is away in the Punjaub, and he
with it. Winburn, as I told you, is hard hit, but no danger.
I have great hopes that he will be invalided. You may depend
upon it he will escort me home, if any interest of mine can
manage it; and the dear old chief is so kind to me that I
think he will arrange it somehow.

“TI must be wonderfully better to have spun such a yarn.
Writing those first ten lines nearly finished me, a week ago,
and now I am scarcely tired after all this scrawl. If that
rascal, Larry, escapes hanging another year, and comes back
home, I will run him yet, and thrash his head off.

“ There is something marvellously life-giving in the idea of
sailing for old England again ; and I mean to make a strong
fight for seeing you again, old boy. God bless you. Write
again for the chance, directing to my agents at Calcutta, as
before. Ever your half-alive, but whole-hearted and affec-
tionate friend, “A, East.”

 

CHAPTER XLV.
MASTER'S TERM.

@yu more look into the old college where we have spent
so much time already, not, I hope, altogether unpleasantly.
Our hero is up in the Summer term, keeping his three weeks’
residence, the necessary preliminary to an M.A. degree. We
find him sitting in Hardy’s rooms ; tea is over, scouts out of
college, candles lighted, and silence reigning, except when
distant sounds of mirth come from some undergraduates’ rooms
on the opposite side of quad, through the open windows.
‘Hardy is deep in the budget of Indian letters, some of
which we have read in the last chapter; and Tom reads
them over again as his friend finishes them, and then care-
fully folds them up and puts them back in their places in a
large pocket-case. Except an occasional explanatory remark,
or exclamation of interest, no word passes until Hardy finishes
the last letter. Then he breaks out. into praises of the two
Harrys, which gladden Tom’s heart as he fastens the case, and
puts it back in his pocket, saying, “Yes, you won’t find two
finer fellows in.a long summer's day ; no, nor in twenty.”
496 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“ And you expect them home, then, in a week or two?”

“Yes, I think so, Just about the time I shall be going
down.”

“ Don’t talk about going down. ‘You haven’t been here a
week.”

“Just a week. One out of three, Three weeks wasted in
keeping one’s Master’s term! Why can’t you give a fellow
his degree quietly, without making him come and kick his
heels here for three weeks?” .

“You ungrateful dog! Do you mean to say you haven't
enjoyed coming back, and sitting in dignity in the bachelors’
seats in chapel, and at the bachelors’ table in hall, and thinking
how much wiser you are than the undergraduates? Besides,
your old friends want to see you, and you ought to want to
see them.”

“Well, I’m very glad to see something of you again, old
fellow. I don’t find that a year’s absence has made any
change in you. But who else is there that I care to seo?
- My old friends are gone, and the year has made a great gap
between me and the youngsters. They look on me as a sort
of don.”

“Of course they do. Why, you area sort of don. You
will be an M.A. in a fortnight, and a member of Convoca-
tion.”

“Very likely ; but I don’t appreciate the dignity. I can
tell you being up here now is anything but enjoyable. You
have never broken with the place. And then, you always
did your duty, and have done the college credit, You can’t
enter into the feelings of a fellow whose connexion with
Oxford has been quite broken off, and who wasted three
parts of his time here, when he comes back to keep his
Master's.”

“Come, come, Tom. You might have read more, certainly,
with benefit to yourself and the college, and taken a higher
degree. But, after all, didn’t the place do you a great deal
of good? and you didn’t do it much harm. I don’t like to
see you in this sort of gloomy state; it isn’t natural to
you. ;

“Tt is becoming natural. You haven’t seen much of me
during the last year, or you would have remarked it. And
then, as I tell you, Oxford, when one has nothing to do in it
but to moon about, thinking over one’s past follies and sins,
isn’t cheerful. It never was a very cheerful place to me at
the best of times,”

“ Not even at pulling times?”

“Well, the river is the part I like best to think of But
'

MASTER’S TERM. 497
even the river makes me rather melancholy now. One fecle
one has done with it.” ;

“Why, Tom, I believe your melancholy comes from their
not having asked you to pull in the boat.”

“ Perhaps it does. Don’t you call it degrading to be pulling
in the torpid in one’s old age?”

“Mortified vanity, man! They have a capital boat. I wonder
how we should have liked to have been turned out for some
bachelor just because he had pulled a good oar in his day?”

“ Not at all. I don’t blame the young ones, and I hope I
do my duty in the torpid. By the way, they’re an uncom-
monly nice set of youngsters. Much better behaved in every
way than we were, unless it is that they put on their best
manners before me.” ‘

“No, I don’t think they do. The fact is, they are really
fine young fellows.”

“So I think. And Pll toll you what, Jack; since we are
sitting and talking our minds to one another at last, like old
times, somebody has made the most wonderful change in this
college. I rather think it is seeing what St. Ambrose’s is now,
and thinking what it was in my time, and what an uncommon
member of society I should have turned out if I had had the
luck to have been here now instead of then, that ‘makes me
down in the mouth—more even than having to pull in the
torpid instead of the racing boat.”

“You do think it is improved, then ?”

“Think! Why it is a different place altogether ; and, as
you are the only new tutor, it must have been your doing.
Now, I want to know your secret.”

“Tve no secret, except. taking a real interest in all that the
men do, and living with them as much as I can. You may
fancy it isn’t much of a trial to me to steer the boat down, or
run on the bank and coach the crew.”

“ Ah! I remember ; you were beginning that before I left,
in your first year. I know that would answer.”

“Yes. The fact is, I find that just what I like best is the
very best thing for the men. With very few exceptions they
are all glad to be stirred up, and meet me nearly half-way in
reading, and three-quarters in everything else. I believe they
would make me captain to-morrow.”

“ And why don’t you let them, then?”

“No; there’s a time for everything. I go in in the scratch
fours for the pewters, and—more by token—my crew won them
two years running. Look at my trophies,” and he pointed to
two pewter pots, engraved with the college arms, which stood
on his side-board.

KK
\
498 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“Well, I dare say you're right. But what does the presi
dent say?”

“Oh, he is a convert. Didn't you see him on the bank
when you torpids made your bump the other night?”

“No, you don’t mean it? ‘Well, do you know, a sort of
vision of black tights, and a broad-brimmed hat, crossed me,
but I never gave it a second thought. And so the president
comes out to see the St. Ambrose boat row MY

“ Seldom misses two nights running.”

“Then, ‘carry me out, and bury me decently.’ Have you
seen old Tom walking round Peckwater lately on his clapper,
smoking a cigar with the Dean qf Christchurch? Don’t be
afraid. Iam ready for anything you like to tell me. Draw
any amount you like on my faith ; I shall honour the draft
after that.”

“The president isn’t a bad judge of an oar, when he sets
his mind to it.”

“Tsn’t he? But, I say, Jack—no sell—how in the world
did it happen?”

“T beliove it happened chiefly through his ialks with mo.
When I was first made tutor he sent for me and told me he
had heard I encouraged the young men in boating, and he
must positively forbid it. I didn’t much care about staying
up; so I was pretty plain with him, and said, ‘if I was not
allowed to take the line I thought best in such matters I
must resign at the end of term.’ He assented, but afterwards
thought better of it, and sent for me again, and we had several
encounters, I took my ground very civilly but firmly, and
he had to give up one objection after another. I think the
turning-point was when he quoted St. Paul on me, and said
I was teaching boys to worship physical strength, instead of
teaching them to keep under their bodies and bring them into
subjection. Of course I countered him there with tremendous
effect. The old boy took it very well, only saying he feared
it was no use to argue further—in this matter of boat-racing

-he had come to a conclusion, not without serious thought,
many years before. However, he came round quietly. And
so he has on other points. In fact, he is a wonderfully open-
minded man for his age, if you only put things to him the
right way.”

“ Has he come round about gentlemen-commoners? I see
you've only two or three up.”

“Yes. We haven't given up taking them altogether. I
hope that may come soon. But I and another tutor took to
plucking them ruthlessly at matriculation, unless they were
quite up to the commoner standard. The consequence was, a
MASTER'S TERM. 499

row in common room. We stood out, and won. Luckily, as
you know, it has always been given out here that all under-
graduates, gentlemen-commoners and commoners, have to pass
the same college examinations, and to attend the same courses
of lectures. You know also what a mere sham and pretence
the rule had become. ‘Well, we simply made a reality of it,
and in answer to all objectors said, ‘Is it our rule or not?
If it is, we are bound to act on it. If you want to alter it,
there are the regular ways of doing so.’ After a little grumb-
ling they let us have our way, and the .consequence is, that
velvet is getting scarce at St. Ambrose.” |

“What a blessing! What other miracles have you been ,
performing ?”

“The best reform we have carried is throwing the kitchen
and cellar open to the undergraduates.”

“W-h-e-w! That's just the sort of reform we should have
appreciated. Fancy Drysdale’s lot with the key of the college
cellars, at about ten o’clock on a shiny night.”

“You don’t quite understand the reform. You remember,
when you were an undergraduate you couldn’t give a dinner
in college, and you had to buy your wine anywhere?”

“Yes. And awful firewater we used to get. The governor
supplied me, like » wise man.”

“Well, we have placed the college in the relation of.
benevolent father. Every undergraduate now can give two
dinners a term in his own rooms, from the kitchen ; or more,
if he comes and asks, and has any reason to give. We take
care that they have a good dinner at a reasonable rate, and
the men are delighted with the arrangement. I don’t believe
there are three men in the college now who have hotel bills.
And we let them have all their wine out of the college
cellars.”

“That's what I call. good common-sense. Of course it
must answer in every way. And you find they all come
to you?”

« Almost all. They can’t get anything like the wine we
give them at the price, and they know it.” _

“Do you make them pay ready money ?”

“The dinners and wine are charged in their battel bills; |
so they have to pay once a term, just as they do for their ©
orders at commons.”

“Tt must swell their battel bills awfully.”

“Yes, but battel bills always come in at the beginning of
term, when they are flush of money. Besides, they all know
that battel bills must be paid. In e small way it is the best
thing that ever was done for St. Ambrose’s, You see it cuts

KK
500 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

go many ways. Keeps men in college, knocks off the most
objectionable bills at inns and pastry-cooks’, keeps them from
being poisoned, makes them pay their bills regularly, shows
them that we like them to be able to live like gentlemen—”

“And Jets you dons know what they are all about, and
how much they spend in the way of entertaining.”

“Yes ; and a very good thing for them too. They know
that we shall not interfere while they behave like gentlemen.”

“Oh, I’m not objecting. And was this your doing, too?”

“No ; a joint business. We hatched it in the common
room, and then the bursar spoke to the president, who ‘was
furious, and said we were giving the sanction of the college
to disgraceful luxury and extravagance. Luckily he had not
the power of stopping us, and now is convinced.”

“The goddess of common-sense seems to have alighted
again in the quad of St. Ambrose. You'll never leave the
place, Jack, now you're beginning to get everything your own:
way.” :

“On the contrary, I don’t mean to stop up more than
another year at the outside. I have been tutor nearly three
years now ; that’s about long enough.”

“Do you think you’re right? You seem to have hit on
your line in life wonderfully. You like the work, and the
work likes you. You are doing a heap of good up here.
You'll be president in a year or two, depend on it. I should
say you had better stick to Oxford.”

“No. Ishould be of no use in a year or two. We want
a constant current of fresh blood here.”

“In a general way. But you don’t get a man every day
who can throw himself into the men’s pursuits, and can get
hold of them in the right way. And then, after all, when a
fellow has got such work cut out for him as you have, Oxford
must be an uncommonly pleasant place to live in.”

“ Pleasant enough in many ways. But you seem to have
forgotten how you used to rail against it.

“Yes. Because I never hit off the right ways of the
place. But, if I had taken a first and got a fellowship, I
should like it well enough, I dare say.”

“ Being a fellow, on the contrary, makes it worse. While
one was an undergraduate one could feel virtuous and indig-
nant at the vices of Oxford, at least at those which one did
not indulge in, particularly at the flunkeyism and money-
worship which are our most prevalent and disgraceful sins.
But when one is a fellow it is quite another affair, They
become a sore burthen then, enough to break one’s heart.”

“Why, Jack, we're changing characters to-night. Fancy
MASTER'S TERM. 501

your coming out in the abusive line! Why, I never said
harder things of Alma Mater myself. However, there’s
plenty of flunkeyism and money-worship everywhere else.”

“Yes; but it is not so heartbreaking in other places.
When one thinks what a great centre of learning and faith
like Oxford ought to be—that its highest educational work
should just be the deliverance of us all from flunkeyism and
money-worship—and then looks at matters here without rose-
coloured spectacles, it gives one sometimes a sort of chilly .
leaden despondency, which is very hard to struggle against.”

“T am sorry to hear you talk like that, Jack, for one can’t
help loving the place after all.”

“So I do, God knows. If I didn’t I shouldn’t care for its
shortcomings.”

“Well, the flunkeyism and money-worship were bad
enough, but I don’t think they were the worst things—at
least not in my day. Our neglects were almost worse than
our worships.”

“You mean the want of all reverence for parents? Well,
perhaps that lies at the root of the false worships. They
spring up on the vacant soil.”

“ And the want of reverence for women, Jack. The worst.
of all, to my mind!”

“Perhaps you areright. But we are not at the bottom yet.”

“How do you mean ¢”

“JT mean that we must worship God before we can rever-
ence parents or women, or root out flunkeyism and money-
worship.”

“Yes. But after all can we fairly lay that sin on Oxford?
Surely, whatever may be growing up side by side with it,
there’s more Christianity here than almost anywhere else.”

“Plenty of common-room Christianity—belief in a dead
God. There, I have never said it to any one but you, but
that is the slough we have to get out of. Don’t think that I
despair for us. We shall do it yet ; but it will be sore work,
stripping off the comfortable wine-party religion in which we
are wrapped up—work for our strongest and our wisest,” —_,«

“ And yet you think of leaving?” .

“There are other reasons. I willtell you some day. But
now, to turn to other matters, how have you been getting on
this last year? You write so seldom that I am all behind-
hand.”

“ Oh, much the same as usual.”

“Then you are still like one of those who went out to
David?”

“No, I'm not in debt.”
502 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“But discontented ?”

“Pretty much like you there, Jack. However, content is
no virtue, that I can see, while there’s anything to mend.
Who is going to be contented with game-preserving, and
gorn-laws, and grinding the faces of the poor? David’s
camp was a better place than Saul’s, any day.”

Hardy got up, opened a drawer, and took out a bundle of
papers, which Tom recognised as the Wessex Freeman. He
felt rather uncomfortable, as his friend seated himself again,
and began looking them over.

“You see what I have here,” he said.

Tom nodded.
“Well, thero are some of the articles I should like to ask
you about, if you don’t object.” :

“No; go on.”

“Here is one, then, to begin with. I won’t read it all.
Let me see; here is what I -was looking for,” and he began
reading: “One would think, to hear these landlords, our
rulers, talk, that the glorious green fields, the deep woods,
the everlasting hills, and the rivers that run among them,
were made for the sole purpose of ministering to their
greedy lusts and mean ambitions; that they may roll out
amongst unrealities their pitiful mock lives, from their silk
and lace cradles to their spangled coffins, studded with silver
knobs, and lying coats of arms, reaping where they have not
sown, and gathering where they have not strewed ; making
the omer small and the ephah great, that they may sell the
tefuse of the wheat——’”

“That'll do, Jack ; but what’s the date of that paper?”

“ July last. Is it yours, then?”

‘Yes. And I allow it’s too strong and one-sided. I have
given up writing altogether ; will that satisfy you? I don’t
see my own way clear enough yet. But for all that I’m not
ashamed of what I wrote in that paper.”

“T have nothing more to say after that, except that I’m
heartily glad you have given up writing for the present.”

“But I say, old follow, how did you get these papers, and
know about my articles }”

“They were sent me, Shall I burn them now, or would
you like to have them? We needn't say anything more
about them.”

“Burn them by all means. I suppose a friend sent them
to you?” —

“T suppose so.” Havdty went on burning the papers in
silence ; and as Tom watched him, a sudden light seemed to
break upon him,
»

FROM INDIA TO ENGLEBOURN. 503

“T say, Jack,” he said presently, “a little bird has been
whispering something to me about that friend.” Hardy
winced a little, and redoubled his diligence in burning the
papers. Tom looked on smiling, and thinking how to go on
now that he had so unexpectedly turned the tables on his
monitor, when the clock struck twelve. .

“Hullo!” he said, getting up; “time for me to knock out,
or old Copas will be in bed. To go back to where we started
from to-night—as soon as East and Harry Winburn get back
we shall have some jolly doings at Englebourn. There’ll be
a wedding, I hope, and yow’ll come over and do parson for
us, won’t you 7”

“You mean for Patty? Of course I will.”

“ The little bird whispered to me that you wouldn’t dislike
visiting that part of the old county. Good-night, Jack. I.
wish you success, old fellow, with all my heart, and I hope
after all that you may leave St. Ambroso’s within the year.”

 

CHAPTER XLVI..
FROM INDIA TO ENGLEBOURN.

Ir a knowledge of contemporary history must be reckoned
as an important element in the civilization of any people,
then I am afraid that the good folk of Englebourn must have
been content, in the days of our story, with a very low place
on the ladder. How, indeed, was knowledge to percolate, so
as to reach down to the foundations of Englebournian society
—the stratum upon which all others rest—the common
agricultural labourer, producer of corn and other grain, the
careful and stolid nurse and guardian of youthful oxen,
sheep, and pigs, many of them far better fed and housed
than his own children? All-penetrating as sho is, one
cannot help wondering that she did not give up Englebourn
altogether as a hopeless job.

So far as written periodical instruction is concerned (with
the exception of the Quarterly, which Dr. Winter had taken
in from its commencement, but rarely opened), the supply
was limited to at most half a dozen weekly papers. A
London journal, sound in Church and State principles, most
respectable but not otherwise than heavy, came every Satur-
day to the rectory. The Conservative county paper was
taken in at the Red Lion; and David the constable, and
the blacksmith, clubbed together to purchase the Liberal
paper, by help of which they managed to wage unequal war
504 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD. :

with the knot of village quidnuncs, who assembled almost
nightly at the bar of the Tory beast above referfed to—that
king of beasts, red indeed in colour, but of the tfuest blue
in political principle. Besides these, perhaps three or four
more papers were taken by the farmers. But, scanty as the
food was, it was quite enough for the mouths ; indeed, when
the papers once passed out of the parlours they had for the
most part performed their mission. Few of the farm-
servants, male or female, had curiosity or scholarship enough’
to spell through the dreary columns.

And oral teaching was not much more plentiful, as how
was it likely to be? ‘Englebourn was situated on no trunk
toad, and the amount of intercourse between it and the rest
of the world was of the most limited kind. The rector never
left home ; the curate at rare intervals. Most of the farmers
went to market once a week, and dined at their ordinary, dis-
cussing county politics after their manner, but bringing home
little, except as much food and drink as they could cleverly
carry. The carrier went to and from Newbury once a week ;
but he was a silent man, chiefly bent on collecting and selling
butter. The postman, who was deaf, only went as far as the
next village. The waggoners drove their masters’ produce to
market from time to time, and boozed away an hour or two in
the kitchen, or tap, or skittle-alley, of some small public-house
in the nearest town, while their horses rested. With the
above exceptions, probably not one of the villagers strayed,
ten miles from home, from year’s end to year’s end. As to
visitors, an occasional pedlar or small commercial traveller: +
turned up about once a quarter. A few boys and girls, mor,
enterprising than their fellows, went out altogether into -the*-.
world, of their own accord, in the course of the year; and an '
occasional burly ploughboy, or carter’s boy, was entrapped
into taking the Queen’s shilling by some subtle recruiting
sergeant, But few of these were seen again, except at long
intervals, The yearly village feasts, harvest homes, or a meet
of the hounds on Englebourn Common, were the most ex-
citing events which in an ordinary way stirred the surface of
Englebourn life ; only faintest and most distant murmurs of
the din and strife of the great outer world, of wars, and
rumours of wars, the fall of governments and the throes of
nations, reached that, primitive, out-of-the-way little village.

A change was already showing itself since Miss Winter had
been old enough to look after the schools, The waters were
beginning to stir; and by this time, no doubt, the parish
boasts a regular book-hawker and reading-room ; but at that
day Englebourn was like one of those small ponds you may
FROM INDIA TO ENGLEBOURN. 505

find in some nook of a hill-side, the banks grown over with
underwood, to which neither man nor beast, scarcely the
winds of heaven, have any access. When you have found
such a pond you may create a great excitement amongst the
easy-going newts and frogs who inhabit it, by throwing in a
pebble. The splash in itself is a small splash enough, and
the waves which circle away from it are very tiny waves, but
they move over the whole face of the pond, and are of more
interest to the frogs than a nor’-wester in the Atlantic.

So the approaching return of Harry Winburn, and the
story of his doings at the wars, and of the wonderful things
he had sent home, stirred Englebourn to its depths. In that
small corner of the earth the sergeant was of far more im-
portance than governor-general and commander-in chief. In
fact, it was probably the common belief that he was somehow
the head of the whole business ; and India, the war, and all
that hung thoreon, wore looked ot and cared for only as they
had served to bring him out. So careless were the good folk
about everything in the matter except their own hero, and so
wonderful were the romances which soon got abroad about
him, that Miss Winter, tired of explaining again and again 'to
the old women without the slightest effect on the parochial
faith, bethought her of having a lecture on the subject of
India and the war in the parish schoolroom.

Full of this idea, she wrote off to Tom, who was the medium
of communication on Indian matters, and propounded it to
him. The difficulty was, that Mr. Walker, the curate, the.
only person competent to give it, was going away directly for
a three weeks’ holiday, having arranged with two neighbour-
ing curates to take his Sunday duty for him. What was to
be done? Harry might be back any day, it seemed ; so there
was no time to be lost. Could Tom come himself, and help
her?

Tom could not; but he wrote back to say that his friend
Hardy was just getting away from Oxford for the long vaca-
tion, and would gladly take Mr. Walker’s duty for the three
weeks, if Dr. Winter approved, on his way home: by which
arrangement Englebourn would not be without an efficient
parson on week-days, and she would have the man of all others
to help her in utilising the sergeant’s history for the instruc-
tion of the bucolic mind. The arrangement, moreover, would
be particularly happy, because Hardy had already promised to
perform the marriage ceremony, which Tom and she had
settled would take place at the earliest possible moment after
the return of the Indian heroes.

Dr. Winter was very glad to accept the offer; and so, when
506 ‘TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

they parted at Oxford, Hardy went to Englebourn, where we
must leave him for the present. Tom went home—whence,
in a few days, he had to hurry down to Southampton to meet
the two Harrys. He was much shocked at first to see the
state of his old school-fellow, East looked haggard and pale
in the face, notwithstanding the sea-voyage. . His clothes hung
on him as if they had been made for a man of twice his size,
and he walked with difficulty by the help of a large. stick.
But he had lost none of his indomitableness, laughed at Tom’s
long face, and declared that he felt himself getting better and
stronger every day.

“Tf you had only seen me at Calcutta,” he said, “ you would
sing a different song. Th, Winburn?”

Harry Winburn was much changed, and had acquired all
the composed and self-reliant look which is so remarkable in
a good non-commissioned officer. Readiness to obey and
command was stamped on every line of his face; but it
required all his powers of self-restraint to keep within bounds
his delight at getting home again. His wound was quite
healed, and his health re-established by the voyage; and,
when Tom gaw how wonderfully his manners and carriage
were improved, and how easily his uniform sat on him, he felt
quite sure that all would be soon right at Englebourn,
and that Katie and he would be justified in their prophecies
and preparations. The invalids had to report themselves in
London, and thither the three proceeded together. When
this was done, Harry Winburn was sent off at once. He re-
sisted at first, and begged to be allowed to stay with his captain
until the Captain could go into Berkshire himself. But he
was by this time too much accustomed to discipline not to
obey a positive order, and was comforted by Tom’s assurance
that he would not leave East, and would do everything for him
which the sergeant had been accustomed to do.

Three days later, as East and Tom were sitting at breakfast,
a short note came from Miss Winter, telling of Harry’s arrival
—how the bells were set ringing to welcome him; how Mr.
Hardy had preached the most wonderful sermon on his story
the next day ; above all, how Patty had surrendered at dis-
cretion, and the banns had been called for the first time. So
the sooner they could come down the better—as it was very
important that no time should be lost, lest some of the old
jealousies and quarrels should break out again. Upon reading
and considering which letter, East resolved to start for Engle-
bourn at once, and Tom to accompany him.

There was one person to whom Harry’s return and approach-
ing wedding was a subject of unmixed joy and triumph, and
FROM INDIA TO ENGLEBOURN. 507

that was David the constable. He had always been a sincere
friend to Harry, and had stood up for him when all the parish
respectabilities had turned against him, and had prophesied
that he would live to be a credit to the place. So now David
felt himself an inch higher as he saw Harry walking about in
his uniform with his sweetheart, the admiration of all Engle-
bourn. But, besides all the unselfish pleasure which David
enjoyed on his young friend’s account, a little piece of private
and personal gratification came to him on his own. Ever
since Harry’s courtship had begun David had felt himself in
a false position towards, and had suffered under, old Simon,
the rector’s gardener. The necessity for keeping the old man
in good humour for Harry’s sake had always been present to
the constable’s mind ; and, for the privilege of putting in a
good word for his favourite every now and then, he had
allowed old Simon to assume an air of superiority over him,
and to trample upon him and dogmatizo to him, evon in the
matters of flowers and bees. This had been the more galling
to David on account of old Simon’s intolerant Toryism, which
the constable’s soul rebelled against, except in the matter of
Church music. On this one point they agreed, but even here
Simon managed to be unpleasant. He would lay the whole
blame of the changes which had been effected upon David,
accusing him of having given in when there was no need. As
there was nothing but a wall between the Rectory garden and
David's little strip of ground, in which he spent all his leisure
time until the shades of evening summoned him to the bar of
the Red Lion for his daily pint and pipe, the two were con-
stantly within hearing of one another, and Simon, in times
past, had seldom neglected an opportunity of making himself
disagreeable to his long-suffering neighbour.

But now David was a free man again; and he took the
earliest occasion of making the change in his manner apparent
to Simon, and of getting, as he called it, “upsides” with him.
One would have thought, to look at, him, that the old gardener
was as pachydermatous as a rhinoceros; but somehow he
seemed to feel that things had changed between them, and
did not appreciate on interview with David now nearly so
much as of old. So he found very little to do in that part of
the garden which abutted on the constable’s premises. When
he could not help working there, he chose the times at which
David was most likely to be engaged, or even took the trouble
to ascertain that he was not at home.

Early on Midsummer-day, old Simon reared his ladder
against the boundary wall, with the view of “doctorin’” some
of the fruit trees, relying on a parish meeting, at which the
508 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

constable’s presence was required. But he had not more than
half finished his operations before David returned from vestry,
and, catching sight of the top of the ladder and Simon’s head
above the wall, laid aside all other business, and descended
into the garden.

' Simon kept on at his work, only replying by a jerk of the
head and one of his grunts to his neighbour’s salutation.

David took his coat off, and his pruning knife out, and,

establishing himself within easy shot of his old oppressor,
. opened fire at once—

“Thou’st gi’en thy consent then?” ~

“Tis no odds, consent or none—her’s old enough to hev
her own waay.”

“But thou’st gi’en thy consent?”

“es, then, if thou wilt hev’t,” said Simon, suzlily ; “wut
then ?”

“So I heerd,” said David, indulging in an audible chuckle,

; What bist a laughin’ at?” —
' T be laughin’ to think how folks changes, Do’st mind
the hard things as thou hast judged and said o’ Harry? Not
as ever I known thy judgment to be o’ much account, ’cept
about roots. But thou saidst, times and times, as a would
come to the gallows.”

“So a med yet—so a med yet,” answered Simon. “ Not
but wut I wishes well to un, and bears no grudges; but
others as hev got the law ov un medn’t.”

“Tis he as hev got grudges to bear. He don’t need none
o’ thy forgiveness.”

“Praps a medn’t. But hev ’em got the law ov un, or
hevn’t ’em?” .

“Wut do’st mean: got the law ov un?”

“ Thaay warrants as wur out agen un, along wi’ the rest as
was transpworted auver Farmer Tester’s job.”

“Oh, he’ve got no call to be afeard o’ thaay now. Thou
know’st I hears how ‘tis laid down at Sessions and ’Sizes,
wher’ I’ve a been this twenty year.”

“ Like enuff. Only, wut’s to hinder thaay tryin’ ov un, if
thaay be a minded to ’t? That’s wut I wants to know.”

“Tis wut the counsellors calls the Statut o’ Lamentations,”
said the constable, proudly.

“ Wutever’s Lamentations got to do wit?”

“A gurt deal, I tell ’ee, What do’st thou know o’ Lamen-
tations ?”

“ Lamentations cums afore Ezekiel in the Bible.”

“That ain’t no kin to the Statut o’ Lamentations. But
there’s summut like to’t in the Bible,” said the constable,

v

{ a
FROM INDIA TO ENGLEBOURN. 509

stopping his work to consider a moment, ‘ Do’st mind the
year when the land wur all to be guv back to thaay as owned
it fust, and debts wur to be wiped out?”

“es, I minds summut o’ that.”

“Well, this here statut says, if so be as a man hev bin to
the wars, and sarved his country like, as nothin’ shan’t be
reckoned agen he, let alone murder. Nothin’ can’t do away
wi’ murder.”

“No, nor oughtn’t. Hows’mdever, you seems clear about
the law on’t. There’s Miss a callin’.”

And old Simon’s head disappeared as he descended the
ladder to answer the summons of his young mistress, not
displeased at having his fears as to the safety of his future
son-in-law set at rest by so eminent a legal authority as the
constable. Fortunately for Harry, the constable’s law was
not destined to be tried. Young Wurley was away in London.
Old Testor was bedridden with an accumulation of diseases
brought on by his bad life. His illness made him more
violent and tyrannical than ever; but he could do little harm
out of his own room, for no one ever went to see him, and the
wretched farm-servant who attended him was much too fright-
ened to tell him anything of what was going on in the parish.
There was no one else to revive proceedings against Harry.

David pottered on at his bees and his flowers till old Simon
returned, and ascended his ladder again.

“You be ther’ still, be ’ee?” he said, as soon as he saw
David.

“Kes, Any news?”

“ Ah, news enuff. He as wur Harry’s captain and young
Mr. Brown be comin’ down to-morrow, and hev tuk all the
Red Lion to theirselves. And thaay beant content to wait
for banns—not thaay—and so ther’s to be a license got for
Saturday. “Taint scarce decent, that taint.”

“Tis best to get drough wi't,” said the constable.

“Then nothin’ll sarve ’em but the church must be hung
wi’ flowers, and wher’ be thaay to cum from without strippin’
and starvin’ ov my beds? "Lis shameful to seo how folks
acts wi’ flowers now-a-days, a cuttin’ on ’em and puttin’ on
’em about, as prodigal as though thaay growed o’ their-
selves.”

“So ‘tis shameful,” said David, whose sympathies for
flowers were all with Simon. “I heers tell as young Squire
Wurley hevs ’em on table at dinner-time instead o’ the
wittles.”

“Do’ee though! I calls it reg’lar papistry, and so I tells
Miss; but her only laughs.”
510 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

The constable shook his head solemnly as he replied,
“Hler’ve been led away wi’ such doin’s ever sence
Walker cum, and took to organ-playin’ and chantin’.”

“ And he ain’t no sich gurt things in the pulpit necther,
ain’t Mr. Walker,” chimed in Simon (the two had not been so
in harmony for years). “I reckon as he ain’t nothin’ to speak
ov alongside o’ this here new un as hev tuk his place. He’ve
a got a good deal o’ move in un, he hey.”

“Ah, so a hev. A wunnerful. sight o’ things a telled us
?other night about the Indians and the wars.”

“ Ah! talking cums as nat’ral to he as buttermilk to a
litterin’ sow.”

“ Thou shoulds’t a heerd un, though, about the battles. I
can’t mind the neames on ’em—let me see—”

“JT dwun’t vally the neames,” interrupted Simon. “Thaay
makes a deal o’ fuss auver’t aal, but I dwun’t tek no account
on’t. ‘Tain’t like the owld wars and fightin’ o’ the French,
this here fightin’ wi’ blackamoors, let ’em talk as thaay
wool.”

“No more ’tain’t. But ’twur a ’mazin’ fino talk as he gi'n
us. Hev’ee seed ought ’twixt he and young missus?”

“ Nothin’ out o’ th’ common. I got plenty to do without
lookin’ arter the women, and ’tain’t no bisness o’ mine, nor o’
thine neether.”

David was preparing a stout rejoinder to this rebuke of:
the old retainer of the Winter family on his curiosity, but
was summoned by his wife to the house to attend a customer ;
and by the time he could get out again Simon had dis-
appeared, ;

The next day East and Tom arrived, and took possession
of the Red Lion ; and Englebourn was soon im a ferment of
preparation for the wedding. East was not the man to do
things by halves; and, seconded as he was by Miss Winter
and Hardy and Tom, had soon made arrangements for all
sorts of merrymaking. The school-children were to have a
whole holiday, and, after scattering flowers at church and
marching in the bridal procession, were to be entertained in
a tent pitched in the home paddock of the Rectory, and to have
an afternoon of games and prizes, and tea and cake. The
bell-ringers, Harry’s old comrades, were to have five shillings
apiece, and a cricket match, and a dinner afterwards at the
second public-house, to which any other of his old friends
whom Harry chose to ask were to be also invited. The old
men and women were to be fed in the village school-room ;
and East and Tom were to entertain a select party of the
farmers and tradesmen at the Red Lion, the tap of which
THE WEDDING-DAY. 511

hostelry was to be thrown open to all comers at the Captain’s
expense. It was not without considerable demur on the part
of Miss Winter that some of these indiscriminate festivities
were allowed to pass. But after consulting with Hardy
she relented, on condition that the issue of beer at the two
public-houses should be put under the control of David the
constable, who, on his part, promised that law and order should
be well represented and maintained on the occasion. “ Arter
all, Miss, you sees, ’tis only for once in a waay,” he said ;
“and ’twill make ’em remember aal as hev bin said to ’em
about the Indians and tho rest on’t.” So the Captain and his
abettors, having gained the constable as an ally, prevailed ;
and Englebourn, much wondering at itself, made ready for a
general holiday.

 

CHAPTER XLVIL

THE WEDDING-DAY.

One—more—poor—man—un-done—

One—more—poor—man—un-done.
Tus belfry-tower rocked and reeled, as that peal rang out,
now merry, now scornful, now plaintive, from those narrow
belfry windows, into the bosom of the soft south-west wind
which was playing round the old grey tower of Englebourn
‘ church. And the wind caught the peal and played with it,
and bore it away over Rectory and village street, and many a
homestead, and gently waving field of ripening corn, and rich
pasture and water-meadow, and tall whispering woods of the
Grange, and rolled it against the hill-side, and up the slope
past the clump of firs on the Hawk’s Lynch, till it died away
on the wild stretches of common beyond.

The ringers bent lustily to their work. There had been no
such ringing in Englebourn since the end of the great war.
Not content with the usual peal out of church, they came
back again and again in the afternoon, full of the good cheer
which had been provided for them ; and again and again the
wedding peal rang out from the belfry in honour of their old
comrade—

One—more—poor—man—un-done—
One—more—poor—man—un-done.

Such was the ungallant speech which for many generations
had been attributed to the Englebourn wedding-bells ; and
when you had once caught the words—as you would be sure
to do from some wide-mouthed grinning boy, lounging over
512 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

the churchyard rails to see the wedding pass—it would be
impossible to persuade yourself that they did, in fact, say
anything else, Somehow, Harry Winburn bore his undoing
in the most heroic manner, and did his duty throughout the
trying day as a non-commissioned officer and bridegroom
should. ‘the only part of the performance arranged by his
captain which he fairly resisted, was the proposed departure
of himself and Patty to the station in the solitary post-chaise
-of Englebourn—a real old yellow—with a pair of horses.
East, after hearing the sergeant’s pleading on the subject of
vehicles, at last allowed them to drive off in a tax-cart, taking
a small boy with them behind, to bring it back.

As for the festivities, they went off without a hitch, as such
affairs will, where the leaders of the revels have their hearts
in them. The children had all played, and romped, and
eaten, and drunk themselves into a state of torpor by an
early hour of the evening. The farmers’ dinner was a de-.
cided success. East proposed the health of the bride and
bridegroom, and was followed by Farmer Grove and the con-
stable. David turned out in a new blue swallow-tailed coat,
with metal buttons, of his own fabulous cut, in honour of the
occasion. He and the farmer spoke like the leader of the
Government and the Opposition in the House of Commons
on an address to the Crown. There was not a pin to choose
between their speeches, and a stranger hearing them would
naturally have concluded that Harry had never been anything
but the model boy and young man of the parish. Fortunately,
the oratorical powers of Englebourn ended here; and East,
and the majority of his guests, adjourned to the green, where
the cricket was in progress, Each game lasted a very short
time only, as the youth of Englebourn were not experts in
the noble science, and lost their wickets one after another so
fast, that Tom and Hardy had time to play out two matches
with them, and then to retire on their laurels, while the after-
noon was yet young.

The old folk in the village school-room enjoyed their beef
and pudding, under the special superintendence of Miss
Winter, and then toddled to their homes, and sat about in
the warmest nooks they could find, mumbling of old times,
and the doings at Dr. Winter's wedding. :

David devoted himself to superintending the issue of beer,
swelling with importance, but so full of the milk of human
kindness from the great event of‘ the day that nobody minded
his little airs. He did his duty so. satisfactorily that, with
the exception of one or two regular confirmed soakers, who
stuck steadily to the tap of the Red Lion and there managed
THE WEDDING-DAY. 518

successfully to fuddle themselves, there was nothing like
drunkenness. In short, it was one of those rare days when
everything goes right, and everybody seems to be inclined to
give and take, and to make allowances for their neighbours.
By degrees the cricket flagged, and most of the men went off
to sit over their pipes, and finish the evening in their own
way. The boys and girls took to playing at ‘“ kissing in the
ring ;” and the children who had not already gone home sat
in groups watching then.

Miss Winter had already disappeared, and Tom, Hardy,
and the Captain began to feel that they might consider their
part finished. They strolled together off the green towards
Hardy’s lodgings, the Red Lion being still in the possession
‘of East’s guests.

“Well, how do you thing it all went off?” asked he.

‘Nothing could have been better,” said Hardy ; and they
all seem so inclined to be reasonable that I don’t think we
shall even have a roaring song along the street to-night when
the Red Lion shuts up.”

« And you are satisfied, Tom ?”

“T should think so. I have been hoping for this day any
time this four years, and now it has come, and gone off well,
too, thanks to you, Harry.”

“Thanks to me? Very good ; I am open to any amount of
gratitude.”

“T think you have every reason to be satisfied with your
second day’s work at Englebourn, at any rate.”

“So I am. I only hope it may turn out as well as the
first.” 5

“Oh, there’s no doubt about that.”

“J don’t know. I rather believe in the rule of contraries.”

“How do you mean ?”

“ Why, when you inveigled me over from Oxford, and we
carried off the sergeant from the authorities, and defeated the
yeomanry in tha} tremendous thunder-storm, I thought we
were a couple of idiots, and deserved a week each in the lock-
up for our pains. That business turned out well. This time
we have started with flying colours and bells ringing, and
80 ”

“ This business will turn out better. Why not?”

“Then let us manage a third day’s work in these parts as
soon as possible. I should like to get to the third degree of
comparison, and perhaps the superlative will turn up trumps
for me somehow. Are there many more young women in the
place as pretty as Mrs. Winburn? This marrying complaint
is very catching, I find.”

 

LL
514 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

“ There’s my cousin Katie,” said Tom, looking stealthily at
Hardy ; “I won’t allow that there’s any face in the country-
side to match hors. “What do you say, Jack %”

Hardy was confused by this sudden appeal.

“T haven’t been long enough here to judge,” ho said. “I
have always thought Miss Winter very beautiful. I see it is
nearly seven o'clock, and I have a call or two to make in the
village. I should think you ought to get some rest after this
tiring day, Captain Fast ?”

“What are you going to do, Tom 9”

“Well, I was thinking of just throwing a fly over the mill
tail. There’s such a fine head of water on.”

“Tsn’t it too bright?”

‘Well, perhaps it is a little: marrying weather and fishing
weather don’t agree. Only what else is there todo? But if
you are tired,” he added, looking at East, “I don’t care a
straw about it. I shall stay with you.”

“Not a bit of it. Ishall hobble down with you, and lie
on the bank and smoke a cheroot,”

“No, you shan’t walk, at any rate. I can borrow the
constable’s pony, old Nibble, the quietest beast in the world.
He'll stand for a week if we like, while I fish and you lie and
look on. Tl be off, and bring him round in two minutes.”

“Then we shall meet for a clumsy tea at nine at my lodg-
ings,” said Hardy, as he went off to his pastoral duties.

Tom and East, in due time, found themselves by the side
of the stream. ‘There was only a small piece of fishable
water in Englebourn. The fine stream, which, a mile or so
below, in the Grange grounds, might be called a river, came
into respectable existence only about two hundred yards above
Englebourn Mill Here two little chalk brooks met, and
former millers had judiciously deepened the channel, and
dammed the united waters back so as to get a respectable
reservoir. Above the junction the little weedy, bright,
creeping brooks afforded good sport for small truants groppling
about with their hands, or bobbing with lobworms under the
hollow banks, but were not available for the scientific angler.
The parish ended at the fence next below the mill garden, on
the other side of which the land was part of the Grange estate,
So there was just the piece of still water above the mill, and
the one field below it, over which Tom had leave.. On ordi-
nary occasions this would have been enough, with careful
fishing, to last him till dark ; but his nerves were probably
somewhat excited by the events of the day, and East sat near
and kept talking ; so he got over his water faster than usual.
At any rato, he had arrived for the second time at the envious
THE WEDDING-DAY. 516

fence before the sun was down. The fish were wondrous wa:
in the miller’s bit of water—as might be expected, for they
led a dog of a life there, between the miller and his men, and
their nets, and baits of all kinds always set. So Tom thought
himself lucky to get a couple of decent fish, the only ones
that were moving within his liberty ; but he could not help
looking with covetous eyes on the fine stretch of water below,
all dimpling with rises.

“Why don’t you get over and fish below ?” said East, from
his seat on the bank ; “don’t mind me. I can watch you;
besides, lying on the turf on such an evening is luxury
enough by itself.”

“TI can’t go. Both sides below belong to that fellow
Wurley.”

“The sergeant’s amiable landlord and prosecutor ?”

“Yes ; and the yeoman with whom you exchanged shots
on the common.”

“Hang it, Tom, just jump over and catch a brace of his
trout. Look how they are rising.”

“No, I don’t know. I never was very particular about
poaching, but somehow I shouldn’t like to do it on his land.
I don’t like him well enough.”

“You're right, I believe. But, just look there. There’s a
whopper rising not more than ten yards below the rail. You
might reach him, I think, without tresspasing, from where
you stand.”

“Shall I have a shy at him?”

“Yes; it can’t be poaching if you don't go on his

grounds.”
. Tom could not resist the temptation, and threw over the
rails, which crossed the stream from hedge to hedge to mark
the boundaries of the parish, until he got well over the place
where the fish was rising.

“There, that was at your fly,” said East, hobbling up in
great excitement.

“ All right, I shall have him directly. There he is. Hullo!
Harry, I say! Splash with your stick. Drive the brute back.
Bad luck to him. Look at that!”

The fish when hooked had come straight up stream towards
his captor, and notwithstanding East’s attempts to frighten
him back, had rushed in under the before-mentioned rails,
which were adorned with jaaged nails, to make crossing on
them unpleasant for the Englebourn boys. Against ono of
these Tom’s line severed, and the waters closed over two
beauteous flies, and some six feet of lovely taper gut.

East laughed loud and merrily ; and Tom, crbstfallen as he

LL2
516 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

was, was delighted to hear the old ring coming back into his
friend’s voice.

“Harry, old fellow, you're picking up already in this glo-
rious air.”

“Of course Iam. Two or three more weddings and fish-
ings will set me up altogether. How could you be so green
as to throw over those rails? It’s a proper lesson to you, Tom,
for poaching.” ‘

“Well, that’s cool, Didn’t I throw down stream to please
you }”
ae You ought to have resisted temptation. But, I say, what
are you at ?”

“Putting on another cast, of course.”

“Why, you're not going on to Wurley’s land ?”

“No; I suppose not. I must try the mill tail again.”

“Tt’s no good. You've tried it over twice, and I'm getting
bored.”

, Well, what shall we do then 9”

“T’ve a mind to get up to the hill there to see the sun set
—what’s its name?—where I waited with the cavalry that
night, you know.”

“Oh! the Hawk’s Lynch. Come along, then; I’m your
man.”

So Tom put up his rod, and caught the old pony, and the
two friends were soon on their way towards the common,
through lanes at the back of the village.

The wind had sunk to sleep as the shadows lengthened.
There was no sound abroad except that of Nibble’s hoofs on
the turf,—not even the hum of insects; for the few perse-
vering gnats, who were still dancing about in the slanting,
glints of sunshine that struck here and there across the lanes,
had left off humming. Nothing living met them, except an
occasional stag-beetle, steering clumsily down the lane, and
seeming, like a heavy coaster, to have as much to do as he
could fairly manage in keeping clear of them. They walked
on in silence for some time, which was broken at last by East.

“T haven't had time to tell you about my future pros-
pects,”

“How do you mean? Has anything happened?”

“Yes, I got a letter two days ago from New Zealand,
where I find I am a considerable landowner, A cousin of mine
has died out there and left me his property.”

“Well, you're not going to leave England, surely ¢”

“Yes, Iam. The doctors say the voyage will do me good,
and the climate is just the one to suit me. What's the good

_ of my staying here? I shan’t be fit for service again for
THE WEDDING-DAY. 517

years. I shall go on half-pay, and become an enterprising
agriculturist at the Antipodes. I have spoken to the ser-
geant, and arranged that he and his wife shall go with me;
so, as soon as I can get his discharge, and he has done
honeymooning, we shall start. I wish you would come with
us.”

Tom could scarcely believe his ears ; but soon found that
East was in earnest, and had an answer to all his remon-
strances. Indeed, he had very little to say against the plan,

* for it jumped with his own humour ; and he could not help
admitting that, under the circumstances, it was a wise one,
and that, with Harry Winburn for his head man, East
couldn’t do better than carry it out.

“T knew you would soon come round to it,” said the
captain ; “what could I do dawdling about at home, with just
enough money to keep me and get me into mischief? There
I shall have a position and an object; and one may be of
some use, and make one’s mark in a new country. And we'll
get a snug berth ready for you by the time yore starved out
of the old country. England isn’t the place for poor men
with any go in them.”

“T believe you're right, Harry,” said Tom, mournfully.

“T knowI am. And in a few years, when weve made
our fortunes, we'll come back and have a look at the old
country, and perhaps buy up half Englebourn, and lay our
bones in the old churchyard.”

“And if we don’t make our fortunes ?”

“Then we'll stay out there.”

“Well, if I were my own master I think I should make
one with you. But I could never leave my father and mother,
or—or—”

“Oh, I understand. Of course, if matters go all right in
that quarter, I have nothing more to say. But, from what
you have told me, I thought you might be glad of a regular
break in your life, a new start in a new world.”

“Very likely I may. I should have said so myself this
morning. But somehow I feel to-night more hopeful than I
have for years.”

“Those wedding chimes are running in your head.” °

“Yes ; and they have lifted a load off my heart too. Four
years ago I was very near doing the greatest wrong a man
can do to that girl who was married to-day, and to that fine
fellow her husband, who was the first friend I ever had.
Ever sinco then I have beon doing my best to set matters
straight, and have often made them crookeder. But to-day
they are all straight, thank God, and I feel as if a chain were
518 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

broken from off my neck. All has come right for them, and
perhaps my own turn will come before long.”

. To be sure it will, I must be introduced to a certain
young lady before we start. I shall tell her that I don't
mean to give up hopes of seeing her on the other side of the
world.”

‘Well, here we are on the common. What a glorious
sunset! Come, stir up, Nibble. ‘We shall be on the Lynch
just in time to see him dip if we push on.”

Nibble, that ancient pony, finding that there was no help
for it, scrambled up the greater part of the ascent successfully.
But his wheezings and roarings during the operation excited
East’s pity. So he dismounted when they came to the foot
of the Hawk’s Lynch, and, tying Nibble’s bridle to a furze-
bush—-a most unnecessary precaution—set to work to scale
the last and steepest bit of-the ascent with the help of his stick
and Tom’s strong arm.

They paused every ten paces or so to rest and look at the
sunset. The broad vale below lay in purple shadow; the
soft flocks of little clouds high up over their heads, and
stretching away to the eastern horizon, floated in a sea of
rosy light; and the stems of the Scotch firs stood out like
columns of ruddy flame.

“Why, this beats India,” said East, putting up his hand to
shade his eyes, which were fairly dazzled by the blaze. “ What
a contrast to the last time I was up here! Do you remember
that awful black-blue sky ?”

“Don't I? Like a night-mare. Hullo! who’s here?”

_ “Why, if it isn’t the parson and Miss Winter !” said East,
smiling, 5

True enough, there they wore, standing together on the
very verge of the mound, beyond the firs, some ton yards in
front of the last comers, looking out into the sunset.

“Tsay, Tom, another good omen,” whispered East’; “hadn't
we better beat a retreat ?”

Before Tom could answer, or make up his mind what to do,
Hardy turned his head and caught sight of them, and then
Katie turned too, blushing like the little clouds overhead.
It was an embarrassing moment, Tom stammered out that
they had come up quite by chance, and then set to work, well
seconded by East, to look desperately unconscious, and to
expatiate on the beauties of the view. The light began to fade,
and the little clouds to change again from soft pink to grey,
and the evening star shone out clear as they turned to
descend the hill, when the Englebourn clock chimed nine,

Katie attached herself to Tom, while Hardy helped the
THE WEDDING-DAY. 519

Captain down the steep pitch, and on to the back of Nibble.
They went a little ahead. Tom was longing to speak to his
cousin, but could not tell how to begin. At last Katie broke
silence :

“T am so vexed that this should have happened !”

* Are you, dear? So am not I,” he said, pressing her arm
to his side.

“But I mean, it seems so forward—as if I had met Mr.

Hardy here on purpose. What will your friend think of
me?”

“ He will think no evil.”

“But indeed, Tom, do tell him, pray. It was quite an
accident. You know how I and Mary used. to go up the
Hawk’s Lynch whenever we could, on fine evenings.

“Yes, dear, I know it well.”

“And I thought of you both so much to-day, thet I
couldn’t help coming up here.”

“And you found Hardy? I don’t wonder. I should
come up to see the sun set every night, if I lived at Engle-
bourn.”

“No. He came up some time after me. Straight up the
hill. I did notsee him till he was quite close. I could not
run away then. Indeed, it was not five minutes before you
came.’

“ Five minutes are as good as a year sometimes.”

“ And you will tell your friend, Tom, how it happened ?”

“Tndeed I will, Katie. May I not toll him something
more 1”

He looked round for an answer, and there was just light
enough to read it in her eye.

“My debt is deepening to the Hawk’s Lynch,” he said,
as they walked on through the twilight. “Blessed five
minutes! Whatever else they may take with them, they will
carry my thanks for ever. Look how clear and steady the
light'of that star is, just over the church tower. I wonder
whether Mary is at a great hot dinner. Shall you write to
her soon ?”

“Oh, yes. .To-night.”

“You may tell her that there is no better Englishman
walking the earth than my friend, John Hardy. Here we
are at his lodgings. East and I are going to tea with him.

‘Wish them good night, and I will see you home.”
620 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

CHAPTER XLVIIL.
THE BEGINNING OF THB END.

From the Englebourn festivities Tom and East returned to
London. The Captain was bent on starting for his posses-
sions in the South Pacific; and, as he regained strength,
energized over all his preparations, and went about in cabs
purchasing agricultural implements, sometimes by the light of
nature, and sometimes under the guidance pf Harry Winburn.
He invested. also in something of a library, and in large quan-
tities of saddlery. In short, packages of all kinds began to
increase and multiply upon him. Then there was the select-
ing a vessel, and all the negotiations with the ship’s husband
as to terms, and the business of getting introduced to, and
conferring with, people from the colony, or who were supposed.
to know something about it. Altogether, East had plenty of
work on his hands; and the more he had to do, the better
and more cheery he became.

Tom, on the contrary, was rather lower than usual. His
half-formed hopes that some good luck was going to happen
to him after Patty’s marriage, were beginning to grow faint,
and the contrast of his friend’s definite present purpose in life
with his own uncertainty, made him more or less melancholy
in spite of all his efforts. His father had offered him a tour
abroad, now that he had finished with Oxford, urging that he
seemed to want a change to freshen him up before buckling
to a profession, and that he would never, in all likelihood,
have such another chance. But he could not make up his
mind to accept the offer, The attraction to London was too
strong for him ; and, though he saw little hope of anything
happening to improve his, prospects, he could not keep away
from it. He spent most of his time when not with East, in
haunting the neighbourhood of Mr. Porter's house in Belgravia,
and the places where he was likely to catch distant glimpses
of Mary, avoiding all chance of actual meeting or recognition,
from which he shrank in his present frame of mind.

The nearest approach to the flame which he allowed him-
self was a renewal of his old friendship with Grey, who was
still working on in his Westminster rookery. He had become
a great favourite with Mrs. Porter, who was always trying to
get him to her house to feed him properly, and was much
astonished, and sometimes almost provoked, at the small
success of her hospitable endeavours. Grey was so taken up
with his own pursuits that it did not occur to him to be sur.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 521

prised that he never met Tom at the house of his relations,
He was innocent of all knowledge or suspicion of the real
state of things, so that Tom could talk to him with perfect
freedom about his uncle’s household, picking up all such
scraps of information as Grey possessed without compromising
himself or feeling shy.

Thus the two old schoolfellows lived on together after their
return from Englebourn, in a set of chambers in the Temple,
which one of Tom’s college friends (who had been beguiled
from the perusal of Stephen’s Commentaries and aspirations
after the woolsack, by the offer of a place on board a yacht
and a, cruise to Norway,) had fortunately lent him.

‘We join company with our hero again on a fine July
morning. Readers will begin to think that, at any rate, he
is always blessed with fine weather whatever troubles he may
have to endure; but, if we are not to have fine weather in
novels, when and where are we to have it? It, was a fine
July morning, then, and the streets were already beginning to
feel sultry as he worked his way westward. Grey, who had
never given up hopes of bringing Tom round to his own
views, had not neglected the opportunities which this resi-
dence in town offered, and had enlisted Tom’s services on
more than one occasion. He had found him specially useful
in instructing the big boys, whom he was trying to bring
together and civilize in a “ Young Men’s Club,” in the rudi-
ments of cricket on Saturday evenings. But on the morning
in question an altogether different work was on hand.

A lady living some eight or nine miles to the north-west of
London, who took great interest in Grey’s doings, had asked
him to bring the children of his night-school down to spend
a day in her grounds, and this was the happy occasion. It
was before the days of cheap excursions by rail, so that vans
had to be found for the party; and Grey had discovered a
benevolent remover of furniture in Paddington, who was
ready to take them at a reasonable figure. The two vans,
with awnings and curtains in the height of the fashion, and
horses with tasselled ear-caps, and everything handsome about
them, were already drawn up in the midst of a group of ex-
cited children, and scarcely less excited mothers, when Tom
arrived. Grey was arranging his forces, and labouring to
reduce the Irish children, who formed almost half of his
ragged little flock, into something like order before starting,
By degrees this was managed, and Tom was placed in com-
mand of the rear van, while Grey reserved the leading one
to himself. The children were divided, and warned not to
lean over the sides and tumble out—a somewhat superfluous
522 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

caution, as most of them, though unused to riding in any
legitimate manner, were pretty well used to balancing them-
selves behind any vehicle which, offered as much as a spike to
sit on, out of sight of the driver. Then came the rush into
the vans. Grey and Tom took up their places next the doors
as conductors, and the procession lumbered off with great
success, and much shouting from treble voices.

Tom soon found that he had plenty of work on his hands
to keep the peace amongst his flock. The Irish element was
in a state of wild effervescence, and he had to draft them
down to his own end, leaving the foremost part of the van
to the soberer English children. He was much struck by the
contrast of the whole set to the Englebourn school children,
whom he had lately seen under. somewhat similar circum-
stances, The difficulty with them had been to draw them
out, and put anything like life into them; here, all he had
to do was to repress .the superabundant life. However, the
vans held on their way, and got safely into the suburbs, and
go at last to an occasional hedge, and a suspicion of trees, and
green fields beyond,

It became more and more difficult now to keep the boys
in; and when they came to a hill, where the horses had to
walk, he yielded to their entreaties, and, opening the door,
let them out, insisting only that the girls should remain
seated. They scattered over the sides of the roads, and up
the banks ; now chasing pigs and fowls up to the very doors
of their owners; now gathering the commonest road-side
weeds, and running up to show them to him, and ask their
names, as if they were rare treasures. The ignorance of most
of the children as to the commonest country matters astonished
him. One small boy particularly came back time after time to
ask him, with solemn face, “ Please, sir, is this the country 7”
and when at last he allowed that it was, rejoined, “Then,
please, where are the nuts?” :

The clothing of most of the Irish boys began to tumble to
pieces in an alarming manner. Grey had insisted on their
being made tidy for the occasion, but the tidiness was of a
superficial kind. The hasty stitching soon began to give way,
and they were rushing about with wild locks; the strips of
what once might have been nether garments hanging about
their legs ; their feet and heads bare, the shoes which their
mothers had borrowed for the state occasion having been
deposited under the seat of the van. So, when the proces-
sion arrived at the trim lodge-gates of their hostess, and his
charge descended and fell in on the beautifully clipped turf
at the side of the drive, Tom felt some of the sensations of
THE BEGINNING OF THE END. ' 523

Falstaff when he had to lead his ragged regiment through
Coventry streets.

-He -was soon at his ease again, and enjoyed the day tho-
roughly, and the drive home; but, as they drew near town
again, a.sense of discomfort and shyness came over him, and
he wished the journey to Westminster well over, and hoped
that the carman would have the sense to go through the quiet
parts of the town.

He was much disconcerted, consequently, when the vans
came to a sudden stop, opposite one of the Park entrances, in
the Bayswator Road. “ What in the world is Grey about?”
he thought, as he saw him get out, and all the children after
him. So he got out himself, and went forward to get an
explanation.

“ Oh, I have told the man that he need not drive ug round.
to Westminster. He is close at home here, and his horses
have had a hard day; so we can just get out and walk
home.”

“‘ What, across the Park?” asked Tom.

“Yes, it will amuse the children, you know.” :

“But they're tired,” persisted Tom; “come now, it’s all
nonsense letting the fellow off; he’s bound to take us
back.”

“Tm afraid I have promised him,” said Grey ; “besides,
the children all think it a treat. Don’t you all want to
walk across the Park?” he went on, turning to them, and
a general affirmative chorus was the answer. So Tom had
nothing for it but to shrug his shoulders, empty his own van,
and follow into the Park with his convoy, not in the best
humour with Grey for having arranged this ending to their
excursion. ’

They might have got over a third of the distance between
the Bayswater Road and the Serpentine, when he was aware
of a small thin voice addressing him.

“Qh, please, won't you carry me a bit? I’m so tired,”
said the voice. He turned in somo trepidation to look for
the speaker, and found her to be a sickly undergrown little:
girl, of ten or thereabouts, with large pleading grey eyes,
very shabbily dressed, and a little lame. He had remarked
her several times in the course of the day, not for any beauty
or grace about her, for the poor child had none, but for her
transparent confidence and trustfulness. After dinner, as they
had been all sitting on the grass under the shade of a great
elm to hear Grey read a story, and Tom had been sitting a
little apart from the rest with his back against the trunk, she
had come up and sat quietly down by him, leaning on his
524 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

knee. Then he had seen her go up and take the hand of
the lady who had entertained them, and walk along by her,
talking without the least shyness. Soon afterwards she had
squeezed into the swing by the side of the beautifully-dressed
little daughter of the same lady, who, after looking for a
minute at her shabby little sister with large round eyes, had
jumped out and run off to her mother, evidently in a state of
childish bewilderment as to whether it was not wicked for a
child to wear such dirty old clothes,

Tom had chuckled to himself as he saw Cinderella settling
herself comfortably in the swing in the place of the ousted
princess, and had taken a fancy to the child, speculating to
himself as to how she could have been brought up, to be so
utterly unconscious of differences of rank and dress. ‘She
seems Yeally to treat her fellow-creatures as if she had been
studying the Sartor Resartus,” he thought. ‘She has cut
down through all clothes-philosophy without knowing it. I
wonder, if she had a chance, whether she would go and sit
down in the Queen’s lap?”

He did not at the time anticipate that she would put his
own clothes-philosophy to so severe a test before the day was
over. The child had been as merry and active as any of the
rest during the earlier part of the day ; but now, as he looked
down in answer to her reiterated plea, “ Won't you carry me
a bit? I’m so tired!” he saw that she could scarcely drag
one foot after another.

‘What ‘was to be done? He was already keenly alive to

* the discomfort of walking across Hyde Park in a procession of
ragged children, with such a figure of fun as Grey at their
head, looking, in his long, rusty, straight-cut black coat, as if
he had come fresh out of Noah’s ark. He didn’t care about it
so much while they were on the turf in the out-of-the-way
parts, and would meet nobody but guards, and nurse-maids,
and tradespeople, and mechanics out for an evening’s stroll.
But the Drive and Rotten Row lay before them, and must be
crossed, It was just the most crowded time of the day. He
had almost made up his mind once or twice to stop Grey and
the procession, and propose to sit down for half-an-hour or so
and Jet the children play, by which time the world would be
going home to dinner. But there was no play left in the
children ; and he had resisted the temptation, meaning, when
they came to the most crowded part, to look unconscious, as
if it were by chance that he had got into such company, and
had in fact nothing to do with them. But now, if he listened -
to the child’s plea, and carried her, all hope of concealment
was over. If he did not, he felt that there would be no greater
THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 525

flunkey in the Park that evening than Thomas Brown, the
enlightened radical and philosopher, amongst the young gentle-
men riders in Rotten Row, or the powdered footmen lounging
behind the great blaring carriages in the Drive.

So he looked down at the child once or twice in a state of
puzzle. A third time she looked ‘up with her great eyes, and
said, “Oh, please carry me a bit!” and her piteous, tired face
turned the scale. “If she were Lady Mary or Lady Blanche,”
thought he, “I should pick her up at once, and be proud of
the burden. Here goes!” And he took her up in his arms,
and walked on, desperate and reckless.

Notwithstanding all his philosophy, he felt his ears tingling
and his face getting red, as they approached the Drive. It
was crowded. They were kept standing a minute or two at
the crossing. He made a desperate effort to abstract himself
wholly from the visible world, and retire into a state of serene
contemplation. But it would not do; and he was painfully
conscious of the stare of lack-lustre eyes of well-dressed men
leaning over the rails, and the amused look of delicate ladies,
lounging in open carriages, and surveying him and Grey and
their ragged rout through glasses.

At last they scrambled across, and he breathed freely for a
minute, as they struggled along the comparatively quiet path
leading to Albert Gate, and stopped to drink at the fountain.
Then came Rottén Row, and another pauce amongst the
loungers, and a plunge into the Ride, where he was nearly run
down by two men whom he had known at Oxford. They
shouted to him to get out of the way; and he felt the hot
defiant blood rushing through his veins, as he strode across
without heeding. They passed on, one of them having to pull
his horse out of his stride to avoid him. Did they recognise
him? He felt a strange mixture of utter indifference, and
longing to strangle them.

The worst was now over; besides, he was getting used to
the situation, and his good sense was beginning to rally. So
he marched through Albert Gate, carrying his ragged little
charge, who prattled away to him without a pause, and sur-
rounded by the rest of the children, scarcely caring who might
see him. EB ;

They won safely through the omnibuses and carriages on
the Kensington Road, and so into Belgravia. At last he was
quite at his ease again, and began listening to what the child
was saying to him, and was strolling carelessly along, when
once more, at one of the crossings, he was startled by a shout
from some riders. ‘There was straw laid down in the street,
so that he had not heard them as they cantered round the
526 ' TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

corner, hurrying home to dress for dinner ; and they were all
put upon him, and had to rein up their horses sharply.

The party consisted of a lady and two gentlemen, one old,
the other young ; the latter dressed in the height of fashion,
and with the supercilious air which Tom hated from his soul.
The shout came from the young man, and drew Tom’s atten-
tion to him first. All the devil rushed up as he recognised
St. Cloud. The lady’s horse swerved against his, and began
to rear. He put his hand on its bridle, as if he had a right
to protect her. Another glance told Tom that the lady was
Mary, and the old gentleman, fussing up on his stout cob on
‘the other side of her, Mr. Porter.

They all knew him in another moment. He stared from

one to the other, was conscious that she turned her horse’s
‘head sharply, so as to disengage the Wridle from St. Cloud’s
hand, and of his insolent stare, and of the embarrassment of
Mr. Porter ; and then, setting his face straight before him, he
‘passed on in a bewildered dream, never looking back till they
were out of sight. The dream gave way to bitter and wild
thoughts, upon which it will do none of us any good to dwell.
He put down the little girl outside the schools, turning
‘abruptly from the mother, a poor widow in scant, well-pre-
served black clothes, who was waiting for the child, and began
thanking him for his care of her; refused Grey's pressing
invitation to tea, and set his face eastward.—Bitterer and more
wild and more scornful grew his thoughts as he strode along
past the Abbey, and up Whitehall, and away down the Strand,
holding on over the crossings without paying the slightest
heed to vehicle, or horse, or man. Incensed coachmen had to
pull up with a jerk to avoid running over him, and more than
one sturdy walker turned round in indignation at a collision
which they felt had been intended, or at least which there
had been no effort to avoid.

As he passed under the window of the Banqueting Hall,
and by the place in Charing-cross where the pillory used to
stand, he growled to himself what a pity it was that the times
for cutting off heads and cropping ears had gone by. The
whole of the dense population from either side of the Strand
seemed to have crowded out into that thoroughfare to impede
his march and aggravate him. The further eastward he got
the thicker got the crowd ; and the vans, the omnibuses, the
cabs, seemed to multiply and get noisier. Not an altogether
pleasant sight to a man in the most Christian frame of mind
is the crowd that a fine summer evening fetches out into the
roaring Strand, as the sun fetches out flies on the window of
a village grocery. To him just then it was at once depressing
THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 527

and provoking, and he went shouldering his way towards
Temple Bar as thoroughly out of tune as he had been for
many a long day.

As he passed from the narrowest part of the Strand into
the space round St. Clement Danes’ church, he was startled,
in a momentary lull of the uproar, by the sound of chiming
bells. He slackened- his pace to listen; but a huge van
lumbered by, shaking the houses on both sides, and drowning
all sounds but its own rattle; and then he found himself
suddenly immersed in a crowd, vociferating and gesticulating
round a policeman, who was conveying a woman towards the
station house. He shouldered through it—another lull came,
and with it the same slow, ‘gentle, calm cadence of chiming
bells. Again and again he caught it as he passed on to
Temple Bar ; whenever the roar subsided the notes of the old
hymn tune came dropping down on him like balm from the
air. If the ancient benefactor who caused the bells of St.
Clement Danes’ church to be arranged to play that chime so
many times a day is allowed to hover round the steeple at
such times, to watch the effect of his benefaction on posterity,
he must have been well satisfied on that evening. Tom passed
under the Bar, and turned into the Temple another man,
softened again, and in his right mind.

“There's, always a voice saying the right thing to you
somewhere, if you'll only listen for it,” he thought. He took
a few turns in the court to clear his head, and then went up,
and found Harry East reclining on a sofa, in full view of tho
gardens and river, solacing himself with his accustomed cheroot,

“Oh, here you are,” he said, making room on the sofa ;—
“how did it go off?”

‘Well enough. Where have you been?”

‘ “Jn the City and at the Docks. I’ve been all over our
vessel. She’s a real clipper.”

‘When do you sail?”

“Not quite certain. I should say in a fortnight, though.”
East puffed away fora minute, and then, as Tom said nothing,
went on. “I’m not so sweet on it os the time draws near.
There are more of my chums turning up every day from India
at the Rag. And this is uncommonly pleasant, too, living
with you here in chambers. You may think it odd, but I
don’t half'like getting rid of you.”

“Thanks: but I don’t think you will get rid of me.”

“ How do you mean?”

“T mean that I shall go with you, if my people will let me,
and you will take me.”

' «We-h-e-w! Anything happened?”
528 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD,

. © Yes,”

“You've seen her ?”’

y “ Yes.” Y

“Well, goon, Don’t keep a fellow in suspense. I shall
be introduced, and eat ono of the old boy’s good dinners,
after all, pofore I sail.”

Tom looked out of window, and found some difficulty in
getting out the words, “ No, it’s all up.”

“You don't mean it?” said East, coming to a sitting posi-
tion by Tom’s side. “But how do you know? Are you
sure? What did she say?”

“Nothing. I haven't f spdihii to her; but it’s all up. She.
was riding with her father and the fellow to whom she’s
engaged. wt have heard it a dozen re but never would
believe it.

“But, is that all? Riding with ties father and another
man! Why, there’s nothing in that.”

“Yes, but there is though. You should have seen his
look. And they all knew me well enough, but not one of
them nodded even.”

“Well, there’s not much in that after all. It may have
been chance, or you may have fancied it.”

‘No, one isn’t quite such a fool. However, I have no
right to complain, and I won't. I could bear it all well
enough if he were not such a cold-hearted blackguard.”

“What, this fellow she was riding with?”

“Yes. He hasn’t a heart the size of a pin’s head. He'll
break her’s. He’s a mean brute, too. She can’t know him,
though he has been after her this year and more. They must
have forced her into it, Ah! it’s a bitter business,” and ho
put his head between his hands, and East heard the deep
catches of his labouring breath, as he sat by him, feeling
deeply for him, but puzzled what to say.

“She can’t be worth so much after all, Tom,” he -said at
last, ‘‘if she would have such a fellow as that. Depend upon
it she’s not what you thought her.”

Tom made no answer; so the captain went on presently,
thinking he had hit the right note,

Cheer up, old boy. There’s as Zood fish in the sea yet as

ever came out of it, Don’t you remember the song—whose
is it? Lovelace’s :—
‘¢ “Tf she be not fair for me,
What care I for whom she be?’”

Tom started up almost fiercely, but recovered. himself. in a

moment, and then leant his head down again.

“Don't talk about her, Harry ; you don’t know her,” he said,
THE END. 5QUi

“And don’t want to know her, Tom, if she is going to:
throw you over. Well, I shall leavé you for an hour or s0.
Come up to me presently at the Rag, when you feel better.”

East started for his club, debating within himself what he
could do for his friend—whether calling out the party mightn’t
do good.

Tom, left to himself, broke down at first sadly ; but, as the '
evening wore on he began to rally, and sat down and wrote a
long letter to his father, making a clean breast, and asking his
permission to go with Fast. 3

 

CHAPTER XLIX.
THE END,

“My pear Katis,—I know you will be very much pained:
when you read this letter. You two have been my only
confidantes, and you have always kept me up, and encouraged
me to hope that all would come right. And after all that
happened last week, Patty’s marriage, and your engagement
—the two things upon earth, with one exception, that I most.
wished for—I quite felt that my own turn was coming. I
can’t tell why I had such a strong feeling about it, but some-
how all the most important changes in my life for the last
four years have been so interwoven with Patty and Harry
‘Winburn’s history, that, now they wére married, I was sure
something would happen to me as soon as I came to London. ''
And I was not wrong. Dear Katie, I can hardly bring myself
to write it. Itis all over. I met her in the street to-day ;
she was riding with her father and the man I told you about.
They had to pull’ up not to ride over me; so I had a good
look at her, and there can be no mistaké about it,’ I have
often tried to reason myself into the belief that the 6vil day:
must come sooner or later, and to preparé myself for it; but
I might have spared myself, for it could not have been worse
than it is if I had never anticipated it. My future is all a blank
now. I can’t stay in England; so I have written home to
ask them to let me go to New Zealand with East, and I am_
sure they will consent, when they know all. a

“T shall wait in town till I get the answer. Perhaps I
may be able to get off with Kast in 4 few weeks. The sooner
the better ; ‘but, of course, I shall not go without seeing you.
and dear old Jack. You mustn’t mind me calling him Jack. :
The only thing that it gives me any pleasure to think about,
is your engagement. It is so right; and one wants to see
something going right, some one getting their due, to keep

MM
530 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

alive one’s belief in justice being done somehow or another
in the world, And I do see it, and acknowledge it, when I
think over his history and mine since we first met. We have
both got our due; and you have got yours, Katie, for you
have got the best fellow in England.

‘“ Ah! if I only could think that she has got hers! If I
could only believe that the man she has chosen is worthy of her!
I will try hard to think better of him. There must be more
good in him than I have ever seen, or she would never have
engaged herself to him. But I can’t bear to stop here, and
see it all going on. The sooner I am out of England the
better. I send you a parcel with this ; it contains her notes,
and some old flowers, and other matters which I haven’t the
heart to burn. You will be the best judge what should
be done with them. If you see your way to managing it, I
should like her to know that I had sent them all to you, and
that, whatever may happen to me hereafter, my love for her has
been the mainstay and the guiding-star of my life ever since
that happy time when you all came to stay with us in my
first long vacation. It found me eaten up with selfishness
and conceit, the puppet of my own lusts and vanities, and has
left me—Well, never mind what it has left me. At any rate,
if I have not gone from worse to worse, it is all owing to
her ; and she ought to knowit. It cannot be wrong to let her
know what good she has scattered unknowingly about her
path. May God bless and reward her for it, and you, too,
dear cousin, for all your long love and kindness to one who is
very unworthy of, but very thankful for, them.

_ “Eyer yours, affectionately,
“T. B.”

The above letter, and that to his father, asking for leave to
emigrate, having been written and sent off, Tom was left, on
the afternoon of the day following his upset, making manful,
if not very successful, efforts to shake off the load of depres-
sion which weighed on him, and to turn his thoughts
resolutely forward to a new life in a new country. ast was
away at the Docks. There was no one moving in the Temple.
The men who had business were all at Westminster, or out
of sight and hearing in the recesses of their chambers. Those
who had none were for the most part away enjoying them-
selves, in one way or another, amongst the mighty whirl of
the mighty human sea of London. There was nothing left
for him to do; he had written the only two letters he had to
write, and had only to sit still and wait for the answers, kill-
ing the mean time as well as he could. Reading came hard
THE END, 631

to him, but it was the best thing to do, perhaps; at any rate
he was trying it on, though his studies were constantly inter-
rupted by long fits of absence of mind, during which, though
his body remained in the Temple, he was again in the well-
kept garden of Barton, or in the hazel-wood under the lee of
the Berkshire hills.

He was roused out of one of these reveries, and brought
back to external life and Fig-tree Court, by a single knock at
the outer door, and a shout of the newsman’s boy for the
paper. So he got up, found the paper, which he had for-
gotten to read, and, as he went to the door, cast his eye on it,
and saw that a great match was going on at Lord’s. This
gave a new turn to his thoughts. He stood looking down-
stairs after the boy, considering whether he should not start
at once for the match.

He would be sure to see a lot of acquaintance there at any rate.
But the idea of seeing and having to talk to mere acquaintance
was more distasteful than his present solitude. He was turn-
ing to bury himself again in his hole, when he saw a white
dog walk quietly up seven or eight stairs at the bottom of the
flight, arid then turn round, and look for some one to follow.

“How odd!” thought Tom, as he watched him ; “as like
as two peas. Itcan’tbe. No. Why, yes it is.” And then he
whistled, and called “Jack,” and the dog looked up, and wagged
his tail, as much as to say, “ All right, I’m coming directly ;
but I must wait for my master.” The next moment Drysdale
appeared at the bottom of the stairs, and looking up, said—

“Oh! that’s you, isit? I’m allrightthen. So you knew
the old dog?”

J should rather think so,” said Tom. “I hope I never
forget a dog or a horse I have once known.”

In the short minute which Drysdale and Jack took to
arrive at his landing, Tom had time for a rush of old college
memories, in which grave and gay, pleasant and bitter, were
strangely mingled. The night when he had been first brought
to his senses about Patty came up very vividly before him,
and the commemoration days, when he had last seen Drysdale.
“ How strange!” he thought, “is my old life coming back
again just now? Here, on the very day after it is all over, ,
comes back the man with whom I was so intimate up to the
day it began, and have never seen since. What does it mean?”

There was a little touch of embarrassment in the manner
of both of them as they shook hands at the top of the stairs,
and turned into the chambers. Tom motioned to Jack to
take his old place at one end of the sofa, and began caressing
him there, the dog showing eee by gesture and

MM
<

532, TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

whine, that delight at renewing an old friendship for which
his race are so nobly distinguished. Drysdale threw himself
down in an arm-chair, and watched them.

“So you knew the old dog, Brown?” he repeated.

“Knew him i—of course I did. Dear old Jack! How
well he wears ; he is scarcely altered at all.” :

“Very little ; only steadier. More than I can say for his
master. I’m very glad you knew Jack.”

“Come, Drysdale, take the other end of the sofa, or it
won’t look like old times, There, now I can fancy myself
back at St. Ambrose’s.”

“By Jove, Brown, you're a real good fellow. I always
said so, even after that last letter. You pitched it rather
too strong in that though. I was very near coming back
from Norway to quarrel with you.”

“Well, I was very angry at being left in the lurch by you
and Blake.”

“You got the coin all right, I suppose? You never ac-
knowledged it.” / ‘

“Didn't I? Then I ought to have. Yes, I got it all
right about six months afterwards. I ought to have acknow-
ledged it, and I thought I had. I’m sorry I didn’t. Now
we're all quits, and won’t talk any more about that rascally bill.”

“T suppose I may light up,” said Drysdale, dropping into his
old lounging attitude on the sofa, and pulling out his cigar-case.

“Yes, of course. ‘Will you have anything?”

“A cool drink wouldn’t be amiss.”

“They make a nice tankard with cider and a lump of ice
at the Rainbow. What do you say to that?”

“Tt sounds touching,” said Drysdale. So Tom posted off
to Fleot Street to order the liquor, and came back followed by
& waiter with the tankard. Drysdale took a long pull, and
smacked his lips.

“That’s a wrinkle,” he said, handing the tankard to Tom.
“T suppose the lawyers teach all the publicans about here
a trick or two. Why, one can fancy oneself back in the old
quad, looking out on this court. If it weren’t such an out-
Jandish out-of-the-way place, I think I should take some
chambers here myself. How did you get here?”

“Oh, they belong to a friend of mine who is away. But
how did you get here?” ‘

“Why, along the Strand in a Hansom.” .

“T mean, how did you know I was here?”

“Grey told me.”
“What! Grey who was at St. Ambrose’s with us?”
“Yes. You look puzzled.”
‘THE END. 533

|" ¢] didn’t think you knew Grey.” Pa
“No more Ido. But a stout old party I met last night
—your godfather, I should think he is—told me where he
was, and said I should get your address from him. So I,
looked him up this morning, in that dog-hole in Westminster
where he lives. He didn’t know Jack from Adam.” =

But what in the world do you mean by my godfather ?”

“T had better tell my story from the beginning, I see.
Last night I did what I don’t often do, went out to a great
drum. There was an awful crush, of course, and you may
guess what the heat was in these dog-days, with gas-lights
and wax-lights going, and a jam of people in every corner.
I was fool enough to get into the rooms, so that my retreat
was cut off; and I had to work right through, and got at
last into a back room, which was not so full. The window
was in a recess, and there was a balcony outside, looking over
a little bit of garden. I got into the balcony, talking with
a girl who was sensible enough to, like the cool. Presently
I heard a voice I thought I knew inside. Then I heard St.
Ambrose, and then your name. Of course I listened; I
couldn’t help myself. They were just inside the window, in
the recess, not five feet from us; so I heard pretty nearly
every word. Give us the tankard; I’m as dry as an ash-
heap with talking.”

Tom, scarcely able to control his impatience, handed the
tankerd. “But who was it ?—you haven't told me,” he said,
as Drysdale put it down at last empty. ©

“Why, that d——d St. Cloud. He was giving you a
nice character, in a sort of sneaking deprecatory way, as if
he was sorry for it. Amongst other little tales, he said you
used to borrow money from Jews—he knew it for a certainty
because he had been asked himself to join you and another
man—meaning me, of course—in such a transaction. You
remember how he wouldn’t acknowledge the money I lent
him at play, and the note he wrote me which upset Blake
so. I had never forgotten it. I knew I should get my chance
‘some day, and here it was. I don’t know what the gir\
thought of me, or how she got out of the balcony, but [
‘stepped into the recess just as he had finished his precious
story, and landed between him and a comfortable old boy,
‘who was looking shocked. He must be your godfather, or
womething of the kind. I'll bet you a pony you are down
for something handsome in his will.”

“What was his name? Did you find out?”
, “Yes; Potter, or Porter, or something like it, I’ve got
his card somewhere. I just stared St. Cloud in the face, and

 
534 TOM BROWN :AT -OXFORD.

you may depend upon it he winced: Then I told the old
boy that I had heard their talk, and, as I was at St. Ambrose

with you, I should like to have five minutes with him wher
St. Cloud had done, He seemed rather in a corner between
us. However, I kept in sight till St. Cloud was obliged to
draw off ; and, to cut my story short, as the tankard is empty,
I think I put you pretty straight there. You said we were
quits just now: after last night, perhaps we are, for I told
him the truth of the Benjamin story, and I think he is
squared, He seems a good sort of old boy. He's a relation
of yours, eh ?”

“ Only a distant connexion. Did anything more happen ?”

“Yes; I saw that he was flurried and didn’t know quite
what to think ; so I asked him to let me call, and I would
bring him some one else to speak to your character. He
gave me his card, and I’m going to take Blake there to-day.
Then I asked him where you were, and he didn’t know, but
said he thought Grey could tell me.”

“Tt is very kind of you, Drysdale, to take so much trouble.”

“Trouble! I’d go from here to Jericho to be even with
our fine friend, I never forget a bad turn. I met him after-
wards in the cloak-room, and went out of the door close after
him, to give him a chance if he wants to say anything. I
only wish he would. But why do you suppose he is lying
about you?”

“T can’t tell. I’ve never spoken to him since he left
Oxford. Never saw him till yesterday, riding with Mr.
Porter. I suppose that reminded them of me.”

“ Well, St. Cloud is bent on getting round him for some
reason or another, you may take your oath of that. Now
my time’s up; I shall go and pick up Blake. I should
think I had better not take Jack to call in Eaton Square,
though he’d give you a good character if he could speak ;
wouldn’t you, Jack?” «

Jack wagged his tail, and descended from the sofa.

_ “Does Blake live up here? What he is doing?”
“Burning the candle at both ends, and in the middle, as
usual, Yos, he’s living near his club. He writes political
articles, devilish well I “hear, too, and is reading for the bar ;
beside which he is getting into society, and going out when-
ever he can, and fretting his soul out that he isn’t prime
minister, or something of the kind. He won't last long at

the pace he’s going.”

“Tm very sorry to hear it, But you'll come here again,
Drysdale; or let me come and see you? I shall be ey
anxious to hear what has happened.”
THE END. 635

_ “Here's my pasteboard; I shall be in town for another
fortnight. Drop in when you like.”

And so Drysdale and Jack went off, leaving Tom in a
chaotic state of mind. All his old hopes were roused again
as he thought over Drysdale’s narrative. He could no longer
sit still; so he rushed out, and walked up and down the
tiver-side walk, in the Temple gardens, where a fine breeze
was blowing, at a pace which astonished the gate-keepers
and the nursery-maids and children, who were taking the
air in that favourite spot. Once or twice he returned to
chambers, and at last found East reposing after his excursion
to the Docks.

East’s quick eye saw at once that something had happened ;
and he had very soon heard the whole story ; upon which he
deliberated for some minutes, and rejoiced Tom’s heart by
saying: “Ah! all up with New Zealand, I ses. I shall
be introduced after all before we start. Come along ; I must
stand you a dinner on the strength of the good news, and
we'll drink her health.”

Tom called twice that evening at Drysdale’s lodgings, but
he was out. The next morning he called again. Drysdale
had gone to Hampton, Court races, and had left no message.
He left a note for him, but got no answer. It was trying
work. Another day passed without any word from Drysdale,
who seemed never to be at home ; and no answer to either of
his letters. On the third morning he heard from his father.
It was just the answer which he had: expected—as kind a
letter as could be written. Mr. Brown had suspected how
matters stood at one time, but had given up the idea in
consequence of Tom’s silence ; which he regretted, as possibly
things might have happened otherwise had he known the
state of the case. It was too late now, however ; and the
less said the better about what might have been. As to
New Zealand, he should not oppose Tom’s going, if, after
some time, he continued in his present mind. It was very
natural for him just now to wish to go, They would talk it
over as soon as Tom came home; which Mr. Brown begged
him to do at once, or, at any rate, as soon as he had seen
his friend off. Home was the best place for him.

Tom sighed as he folded it up; the hopes of the last three
days seemed to be fading away again. He spent another rest-
less day ; and by night had persuaded himself that Drys-
dale’s mission had been a complete failure, ond that he did not
write and kept out of the way out of kindness to him.

“Why, Tom, old fellow, you look es down in the mouth
as éver to-night,” East said, when Tom opened the door for
. 536 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

him about midnight, on his return from his club; “cheer up;
you may depend it’s all to go right.”

“But I hayen’t seen Drysdale again, and he hasn’t written.”

“There’s nothing in that, He was glad enough to do you
a good turn, I dare say, when it came in his way, but that
.sort of fellow never can keep anything up. He has been too
‘much used to haying his own way, and following his own
fancies, Don’t you lose heart because he won’t put himself
out for you.”

. “Well, Harry, you are the best fellow in the world. Yon
would put backbone into any one.”

“ Now, we'll just have a quiet cheroot, and then turn in;
and see if you don’t haye good news to-morrow. How hot
it js! the Strand to-night is as hot as the Punjaub and the
reek of it—phah ! my throat is full of it sti

East took off his coat, and was just throwing it ona chair,
when he stopped, and, feeling in the pocket, said— :

“Let's see, here’s a note for you. The porter gave it me
as I knocked in.”

Tom took it carelessly, but the next moment was tearing it
open with trembling fingers, “From my cousin,” he said.
East watched him read, and saw the blood rush to his face,
and the light come into his eyes.

“ Good news, Tom, I see. Coan old boy. You've had a
long fight for it, and deserve to win.”

- Tom got up, tossed the note across the table, and began walk-
ing up and down the room ; his heart was too full for speech.

“May I read?” said East, looking up.

’ Tom nodded, and he read—

“Dear Tom,—I am come to town to spend a week with

them in Eaton Square, Call on me to-morrow at twelve, o7,
if you are engaged then, between three and five. I have no
time to add more DEW) but long to see you.—Your loving
cousin, Karin,
. *P.8,—I will give you ‘your parcel back to-morrow, and
then you can burn the'contents yourself, or do what you like
with them, Uncle bids me say he shall be glad if you will
come and dine to-morrow, and any other day you can spare
while I am here.”

‘When he had read the note, East got up and shook hands
heartily with Tom, and then sat down again quietly to finish
hig cheroot, watching with a humorous look his friend’s
a

: And you think it is really all right now?” Tom asked,
in one form or another, after every few turns; and East
THE END. | 'b87

replied in various forms of chaffing assurance that there
could not be much further question on the point. At last,
‘when he had finished his cheroot, he got up, and, taking his
candle, said, “Good night, Tom ; when that revolution comes,
which you’re always predicting, remember, if youre not shot
or hung, you'll always find a roost for you and your wife
in New Zealand.”

“T don’t feel so sure about the revolution now, Harry.”

“Of course you don’t. Mind, I bargain for the dinner in
Eaton Square. I always told you I should dine there before
I started.” :

* ¥ ¥ * *% *

The next day Tom found that he was not engaged at twelve
o'clock, and was able to appear in Eaton Square. He was
shown up into the drawing-room, and found Katie alone
there. The quiet and coolness of the darkened room was
most grateful to him after the glare of the streets, as he sat
down by her side. ,

“ But, Katie,” he said, as soon as the first salutations and
congratulations had passed, “ how did it all happen? I can’t
. believe my senses yet. I am afraid I may wake up any

minute.” :

“ Well, it was chiefly owing to two lucky coincidences ;
though no doubt it would have all come right in time without
them.” u
_ “Our meeting the other day in the street, I suppose, for
one?” fo
' Yes, Coming across you so suddenly, carrying the little
girl, reminded Mary of the day when she sprained her ancle,
and you carried her through Hazel Copse. Ah, you never
told me all of that adventure, either of you.”

« All that was necessary, Katie.” gos

“Qh! I have pardoned you. Uncle saw then that she
was very much moved at sométhing, and guessed well enough
what it was. He is so very kind, and so fond of Mary, he
would do anything in the world that she wished. She was
quite unwell that evening; so he and aunt had to go out
alone, and they met that Mr. St. Cloud at a party, who was
said to be engaged to her.” . ee

“Tt wasn’t true, then?”

“No, never. He is «very designing man, though I
believe he was really in love with poor Mary. At any rate
he has persecuted her for more than a year. And, it is very
wicked, but I am afraid ho spread all those reports himself.”
» “Of their engagement? Justlikehim!” ©" § °°"
-€ Uncle is so good-natured, you know; and he took ad-
538 TOM BROWN AT ‘OXFORD.

vantage of it, and was always coming here, and riding with
them. And he had made uncle believe dreadful stories about
-you, which made him seem so unkind. He was quite afraid
to have you at the house.”

“Yes, I saw that last year ; and the second coincidence?”

“Tt happened that very night. Poor uncle was very
much troubled what to do; so, when he met Mr. St. Cloud,
as I told you, he took him aside to ask him again about you.
Somehow, a gentleman who was a friend of yours at Oxford
overheard what was said, and came forward and explained
everything.”

“Yes, ho came and told me,”

“ Then-you know more than I about it.”

“ And you think Mr. Porter is convinced that I am not
quite such a scamp after all +”

“Yes, indeed ; and the boys are so delighted that they will
see youagain. They are at home for the holidays, and so grown.”

« And Mary?”

“ She is very well. You will see her before long, I dare say.”

“Ts she at home?”

“She is out riding with uncle. Now I will go up and get «
your parcel, which I had opened at home before I got aunt’s
note asking me here. No wonder we could never find her boot.”

Katie disappeared, and at the same time Tom thought he
heard the sound of horses’ feet. Yes, and they have stopped,
too; it must be Mary and her father. He could not see,
because of the blinds and other devices for keeping the room
cool. But the next moment there were voices in the hall
below, and then a light step on the carpeted stair which no
ear but his could have heard. His heart beat with heavy,
painful pulsations, and his head swam as the door opened,
and Mary in her riding-habit stood in the room.

 

CHAPTER IL,
THD POSTSCRIPT,

Our curtain must rise once again, and it shall be on a
familiar spot. Once more we must place ourselves on the
Hawk's Lynch, and look out over the well-known view, and
the happy autumn fields, ripe with the golden harvest. Two
people are approaching on horseback from the Barton side,
who have been made one since we left them at the fall of the
curtain in the last chapter. They ride lovingly together,
close to one another, and forgetful of the whole world, as
THE POSTSCRIPT." ~ ‘639

they should do, for they have scarcely come to the end of
their honeymoon. ‘

They are in country costume—she in a light plain habit,
but well cut, and sitting on her as well as she sits on her
dainty grey ; he in shooting-coat and wide-awake, with his
fishing basket slung over his shoulder. . They come steadily
up the hill-side, rousing a yellow-hammer here and there
from ‘the furze-bushes, and only draw bit when they have
reached the very top of the knoll. Then they dismount, and
Tom produces two halters from his fishing basket, and taking
off the bridles, fastens the horses up in the shade of the
fir-trees, and loosens their girths, while Mary, after searching
in the basket, pulls out a bag, and pours out a prodigal feed
of corn before each of them, on the short grass.

“What are you doing, you wasteful little woman? You
should have put the bag underneath, They won't be able
to pick up half the corn.”

“ Never mind, dear; then the birds will get it.”

“ And you have given them enough for three feeds.”

“Why did you put so much in the bag? Besides, you
know it is the last feed I shall give her. Poor dear little
Gipsy,” she added, patting the neck of her dapple grey ;
“you have found a kind mistress for her, dear ; haven’t you ?”

“Yes; she will be lightly worked and well cared for,” he
said shortly, turning away, and busying himself with the
basket again.

“ But no one will ever love you, Gipsy, like your old mis-
tress. Now give me a kiss, and you shall have your treat,”
and she pulled a piece of sugar out of the pocket of her
riding habit ; at the sight of which the grey held out her
beautiful nose to be fondled, and then lapped up the sugar
with eager lips from Mary’s hand, and turned to her corn.

The young wife tripped across, and sat down near her
husband, who was laying out their luncheon on the turf.
“It was very dear of you to think of coming here for our
last ride,” she said. ‘I remember how charmed I was with
the place the first Sunday I ever spent at Englebourn, when
Katie brought me up here directly after breakfast, before we
went to the school. Such a time ago it seems—before I ever
saw you. And I have never been here since. But I love it
most for your seke, dear. Now tell me again all the times
you have been here.”

. Tom proceeded to recount some of his visits to the Hawk’s
Lynch, in which we have accompanied him. And then they
talked on about Katie, and East, and the Englebourn people,
past and present, old Betty; and Harry and his wife in New
‘640 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

Zealand, and David patching coats and tending bees, and
executing the Queen’s justice to the best of his ability i in the
village at their feet. —

' Poor David, I must get over somehow to see him before
we leave home. He feels your uncle’s death, and the other
changes in the parish, more than any one.”

“T am so sorry the living was sold,” said Mary; “Katie
and her husband would have made Englebourn into a little
paradise.”

__ “Tt could not be helped, dear. I can’t say I’m sorry.
‘There would not have been work enough for him. He is
better where he is, in a great town-parish.”

‘ But Katie did love the place so, and was so used to it ;
she had become quite a little queen there before her marriage.
See what we women have to give up for you,” she said, play-
fully, turning to him. But a shadow passed over his face,
and he looked away without answering.

“What makes you look sorrowful, dear? What are you
thinking of?”

“Oh, nothing !”

« That isn’t true. Now, tell me what it is. You have no
right, you know, to keep anything from me.”

“T can’t bear to think that you have had to sell Gipsy.
‘You have never been without a riding horse till now. You
will miss your riding dreadfully, I am sure, dear.”

“T shall do very well without riding. I am so proud of
learning my lesson from you. You will see what a poor man’s
wife I shall make. I have been getting mamma to let me do
the housekeeping, and know how a joint should look, and all
sorts of useful things. And I have made my own house-linen,
I shall soon get to hate all luxuries as much as you do.”

“ Now, Mary, you mustn’t run into extremes, I never said
you ought to hate all luxuries, but that almost everybody one
knows is a slave to them.”

“Well,and I hate anything that wants to make a slaveof me.”

“You are a dear little free woman. But now we are on

‘ this subject again, Mary, I really want to speak to you about
keeping a lady's med, We can quite afford it, and you ought
to have one.’

' ©T shall do nothing of the sort,’

“ Not to oblige me, Mary 1”

“No, not even to oblige you. There is something to be
said for dear Gipsy. But, take a maid again! to do nothing
but torment me, and pretend to take care of my clothes, and

my hair! I never knew what freedom was till I got rid of
poor, foolish, grumbling Higgins.” »
THE POSTSORIPY, 641,

“ But you may get 4 nice girl who will be a comfort to you.”:

“No, [ never will have a woman again to do nothing but.
look after me. It isn’t fair to them. Besides, dear, you can’t.
say that I don’t look better since I have done my own hair.
Did you ever see it look brighter than it does now?”

“Never; and now here is luncheon all ready.” So they
sat down on the verge of the slope, and ate their cold chicken
and tongue, with the relish imparted by youth, a long ride,.
and the bracing air.

Mary was merrier and brighter than ever, but it was an
effort with him to respond; and soon she began to notice
this, and then there wa’ a pause, which she broke at last with
something of an effort.

“There is that look again. What makes you look so
serious, now? I must know.”

“Was I looking serious? I beg your pardon, dearest, and I
won’t do so again any more ;” and he smiled as he answered,
but the smile faded away before her steady, loving gaze, and he
turned slightly from her, and looked out over the vale below.

She watched him for a short time in silence, her own fair
young face changing like a summer sea as the light clouds
pass over it. Presently she seemed to have come to some
decision ; for, taking off her riding hat, she threw it and her
whip and gauntlets, on the turf beside her, and drawing
nearer to his side, laid her hand on his, He looked at her
fondly, and, stroking her hair, said—

“Take care of your complexion, Mary.”

“Qh, it will take care of itself in this air, dear. Besides,
you are between me and the sun; and now you must tell mo
why you look so serious. It is not the first time I have
noticed that look. I am your wife, you know, and I havea
right to know your thoughts, and to share all your joy, and
all your sorrow. I do not mean to give up any of my rights
which I got by marrying you.”

“Your rights, dearest! your poor little rights, which you
have gained by changing name, and plighting troth. It is
thinking of that—thinking of what you have bought, and the
price you have paid for it, which makes me sad at times: even
when you are sitting by me, and laying your hand on my hand,
and the sweet burden of your pure life and being ou my soiled
and baffled manhood.”

“ But it was my own bargain, you know, dear, and I am satis-
fied with my purchase. I paid the price with my eyes open.”

“ Ah, if I could only feel that !”

“But you know that it is true.”

“ No, dearest, that is the pinch. I do not know that it is
542° TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

true. I often feel that it is just not a bit true. It was a one-
sided bargain, in which one of the parties had eyes open and
got all the advantage ; and that party was I.”

“T will not have you so conceited,” she said, patting his |
hand once or twice, and looking more bravely than ever up .
into his eyes. ‘Why should you think you were so much
the cleverer of the two as to get all the good out of our bar-
gain? I am not going to allow that you were so much
the most quick-witted and clear-sighted. "Women are said
to be as quick-witted as men. Perhaps it is not I who
have been outwitted after all.”

“ Look at the cost, Mary. Think‘of what you will have
to give up. You cannot reckon it up yet.”

' “What! you are going back to the riding-horses and lady's
maid again. I thought I had convinced you on those points.”

“They are only a very small part of the price. You
have left’ a home where everybody loved you. You knew
it; you were sure of it. You had felt their love ever since
you could remember anything.”

' “Yes, dear, and I feel it still. “They will be all just as
fond of me at home, though I am your wife.”

“At home! It is no longer your home.”

“No, I have a home of my own now. A new home
with new love there to live on; and an old home; with
the old Jove to think of.”

“ A new home instead of an old one; a poor home in-
stead of a rich one—a home where the cry of the sorrow
and suffering of the world will reach you, for one in which
you had—”

“In which I had not you, dear. There now, that was
my purchase. I set my mind on having you—buying you,
as that is your word. I have paid my price, and got my
bargain, and—you know, I was always an oddity, and rather
wilful—am content with it.

“Yes, Mary, you have bought me, and you little know,
dearest, what you have bought. I can scarcely bear my
own selfishness’ at times when I think of what your life
might have been had I left you alone, and what it must
be with me.’

“ And ae might it have been, dear?”

“Why you might have married some man with plenty
of money, who could have given you everything to which

ou have been used.”

“T shall begin to think that you believe in luxuries, after
all, if you go on making so much of them. You must not
go on preaching one thing and practising another, I am a
5 THE POSTSORIPT. 643

convert to your preaching, and believe in the misery of
multiplying artificial wants, Your wife must have none.” —

“Yes, but wealth and position are not to be despised. “1
feel that, now that it is all done past recall, and I have to
think of you. But the loss of them is a mere nothing to
what you will have to go through.”

“What do you mean, dear? Of course we must expect
some troubles, like other people.”

“ Why, I mean, Mary, that you might, at least, have mar-
ried a contented man ; some one who found the world a very
good world, and was satisfied with things as they are, and had
light enough to steer himself by; and not a fellow like me,
full of all manner of doubts and perplexities, who sees little
but wrong in the world about him, and more in himself.”

“You think I should have been more comfortable?”

“Yes, more comfortable and happier. What right had I
to bring my worries on you? For I know you can’t live with
me, dearest, and not be bothered and annoyed when I am
anxious and dissatisfied.”

“ But what if I did not marry you to be comfortable?”

“My darling, you never thought about it, and I was too
selfish to think for you.”

“There now, you see, it is just as I said.”

“How do you mean?”

“T mean that you are quite wrong in thinking that I have
been deceived. I did not marry you, dear, to be comfortable
—and I did think it all over ; ay, over and over again. So you
are not to run away with the belief that you have taken me in.”

“T shall be glad enough to give it up, dearest, if you can
convince me.”

“ Then you will listen while I explain?”

“Yes, with all my ears and all my heart.”

«You remember the year that we met, when we danced and
went nutting together, a thoughtless boy and girl—”

“Remember it! Have I ever—”

“ You are not to interrupt. Of course you remember it all,
and are ready to tell me that you loved me the first moment
you saw me at the window in High-street.. Well, perhaps I
shall not object to be told it at a proper time, but now I am
making my confessions. I liked you then, because you were
Katie’s cousin, and almost my first partner, and were never
tired of dancing, and were generally merry and pleasant,
though you sometimes took to lecturing, even in those
days.”

“But, Mary—”

“You are to be silent now, and listen. I liked you then.
544, TOM BROWN AT OxFoRD, °°

But you are not to look conceited and flatter yourself. It was
only a girl’s fancy. I couldn’t have married you then-—given.
myself up to you. No, I don’t think I could, even on the
night when you fished for me out of the window with the
heather and heliotrope, though I kept them and have them:
still. And then came that scene down below, at old Simon’s
cottage, and I thought I should never wish’ to see you again.
And then I came out in London, and went abroad. I scarcely:
heard of you again for a’ year, for Katie hardly ever mentioned
you in her letters ; and, though I sometimes wished that she:
would, and thought I should just like to know what you were:
doing, I was too proud to ask. Meantime I went out and:
enjoyed myself, and had a great many pretty things said to
me—much prettier things than you ever said—and made the.
acquaintance of pleasant young men, friends of papa and
mamma; many of them with good establishments too. But
I shall not tell you anything more about them, or you will be
going off about the luxuries I have been used to. ‘Then I
began to hear of you again. Katie came to stay with us,
and I met some of your Oxford friends, Poor dear Katie |
she was full of you and your wild sayings and doings, half-
frightened and half-pleased, but all the time the best and
truest friend you ever had. Some of the rest were not friends
at all; and I have heard many a sneer and unkind word, and
stories of your monstrous speeches and habits. Some said
you were mad; others that you liked to be eccentric; that’
you couldn’t bear to live with your equals ; that you sought
the society of your inferiors to be flattered. TI listened, and
thought it all over, and, being wilful and eccentric myself, ,
you know, liked more and more to hear about you, and hoped. .
I should see you again some day. I was curious to judge for
myself whether you were much changed for the better or the
worse. And at last came the day when I saw you again,
carrying the poor lame child ; and, after that, you know what:
happened. So here we are, dear, and you are my husband.
And you will please never to look serious again, from any
foolish thought that I have been taken in; that I did not
know what I was about when I took you ‘for better for worse,
for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us
do part.’ Now, what have you to say for yourself?” —

‘Nothing; but a great. deal for you. I see more and
more, my darling, what a, brave, generous, pitying angel I
have tied to myself But seeing that makes me despise:
myself more.”

“What! you are going to dare to disobey me already ?”

“T can’t help it, dearest. All you say shows me more and
THE POSTSCRIPT, | 546

more that you have made all the sacrifice, and I am to get all
the benefit. A man like me has no right to bring such a
woman as you under his burthen.”

“But you couldn’t help yourself. It was because you were
out of sorts with the world, smarting with the wrongs you
saw on every side, struggling after something better and
higher, and siding and sympathising with the poor and weak,
that I loved you. We should never have been here, dear, if
you had been a young gentleman satisfied with himself and
the world, and likely to get on well in socicty.”

“ Ah, Mary, it is all very well for a man. It is a man’s
business. But why is a woman’s life to be made wretched ?
Why should you be dragged into all my perplexities, and
doubts, and dreams, and struggles?”

“ And why should I not?”

“Life should’ be all bright and beautiful to a woman. It
is every man’s duty to shield her from all that can vex, or

pain, or soil.”
“ But have women different souls from men?”
“God forbid!” q

“ Then are we not fit to share your highest hopes?”

“To share our highest hopes! Yes, when we have any.
But the mire and clay where one sticks fast over and over
again, with no high hopes or high anything else in sight—
a man must be a selfish brute to bring one he pretends to
love into all that.”

“ Now, Tom,” she said almost solemnly, “you are not true
to yourself. Would you part with your own deepest convic-
tions? Would you, if you could, go back to the time when
. you cared for and thought about none of these things ?”

He thought a minute, and then, pressing her hand, said—

“No, dearest, I would not. The consciousness of the dark-
ness in one and around one brings the longing for light. And
then the light dawns; through mist and fog, perhaps, but
enough to pick one’s way by.” He stopped a moment, and
then added, ‘‘and shines ever brighter unto the perfect day.
Yes, I begin to know it.” ,

“Then, why not put me on your own level? Why not let
me pick my way by your side? Cannot a woman feel the
wrongs that are going on in the world? Cannot she long
to see them set right, and pray that they may be set right?
We are not meant to sit in fine silks, and look pretty, and
spend money, any more than you are meant to make it, and
cry peace where there is no peace. If a woman cannot do
much herself, she can honour and love a man who can.”

He turned to her, and bent over her, and kissed her fore-

NN
+

546 TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.

head, and kissed her lips. She looked up with sparkling eyes
and said—

“ Am I not right, dear?” %
“Yes, you are right, and I have been false
You have taken a Joad off my heart, dearest. |
there shall be but one mind and one soul es us, . You
have made me feel what it is that a man wants, what is the

help that is meet for him.”

He looked into her eyes, and kissed her again ; and then
rose up, for there was something within him like a moving of
new life, which lifted him, and set him on his feet. And he
stood with kindling brow, gazing into the autumn air, as his
heart went sorrowing, but hopefully “sorrowing, back through
all the faultful past.” And she sat on at first, and watched
his face; and neither spoke nor moved for some minutes.
Then she rose too, and stood by his side :—

And on her lover’s arm she leant,
And round her waist she felt it fold ;
And so across the hills they went,
In that new world which is the old.
Yes, that new world, through the golden gates of which they
had passed together, which i is the old, old world after all, and
nothing else. The same old and new world it was to our
fathers and mothers as it is to us, and shall be to-our children
—a world clear and bright, and ever becoming clearer and
brighter to the humble, and true, and pure of heart, to every
man and woman who will live in it as the children of the
Maker and Lord of it, their Father. To them, and to them
alone, is that world, old and new, given, and all that is in it,
fully ‘and freely to enjoy. All others but these are occupying
where they have no title ; “they are sowing much, but bring-
ing in little ; they eat, but have not enough ; they drink, but
are not filled with drink ; they clothe themselves, but there
is none warm; and he of them who earneth wages earneth
wages to put them into a bag with holes,” But these have
the world and all things for a rightful and rich inheritance ;
for they hold them as dear children of Him in whose hand it
and they are lying, and no power in earth or hell shall pluck

  
  

* them out of their Father’s hand.

TOE END.

R. CLAY SON, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, LONDCN.
This preservation photocopy
was made and hand bound at BookLab, Inc.
in compliance with copyright law. The paper,
Weyerhaeuser Cougar Opaque Natural,
meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO
Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Austin 1994
 

sauces