It was Friday night at the Oxford terminus, and all the world scrambling for cabs. Sir John and the Squire, nearly lifted off their legs, and too much taken aback to fight for themselves, stood against the wall, thinking the community had gone suddenly mad. Bill Whitney and Tod, tall, strong young fellows, able to hold their own anywhere, secured a cab at length, and we and our luggage got in and on it.

“To the Mitre.”

“If this is a specimen of Oxford manners, the sooner the lads are at home the better,” growled the Squire. Sir John Whitney was settling his spectacles on his nose—nearly lost off it in the scuffle.

“Snepp told me it was a regular shindy at the terminus the first day of term, with all the students coming back,” said Bill Whitney.

There had been no end of discussion as to our college career. Sir John Whitney said William must go to Oxford, as he had been at Oxford himself; whereas Brandon stood out against Oxford for me; would not hear of it. He preferred Cambridge he said: and to Cambridge Johnny Ludlow should go: and he, as my guardian, had full power over me. The Squire cared not which university was chosen; but Tod went in for Oxford with all his strong will: he said the boating was best there. The result was that Mr. Brandon gave way, and we were entered at Christchurch.

Mr. Brandon had me at his house for two days beforehand, giving me counsel. He had one of his bad colds just then and kept his room, and his voice was never more squeaky. The last evening, I sat up there with him while he sipped his broth. The fire was large enough to roast us, and he had three flannel night-caps on. It was that night that he talked to me most. He believed with all his heart, he said, that the temptations to young men were greater at Oxford than at Cambridge; that, of the two, the more reckless set of men were there: and that was one of the reasons why he had objected to Oxford for me. And then he proceeded to put the temptations pretty strongly before me, and did not mince things, warning me that it would require all the mental and moral strength I possessed to resist them, and steer clear of a course of sin and shame. He then suddenly opened the Bible, which was on the table at his elbow, and read out a line or two from the thirtieth chapter of Deuteronomy.

“‘See, I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.’”

“That’s what I have been striving to set before you, Johnny Ludlow. Read that chapter, the whole of it, often; treasure its precepts in your heart; and may God give you grace to keep them!”

He shook hands with me in silence. I took up my candle and waited a moment, for I thought he was going to speak again.

“Will you try to keep them, lad?”

“I will try, sir.”

We were fortunate in getting good rooms at Christchurch. Tod’s and mine were close together; Bill Whitney’s on the floor above. Our sitting-room was pleasant; it had an old cracked piano in it, which turned out to be passably fair when it had been tinkered and tuned. The windows looked out on the trees of the Broad Walk and to the meadows beyond; but trees are bare in winter, and the month was January. I had never stayed at Oxford before: and I saw that I should like it, with its fine, grand old colleges. The day after we got there, Saturday, we wrote our names in the dean’s book, and saw our tutor. The rest of the day was spent in seeing about battels and getting into the new ways. Very new to us. A civil young fellow, who waited on us as scout, was useful; they called him “Charley” in the college. Tod pulled a long face at some of the rules, and did not like the prospect of unlimited work.

“I’ll go in for the boating and fishing and driving, Johnny; and you can go in for the books.”

“All right, Tod.” I knew what he meant. It was not that he did not intend to take a fair amount of work: but to exist without a good share of out-of-door life also, would have been hard lines for Tod.

The Sunday services were beautiful. The first Sunday of term was a high day, and the cathedral was filled. Orders of admission to the public were not necessary that day, and a general congregation mixed with the students. Sir John and the Squire were staying at the Mitre until Monday. After service we went to promenade in the Broad Walk—and it seemed that everybody else went.

“Look there!” cried the Squire, “at this tall clergyman coming along. I am sure he is one of the canons of Worcester.”

It was Mr. Fortescue—Honourable and Reverend. He halted for a minute to exchange greetings with Sir John Whitney, whom he knew, and then passed on his way.

“There’s some pretty girls about, too,” resumed the Squire, gazing around. “Not that I’d advise you boys to look much at them. Wonder if they often walk here?”

Before a week had gone by, we were quite at home; had shaken down into our new life as passengers shake down in their places in an omnibus; and made lots of friends. Some I liked; some I did not like. There was one fellow always coming in—a tall dark man with crisp hair; his name Richardson. He had plenty of money and kept dogs and horses, and seemed to go in for every kind of fast life the place afforded. Of work he did none; and report ran that he was being watched by the proctor, with whom he was generally in hot water. Altogether he was not in good odour: and he had a way of mocking at religion as though he were an atheist.

“I heard a bit about Richardson just now,” cried Whitney, one morning that he had brought his commons in to breakfast with us—and the fields outside were white with snow. “Mayhew says he’s a scamp.”

“Don’t think he’s much else, myself,” said Tod. “I say, just taste this butter! It’s shockingly strong. Wonder what it is made of?”

“Mayhew says he’s a liar as well as a villain. There’s no speaking after him. Last term a miserable affair occurred in the town; the authorities could not trace it home to Richardson though they suspected he was the black sheep. Lots of fellows knew he was: but he denied it out-and-out. I think we had better not have much to do with him.”

“He entertains jolly well,” said Tod. “Johnny, you’ve boiled these eggs too hard. And his funds seem to spring from some perpetual gold mine——”

The door opened, and two bull-dogs burst in, leaping and howling. Richardson—they were his—followed, with little Ford; the latter a quiet, inoffensive man, who stuck to his work.

“Be quiet, you two devils!” cried Richardson, kicking his dogs. “Lie down, will you? I say, I’ve a wine-coach on to-night in my rooms, after Hall. Shall be glad to see you all at it.”

Considering the conversation he had broken in upon, none of us had a very ready answer at hand.

“I have heaps of letters to answer to-night, and must do it,” said Whitney. “Thank you all the same.”

Richardson might have read coolness in the tone; I don’t know; but he turned the back of his chair on Bill to face Tod.

“You have not letters to write, I suppose, Todhetley?”

“Not I. I leave letters to Ludlow.”

“You’ll come, then?”

“Can’t,” said Tod candidly. “Don’t mean to go in for wine-parties.”

“Oh,” said Richardson. “You’ll tell another tale when you’ve been here a bit longer. Will you be still, you brutes?”

“Hope I shan’t,” said Tod. “Wine plays the very mischief with work. Should never get any done if I went in for it.”

“Do you intend to go up for honours?” went on Richardson.

“’Twould be a signal failure if I did. I leave all that to Ludlow—as I said by the letters. See to the dogs, Richardson.”

The animals had struck up a fight. Richardson secured the one and sent the other out with a kick. Our scout was coming in, and the dog flew at him. No damage; but a great row.

“Charley,” cried Tod, “this butter’s not fit to eat.”

“Is it not, sir? What’s the matter with it?”

“The matter with it?—everything’s the matter with it.”

“Is that your scout?” asked Richardson, when the man had gone again, holding his dog between his knees as he sat.

“Yes,” said Tod. “And your dogs all but made mincemeat of him. You should teach them better manners.”

“Serve him right if they had. His name’s Tasson.”

“Tasson, is it? We call him Charley here.”

“I know. He’s a queer one.”

“How is he queer?”

“He’s pious.”

“He’s what?”

“Pious,” repeated Richardson, twisting his mouth. “A saint; a cant; a sneak.”

“Good gracious!” cried Bill Whitney.

“You think I’m jesting! Ask Ford here. Tell it, Ford.”

“Oh, it’s true,” said Ford: “true that he goes in for piety. Last term there was a freshman here named Carstairs. He was young; rather soft; no experience, you know, and he began to go the pace. One night this Charley, his scout, fell on his knees, and besought him with tears not to go to the bad; to pull up in time and remember what the end must be; and—and so on.”

“What did Carstairs do?”

“Do! why turned him out,” put in Richardson. “Carstairs, by the way, has taken his name off the books, or had to take it off.”

“Charley is civil and obliging to us,” said Whitney. “Never presumes.”

How much of the tale was gospel we knew not; but for my own part, I liked Charley. There was something about him quite different from scouts and servants in general—and by the way, I don’t think Charley was a scout, only a scout’s help—but in appearance and diction and manner he was really superior. A slim, slight young fellow of twenty, with straight fine light hair and blue eyes, and a round spot of scarlet on his thin cheeks.

“I say, Charley, they say you are pious,” began Bill Whitney that same day after lecture, when the man was bringing in the bread-and-cheese from the buttery.

He coloured to the roots of his light hair, and did not answer. Bill never minded what he said to any one.

“You were scout to Mr. Carstairs. Did you take his morals under your special protection?”

“Be quiet, Whitney,” said Tod in an undertone.

“And constitute yourself his guardian-angel-in-ordinary? Didn’t you go down on your knees to him with tears and sobs, and beseech him not to go to the bad?” went on Bill.

“There’s not a word of truth in it, sir. One evening when Mr. Carstairs was lying on his sofa, tired and ill—for he was beginning to lead a life that had no rest in it, hardly, day or night, a folded slip of paper was brought in from Mr. Richardson, and Mr. Carstairs bade me read it to him. It was to remind him of some appointment for the night. Mr. Carstairs was silent for a minute, and then burst out with a kind of sharp cry, painful to hear. ‘By Heaven, if this goes on, they’ll ruin me, body and soul! I’ve a great mind not to go.’ I did speak then, sir; I told him he was ill, and had better stay at home; and I said that it was easy enough for him to pull up then, but that when one got too far on the down-hill path it was more difficult.”

“Was that all?” cried Whitney.

“Every word, sir. I should not have spoken at all but that I had known Mr. Carstairs before we came here. Mr. Richardson made a great deal of it, and gave it quite a different colouring.”

“Did Mr. Carstairs turn you away for that?” I asked of Charley; when he came back for the things, and the other two had gone out.

“Three or four days after it happened, sir, Mr. Carstairs stopped my waiting on him again. I think it was through Mr. Richardson. Mr. Carstairs had refused to go out with him the evening it occurred.”

“You knew Mr. Carstairs before he came to Oxford. Where was it?”

“It was——” he hesitated, and then went on. “It was at the school he was at in London, sir. I was a junior master there.”

Letting a plate fall—for I was helping to pack them, wanting the table—I stared at the fellow. “A master there and——” and a servant here, I all but said, but I stopped the words.

“Only one of the outer masters, attending daily,” he went on quietly. “I taught writing and arithmetic, and English to the juniors.”

“But how comes it that you are here in this post, Charley?”

“I had reasons for wishing to come to live at Oxford, sir.”

“But why not have sought out something better than this?”

“I did seek, sir. But nothing of the kind was to be had, and this place offered. There’s many a one, sir, falls into the wrong post in life, and can never afterwards get into the right one.”

“But—do you—like this?”

“Like it, sir; no! But I make a living at it. One thing I shall be always grateful to Mr. Carstairs for: that he did not mention where he had known me. I should not like it to be talked of in the college, especially by Mr. Richardson.”

He disappeared with his tray as he spoke. It sounded quite mysterious. But I took the hint, and said nothing.

The matter passed. Charley did not put on any mentorship to us, and the more we saw of him the more we liked him. But an impression gradually dawned upon us that he was not strong enough for his place. Carrying a heavy tray upstairs would set him panting like an old man, and he could not run far or fast.

One day I was hard at work, Tod and Whitney being off somewhere, driving tandem, when a queer, ugly-sounding cough kept annoying me from outside: but whether it came from dog or man I could not tell. Opening the door at last, there sat Charley on the stairs, his head resting against the wall, and his cheeks brighter than a red leaf in autumn.

“What, is it you, Charley? Where did you pick up that cough?”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said he, starting up. “I thought your rooms were empty.”

“Come in till the fit’s over. You are in a regular draught there. Come along,” for he hesitated—“I want to shut the door.”

He came in, coughing finely, and I gave him the chair by the fire. It was nothing, he said, and would soon be gone. He had caught it a day or two back in the bleak east wind: the college was draughty, and he had to be on the run out-of-doors in all sorts of weather.

“Well, you know, Charley, putting east winds and draughts aside, you don’t seem to be quite up to your work here in point of strength.”

“I was up to it, sir, when I took it. It’s a failing in some of our family, sir, to have weak lungs. I shall be all right again, soon.”

The coughing was over, and he got up to go away, evidently not liking to intrude. There was a degree of sensitiveness about him that, of itself, might have shown he was superior to his position.

“Take a good jorum of treacle-posset, Charley, at bed-time.”

******

Spring weather came in with February. The biting cold and snow of January disappeared, and genial sunshine warmed the earth again. The first Sunday in this same February month, from my place at morning service, looking out on the townsfolk who had come in with orders, I saw a lady, very little and pretty, staring fixedly at me from afar. The face—where had I seen her face? It seemed familiar, but I could not tell how or where I had known it. A small slight face of almost an ivory white, and wide-open light blue eyes that had plenty of confidence in them.

Sophie Chalk! I should have recognized her at the first moment but for the different mode in which her hair was dressed. Wonderful hair! A vast amount of it, and made the most of. She wore it its natural colour to-day, brown, and the red tinge on it shone like burnished gold. She knew me; that was certain; and I could not help watching her. Her eyes went roving away presently, possibly in search of Tod. I stole a glance at him; but he did not appear to see her. What brought her to Oxford?

We got out of church. I took care to hold my tongue. Tod had cared for Sophie Chalk—there could be little doubt of it—as one never cares for anybody again in life: and it might be just as well—in spite of the exposÉ of mademoiselle’s false ways and misdoings—that they did not meet. Syrens are syrens all the world over.

The day went on to a bright moonlight night. Tod and I, out for a stroll, were standing within the shade of the fine old Magdalen Tower, talking to a fellow of Trinity, when there came up a lady of delicate presence, the flowers in her bonnet exhaling a faint odour of perfume.

“I think I am not mistaken—I am sure—yes, I am sure it is Mr. Ludlow. And—surely that cannot be Mr. Todhetley?”

Tod wheeled round at the soft, false voice. The daintily gloved hand was held out to him; the fair, false face was bent close: and his own face turned red and white with emotion. I saw it even in the shade of the moonlight. Had she been strolling about to look for us? Most likely. A few moments more, and we were all three walking onwards together.

“Only fancy my position!” she gaily said. “Here am I, all forlorn, set down alone in this great town, and must take care of myself as I best can. The formidable gowns and caps frighten me.”

“The gowns and caps will do you no harm—Miss Chalk,” cried Tod—and he only just saved himself from saying “Sophie.”

“Do you think not,” she returned, touching the sleeve of her velvet jacket, as if to brush off a fly. “But I beg you will accord me my due style and title, Mr. Todhetley, and honour me accordingly. I am no longer Miss Chalk. I am Mrs. Everty.”

So she had married Mr. Everty after all! She minced along between us in her silk gown, her hands in her ermine muff that looked made for a doll. At the private door of a shop in High Street she halted, rang the bell, and threw the door open.

“You will walk up and take a cup of tea with me. Nay, but you must—or I shall think you want to hold yourselves above poor little me, now you are grand Oxford men.”

She went along the passage and up the stairs: there seemed no resource but to follow. In the sitting-room, which was very well furnished and looked out upon the street, a fire burned brightly; and a lamp and tea-things stood on the table.

“Where have you been?—keeping me waiting for my tea in this way! You never think of any one but yourself: never.”

The querulous complaint, and thin, shrill voice came from a small dark girl who sat at the window, peering out into the lighted street. I had not forgotten the sharp-featured sallow face and the deep-set eyes. It was Mabel Smith, the poor little lame and deformed girl I had seen in Torriana Square. She really did not look much older or bigger, and she spoke as abruptly as ever.

“I remember you, Johnny Ludlow.”

Mrs. Everty made the tea. Her dress, white one way, green the other, gleamed like silver in the lamplight. It had a quantity of white lace upon it: light green ribbons were twisted in her hair. “I should think it would be better to have those curtains drawn, Mabel. Your tea’s ready: if you will come to it.”

“But I choose to have the curtains open and I’ll take my tea here,” answered Mabel. “You may be going out again for hours, and what company should I have but the street? I don’t like to be shut up in a strange room: I might see ghosts. Johnny Ludlow, that’s a little coffee-table by the wall: if you’ll put it here it will hold my cup and saucer.”

I put it near her with her tea and plate of bread-and-butter.

“Won’t you sit by me? I am very lonely. Those other two can talk to one another.”

So I carried my cup and sat down by Mabel. The “other two,” as Mabel put it, were talking and laughing. Tod was taking a lesson in tea-making from her, and she called him awkward.

“Are you living here?” I asked of Mabel under cover of the noise.

“Living here! no,” she replied in her old abrupt fashion. “Do you think papa would let me be living over a shop in Oxford? My grandmamma lives near the town, and she invited me down on a visit to her. There was no one to bring me, and she said she would”—indicating Sophie—“and we came yesterday. Well, would you believe it? Grandmamma had meant next Saturday, and she could not take us in, having visitors already. I wanted to go back home; but she said she liked the look of Oxford, and she took these rooms for a week. Two guineas without fires and other extras: I call it dear. How came she to find you out, Johnny?”

“We met just now. She tells us she is Mrs. Everty now.”

“Oh yes, they are married. And a nice bargain Mr. Everty has in her! Her dresses must cost twenty pounds apiece. Some of them thirty pounds! Look at the lace on that one. Mrs. Smith, papa’s wife, gives her a good talking-to sometimes, telling her Mr. Everty’s income won’t stand it. I should think it would not!—though I fancy he has a small share in papa’s business now.”

“Do they live in London?”

“Oh yes, they live in London. Close to us, too! In one of the small houses in Torriana Street. She wanted to take a large house in the square like ours, but Mr. Everty was too wise.”

Talking to this girl, my thoughts back in the past, I wondered whether Sophie’s people had heard of the abstraction of Miss Deveen’s emeralds. But it was not likely. To look at her now: watching her fascinating ease, listening to her innocent reminiscences of the time we had all spent together at Lady Whitney’s, I might have supposed she had taken a dose of the waters of Lethe, and that Sophie Chalk had always been guileless as a child; an angel without wings.

“She has lost none of her impudence, Tod,” I said as we went home. “In the old days, you know, we used to say she’d fascinate the hair off our heads, give her the chance. She’d wile off both ears as well now. A good thing she’s married!”

Tod broke into a whistle, and went striding on.

Before the week was out, Sophie Chalk—we generally called her by the old name—had become intimate with some of the men of different colleges. Mabel Smith went to her grandmother’s, and Sophie had nothing to do but exhibit her charms in the Oxford streets and entertain her friends. The time went on. Hardly an evening passed but Tod was there; Bill Whitney went sometimes; I rarely. Sophie did not fascinate me, whatever she might do by others. Sophie treated her guests to wine and spirits, and to unlimited packs of cards. Bill Whitney said one night in a joking way that he was not sure but she might be indicted for keeping a private gaming-house. Richardson was one of her frequent evening visitors, and she would let him take his bull-dogs to make a morning call. There would be betting over the cards in the evenings, and she did not attempt to object. Sophie would not play herself; she dispersed her fascinations amidst the company while they played, and sang songs at the piano—one of the best pianos to be found in Oxford. There set in a kind of furore for pretty Mrs. Everty; the men who had the entrÉe there went wild over her charms, and vied with each other in making her costly presents. Sophie broke into raptures of delight over each with the seeming simplicity of a child, and swept all into her capacious net.

I think it was receiving those presents that was keeping her in Oxford; or helping to keep her. Some of them were valuable. Very valuable indeed was a set of diamonds, brooch and ear-rings, that soft young calf, Gaiton, brought her; but what few brains the viscount had were clean dazzled away by Sophie’s attractions: and Richardson gave her a bejewelled fan that must have cost a small fortune. If Sophie Chalk did spend her husband’s money, she was augmenting her stock of precious stones—and she had not lost her passion for them.

One morning my breakfast was brought in by a strange fellow, gloomy and grim. Tod had gone to breakfast with Mayhew.

“Where’s Charley?” I asked.

“Sick,” was the short answer.

“What’s the matter with him?”

“Down with a cold, or something.”

And we had this surly servant for ever so long to come: and I’m sorry to say got so accustomed to seeing his face as to forget sick Charley.

II.

“Will you go up the river for a row, Johnny?”

“I don’t mind if I do.”

The questioner was Bill Whitney; who had come in to look for Tod. I had nothing particular on hand that afternoon, and the skies were blue and the sun golden. So we went down to the river together.

“Where has Tod got to?” he asked.

“Goodness knows. I’ve not seen him since lecture this morning.”

We rowed up to Godstowe. Bill disappeared with some friend of his from Merton’s, who had watched us put in. I strolled about. Every one knows the dark pool of water there. On the bench under the foliage, so thick in summer, but bare yet in this early season, warm and sunny though it was, sat a man wrapped in a great-coat, whom I took at first to be a skeleton with painted cheeks. But one does not care to stare at skeletons, knowing they’d help their looks if they could; and I was passing him with my face turned the other way.

“Good-afternoon, sir.”

I turned at the hollow words—hollow in sound as though they came out of a drum. It was Charley: the red paint on his thin cheeks was nothing but natural hectic, and the blue of his eyes shone painfully bright.

“Why, what’s the matter, Charley?”

“A fly-man, who had to drive here and back, brought me with him for a mouthful of fresh air, it being so warm and bright. It is the first time I have been able to get out, sir.”

“You are poorly, Charley.” I had all but said “dying.” But one can only be complimentary to a poor fellow in that condition.

“Very ill I have been, sir; but I’m better. At one time I never thought I should get up again. It’s this beautiful warm weather coming in so early that has restored me.”

“I don’t know about restored? You don’t look great things yet.”

“You should have seen me a short while ago, sir! I’m getting on.”

Lying by his side, on a piece of paper, was a thick slice, doubled, of bread-and-butter, that he must have brought with him. He broke a piece off, and ate it.

“You look hungry, Charley.”

“That’s the worst of it, sir; I’m always hungry,” he answered, and his tone from its eagerness was quite painful to hear, and his eyes grew moist, and the hectic spread on his cheeks. “It is the nature of the complaint, I’m told: and poor mother was the same. I could be eating and drinking every hour, sir, and hardly be satisfied.”

“Come along to the inn, and have some tea.”

“No, sir; no, thank you,” he said, shrinking back. “I answered your remark thoughtlessly, sir, for it’s the truth; not with any notion that it would make you ask me to take anything. And I’ve got some bread-and-butter here.”

Going indoors, I told them to serve him a good tea, with a big dish of bacon and eggs, or some relishing thing of that sort. Whitney came in and heard me.

“You be hanged, Johnny! We are not going in for all that, here!”

“It’s not for us, Bill; it’s for that poor old scout, Charley. He’s as surely dying as that you and I are talking. Come and look at him: you never saw such an object. I don’t believe he gets enough to eat.”

Whitney came, and did nothing but stare. Charley went indoors with a good deal of pressing, and we saw him sit down to the feast. Whitney stayed; I went out-of-doors again.

I remembered a similar case. It was that of a young woman who used to make Lena’s frocks. She fell into a decline. Her appetite was wonderful. Anything good and substantial to eat and drink, she was always craving for: and it all seemed to do her no good. Charley Tasson’s sickness must be of the same nature. She died: and he——

I was struck dumb! Seated on the bench under the trees, my thoughts back in that past time, there came two figures over the rustic bridge. A lady and gentleman, arm-in-arm: she in a hat and blue feather and dainty lace parasol; and he with bent head and words softened to a whisper. Tod!—and Sophie Chalk!

“Good gracious! There’s Johnny Ludlow!”

She loosed his arm as she spoke, and came sailing up to me, her gold bracelets jingling as she gave her hand. I don’t believe there are ten women in England who could get themselves up as effectively as did Sophie Chalk. Tod looked black as thunder.

“What the devil brings you here, Johnny?”

“I rowed up with Whitney.”

A pause. “Who else is here?”

“Forbes of Merton: Whitney has been about with him. And I suppose a few others. We noticed a skiff or two waiting. Perhaps one was yours.”

I spoke indifferently, determined he should not know I was put out. Seeing him there—I was going to say on the sly—with that beguiling syren, who was to foretell what pitfalls she might charm him into? He took Madame Sophie on his arm again to continue their promenade, and I lost sight of them.

I did not like it. It was not satisfactory. He had rowed her up—or perhaps driven her up—and was marching about with her tÊte-À-tÊte under the sweet spring sunshine. No great harm in itself this pastime: but he might grow too fond of it. That she had reacquired all her strong influence over Tod’s heart was clear as the stars on a frosty night. Whitney called out to me that it was time to think of going back. I got into the boat with him, saying nothing.

Charley told me where he lived—“Up Stagg’s Entry”—for I said I would call to see him. Just for a day or two there seemed to be no time; but I got there one evening when Tod had gone to the syren’s. It was a dark, dusky place, this Stagg’s Entry, and, I think, is done away with now, with several houses crowded into it. Asking for Charles Tasson, of a tidy, motherly woman on the stairs, she went before me, and threw open a door.

“Here’s a gentleman to see you, Mr. Charley.”

He was lying in a bed at the end of the room near the fire, under the lean-to roof. If I had been shocked at seeing him in the open air, in the glad sunshine, I was doubly so now in the dim light of the tallow candle. He rose in bed.

“It’s very kind of you to come here, sir! I’m sure I didn’t expect you to remember it.”

“Are you worse, Charley?”

“I caught a fresh cold, sir, that day at Godstowe. And I’m as weak as a rat too—hardly able to creep out of bed. Nanny, bring a chair for this gentleman.”

One of the handiest little girls I ever saw, with the same shining blue eyes that he had, and plump, pretty cheeks, laid hold of a chair. I took it from her and sat down.

“Is this your sister, Charley?”

“Yes, sir. There’s only us two left together. We were eight of us once. Three went abroad, and one is in London, and two dead.”

“What doctor sees you?”

“One comes in now and then, sir. My illness is not much in a doctor’s way. There’s nothing he could do: nothing for me but to wait patiently for summer weather.”

“What have you had to eat to-day?”

“He had two eggs for his dinner: I boiled them,” said little Nanny. “And Mrs. Cann brought us in six herrings, and I cooked one for tea; and he’ll have some ale and bread-and-butter for supper.”

She spoke like a little important housekeeper. But I wondered whether Charley was badly off.

Mrs. Cann, the same woman who had spoken to me, came out of her room opposite as I was going away. She followed me downstairs, and began to talk in an undertone. “A sad thing, ain’t it, sir, to see him a-lying there so helpless; and to know that it has laid hold of him for good and all. He caught it from his mother.”

“How do you mean?”

“She died here in that room, just as the winter come in, with the same complaint—decline they call it; and he waited on her and nursed her, and must have caught it of her. A good son he was. They were well off once, sir, but the father just brought ’em to beggary; and Charley—he had a good education of his own—came down from London when his mother got ill, and looked out for something to do here that he might stay with her. At first he couldn’t find anything; and when he was at a sore pinch, he took a place at Christchurch College as scout’s helper. He had to pocket his pride: but there was Nanny as well as his mother.”

“I see.”

“He’d been teacher in a school up in London, sir, by day, and in the evenings he used to help some young clergyman as scripture-reader to the poor in one of them crowded parishes we hear tell of: he was always one for trying to do what good he could. Naturally he’d be disheartened at falling to be a bed-maker in a college, and I’m afraid the work was too hard for him: but, as I say, he was a good son. The mother settled in Oxford after her misfortunes.”

“How is he supported now? And the little girl?”

“It’s not over much of a support,” said Mrs. Cann with disparagement. “Not for him, that’s a-craving for meat and drink every hour. The eldest brother is in business in London, sir, and he sends them what they have. Perhaps he’s not able to do more.”

It was not late. I thought I would, for once, pay Mrs. Everty a visit. A run of three minutes, and I was at her door.

They were there—the usual set. Tod, and Richardson, and Lord Gaiton, and the two men from Magdalen, and—well, it’s no use enumerating—seven or eight in all. Richardson and another were quarrelling at ÉcartÉ, four were at whist; Tod was sitting apart with Sophie Chalk.

She was got up like a fairy at the play, in a cloud of thin white muslin; her hair hanging around and sparkling with gold dust, and little gleams of gold ornaments shining about her. If ever Joseph Todhetley had need to pray against falling into temptation, it was during the weeks of that unlucky term.

“This is quite an honour, Johnny Ludlow,” said Madame Sophie, rising to meet me, her eyes sparkling with what might have been taken for the most hearty welcome. “It is not often you honour my poor little room, sir.”

“It is not often I can find the time for it, Mrs. Everty. Tod, I came in to see whether you were ready to go in.”

He looked at his watch hastily, fearing it might be later than it was; and answered curtly and coolly.

“Ready?—no. I have not had my revenge yet at ÉcartÉ.”

Approaching the ÉcartÉ table, he sat down. Mrs. Everty drew a chair behind Lord Gaiton, and looked over his hand.

The days passed. I had two cares on my mind, and they bothered me. The one was Tod and his dangerous infatuation; the other, poor dying Charley Tasson. Tod was losing frightfully at those card-tables. Night after night it went on. Tod’s steps were drawn thither by a fascination irresistible: and whether the cards or their mistress were the more subtle potion for him, or what was to be the ending of it all, no living being could tell.

As to Stagg’s Entry, my visits to it had grown nearly as much into a habit as Tod’s had to High Street. When I stayed away for a night, little Nanny would whisper to me the next that Charley had not taken his eyes off the door. Sick people always like to see visitors.

“Don’t let him want for anything, Johnny,” said Tod. “The pater would blow us up.”

The time ran on, and the sands of Charley’s life ran with it. One Wednesday evening upon going in late, and not having many minutes to stay, I found him on the bed in a dead faint, and the candle guttering in the socket. Nanny was nowhere. I went across the passage to Mrs. Cann’s, and she was nowhere. It was an awkward situation; for I declare that for the moment I thought he was gone.

Knowing most of Nanny’s household secrets, I looked in the candle-box for a fresh candle. Charley was stirring then, and I gave him some wine. He had had a similar fainting-fit at mid-day, he said, which had frightened them, and Nanny had fetched the doctor. She was gone now, he supposed, to fetch some medicine.

“Is this the end, sir?”

He asked it quite calmly. I could not tell: but to judge by his wan face I thought it might be. And my time was up and more than up: and neither Nanny nor Mrs. Cann came. The wine revived him and he seemed better; quite well again: well, for him. But I did not like to leave him alone.

“Would you mind reading to me, sir?” he asked.

“What shall I read, Charley?”

“It may be for the last time, sir. I’d like to hear the service for the burial of the dead.”

So I read it every word, the long lesson, and all. Nanny came in before it was finished, medicine in hand, and sat down in silence with her bonnet on. She had been kept at the doctor’s. Mrs. Cann was the next to make her appearance, having been abroad on some business of her own: and I got away when it was close upon midnight.

“Your name and college, sir.”

“Ludlow. Christchurch.”

It was the proctor. He had pounced full upon me as I was racing home. And the clocks were striking twelve!

“Ludlow—Christchurch,” he repeated, nodding his head.

“I am sorry to be out so late, sir, against rules, but I could not help it. I have been sitting with a sick man.”

“Very good,” said he blandly; “you can tell that to-morrow to the dean. Home to your quarters now, if you please, Mr. Ludlow.”

And I knew he believed me just as much as he would had I told him I’d been up in a balloon.

“You are a nice lot, Master Johnny!”

The salutation was Tod’s. He and Bill Whitney were sitting over the fire in our room.

“I couldn’t help being late.”

“Of course not! As to late—it’s only midnight. Next time you’ll come in with the milk.”

“Don’t jest. I’ve been with that poor Charley, and I think he’s dying. The worst of it is, the proctor has just dropped upon me.”

“No!” It sobered them both, and they put aside their mockery. Bill, who had the tongs in his hand, let them go down with a crash.

“It’s a thousand pities, Johnny. Not one of us has been before the dean yet.”

“I can only tell the dean the truth.”

“As if he’d believe you! By Jupiter! Once get one of our names up, and those proctors will track every step of the ground we tread on. They watch a marked man as a starving cat watches a mouse.”

With the morning came in the requisition for me to attend before the dean. When I got there, who should be stealing out of the room quite sheepishly, his face down and his ears red, but Gaiton.

“Is it your turn, Ludlow!” he cried, closing the room-door as softly as though the dean had been asleep inside.

“What have you been had up for, Gaiton?”

“Oh, nothing. I got knocking about a bit last night, for Mrs. Everty did not receive, and came across that confounded proctor.”

“Is the dean in a hard humour?”

“Hard enough, and be hanged to him! It’s not the dean: he’s ill, or something; perhaps been making a night of it himself: and Applerigg’s on duty for him. Dry old scarecrow! For two pins, Ludlow, I’d take my name off the books, and be free of the lot.”

Dr. Applerigg had the reputation of being one of the strictest of college dons. He was like a maypole, just as tall and thin, with a long, sallow face, and enough learning to set up the reputations of three archbishops for life. The doctor was marching up and down the room in his college-cap, and turned his spectacles on me.

“Shut the door, sir.”

While I did as I was bid, he sat down at an open desk near the fire and looked at a paper that had some writing on it.

“What age may you be, Mr. Ludlow?” he sternly asked, when a question or two had passed. And I told him my age.

“Oh! And don’t you think it a very disreputable thing, a great discredit, sir, for a young fellow of your years to be found abroad by your proctor at midnight?”

“But I could not help being late, sir, last night; and I was not abroad for any purpose of pleasure. I had been staying with a poor fellow who is sick; dying, in fact: and—and it was not my fault, sir.”

“Take care, young man,” said he, glaring through his spectacles. “There’s one thing I can never forgive if deliberately told me, and that’s a lie.”

“I should be sorry to tell a lie, sir,” I answered: and by the annoyance so visible in his looks and tones, it was impossible to help fancying he had found out, or thought he had found out, Gaiton in one. “What I have said is truth.”

“Go over again what you did say,” cried he, very shortly, after looking at his paper again and then hard at me. And I went over it.

“What do you say the man’s name is?”

“Charles Tasson, sir. He was our scout until he fell ill.”

“Pray do you make a point, Mr. Ludlow, of visiting all the scouts and their friends who may happen to fall sick?”

“No, sir,” I said, uneasily, for there was ridicule in his tone, and I knew he did not believe a word. “I don’t suppose I should ever have thought of visiting Tasson, but for seeing him look so ill one afternoon up at Godstowe.”

“He must be very ill to be at Godstowe!” cried Dr. Applerigg. “Very!”

“He was so ill, sir, that I thought he was dying then. Some flyman he knew had driven him to Godstowe for the sake of the air.”

“But what’s your motive, may I ask, for going to sit with him?” He had a way of laying emphasis on certain of his words.

“There’s no motive, sir: except that he is lonely and dying.”

The doctor looked at me for what seemed ten minutes. “What is this sick man’s address, pray?”

I told him the address in Stagg’s Entry; and he wrote it down, telling me to present myself again before him the following morning.

That day, I met Sophie Chalk; her husband was with her. She nodded and seemed gay as air: he looked dark and sullen as he took off his hat. I carried the news into college.

“Sophie Chalk has her husband down, Tod.”

“Queen Anne’s dead,” retorted he.

“Oh, you knew it!” And I might have guessed that he did by his not having spent the past evening in High Street, but in a fellow’s rooms at Oriel. And he was as cross as two sticks.

“What a fool she must have been to go and throw herself away upon that low fellow Everty!” he exclaimed, putting his shoulders against the mantelpiece and stamping on the carpet with one heel.

“Throw herself away! Well, Tod, opinions vary. I think she was lucky to get him. As to his being low, we don’t know that he is. Putting aside that one mysterious episode of his being down at our place in hiding, which I suppose we shall never come to the bottom of, we know nothing of what Everty has, or has not been.”

“You shut up, Johnny. Common sense is common sense.”

“Everty’s being here—we can’t associate with him, you know, Tod—affords a good opportunity for breaking off the visits to High Street.”

“Who wants to break off the visits to High Street?”

“I do, for one. Madame Sophie’s is a dangerous atmosphere.”

“Dangerous for you, Johnny?”

“Not a bit of it. You know. Be wise in time, old fellow.”

“Of all the muffs living, Johnny, you are about the greatest. In the old days you feared I might go in for marrying Sophie Chalk. I don’t see what you can fear now. Do you suppose I should run away with another man’s wife?”

“Nonsense, Tod!”

“Well, what else is it? Come! Out with it.”

“Do you think our people or the Whitneys would like it if they knew we are intimate with her?”

“They’d not die of it, I expect.”

“I don’t like her, Tod. It is not a nice thing of her to allow the play and the betting, and to have all those fellows there when they choose to go.”

Tod took his shoulder from the mantelpiece, and sat down to his imposition: one he had to write for having missed chapel.

“You mean well, Johnny, though you are a muff.”

Later in the day I met Dr. Applerigg. He signed to me to stop. “Mr. Ludlow, I find that what you told me this morning was true. And I withdraw every word of condemnation that I spoke. I wish I had never greater cause to find fault than I have with you, in regard to this matter. Not that I can sanction your being out so late, although the plea of excuse be a dying man. You understand?”

“Yes, sir. It shall not occur again.”

Down at the house in Stagg’s Entry, that evening, Mrs. Cann met me on the stairs. “One of the great college doctors was here to-day, sir. He came up asking all manner of questions about you—whether you’d been here till a’most midnight yesterday, and what you’d stayed so late for, and—and all about it.”

Dr. Applerigg! “What did you tell him, Mrs. Cann?”

“Tell him, sir! what should I tell him but the truth? That you had stayed here late because of Charley’s being took worse and nobody with him, and had read the burial service to him for his asking; and that you came most evenings, and was just as good to him as gold. He said he’d see Charley for himself then; and he went in and talked to him, oh so gently and nicely about his soul; and gave little Nanny half-a-crown when he went away. Sometimes it happens, sir, that those who look to have the hardest faces have the gentlest hearts. And Charley’s dying, sir. He was took worse again this evening at five o’clock, and I hardly thought he’d have lasted till now. The doctor has been, and thinks he’ll go off quietly.”

Quietly perhaps in one sense, but it was a restless death-bed. He was not still a minute; but he was quite sensible and calm. Waking up out of a doze when I went in, he held out his hand.

“It is nearly over, sir.”

I was sure of that, and sat down in silence. There could be no mistaking his looks.

“I have just had a strange dream,” he whispered, between his laboured breath; and his eyes were wet with tears, and he looked curiously agitated. “I thought I saw mother. It was in a wide place, all light and sunshine, too beautiful for anything but heaven. Mother was looking at me; I seemed to be outside in dulness and darkness, and not to know how to get in. Others that I’ve known in my lifetime, and who have gone on before, were there, as well as mother; they all looked happy, and there was a soft strain of music, like nothing I ever heard in this world. All at once, as I was wondering how I could get in, my sins seemed to rise up before me in a great cloud; I turned sick, thinking of them; for I knew no sinful person might enter there. Then I saw One standing on the brink! it could only have been Jesus; and He held out His hand to me and smiled, ‘I am here to wash out your sins,’ He said, and I thought He touched me with His finger; and oh, the feeling of delight that came over me, of repose, of bliss, for I knew that all earth’s troubles were over, and I had passed into rest and peace for ever.”

Nanny came up, and gave him one or two spoonfuls of wine.

“I don’t believe it was a dream,” he said, after a pause. “I think it was sent to show me what it is I am entering on; to uphold me through the darksome valley of the shadow of death.”

“Mother said she should be watching for us, you know, Charley,” said the child.

A restless fit came over him again, and he stirred uneasily. When it had passed, he was still for awhile and then looked up at me.

“It was the new heaven and the new earth, sir, that we are told of in the Revelation. Would you mind, sir—just those few verses—reading them to me for the last time?”

Nanny brought the Bible, and put the candle on the stand, and I read what he asked for—the first few verses of the twenty-first chapter. The little girl kneeled down by the bed and joined her hands together.

“That’s enough, Nanny,” I whispered. “Put the candle back.”

“But I did not tell all my dream,” he resumed; “not quite all. As I passed over into heaven, I thought I looked down here again. I could see the places in the world; I could see this same Oxford city. I saw the men here in it, sir, at their cards and their dice and their drink; at all their thoughtless folly. Spending their days and nights without a care for the end, without as much as thinking whether they need a Saviour or not. And oh, their condition troubled me! I seemed to understand all things plainly then, sir. And I thought if they would but once lift up their hearts to Him, even in the midst of their sin, He would take care of them even then, and save them from it in the end—for He was tempted Himself once, and knows how sore their temptations are. In my distress, I tried to call out and tell them this, and it awoke me.”

“Do you think he ought to talk, sir?” whispered Nanny. But nothing more could harm him now.

My time was up, and I ought to be going. Poor Charley spoke so imploringly—almost as though the thought of it startled him.

“Not yet, sir; not yet! Stay a bit longer with me. It is for the last time.”

And I stayed: in spite of my word passed to Dr. Applerigg. It seems to me a solemn thing to cross the wishes of the dying.

So the clock went ticking on. Mrs. Cann stole in and out, and a lodger from below came in and looked at him. Before twelve all was over.

I went hastening home, not much caring whether the proctor met me again, or whether he didn’t, for in any case I must go to Dr. Applerigg in the morning, and tell him I had broken my promise to him, and why. Close at the gates some one overtook and passed me.

It was Tod. Tod with a white face, and his hair damp with running. He had come from Sophie Chalk’s.

“What is it, Tod?”

I laid my hand upon his arm in speaking. He threw it off with a word that was very like an imprecation.

“What is the matter?”

“The devil’s the matter. Mind your own business, Johnny.”

“Have you been quarrelling with Everty?”

“Everty be hanged! The man has betaken himself off.”

“How much have you lost to-night?”

“Cleaned-out, lad. That’s all.”

We got to our room in silence. Tod turned over some cards that lay on the table, and trimmed the candle from a thief.

“Tasson’s dead, Tod.”

“A good thing if some of us were dead,” was the answer. And he turned into his chamber and bolted the door.

III.

Lunch-time at Oxford, and a sunny day. Instead of college and our usual fare, bread-and-cheese from the buttery, we were looking on the High Street from Mrs. Everty’s rooms, and about to sit down to a snow-white damasked table with no end of good things upon it. Madam Sophie had invited four or five of us to lunch with her.

The term had gone on, and Easter was not far off. Tod had not worked much: just enough to keep him out of hot-water. His mind ran on Sophie Chalk more than it did on lectures and chapel. He and the other fellows who were caught by her fascinations mostly spent their spare time there. Sophie dispersed her smiles pretty equally, but Tod contrived to get the largest share. The difference was this: they had lost their heads to her and Tod his heart. The evening card-playing did not flag, and the stakes played for were high. Tod and Gaiton were the general losers: a run of ill-luck had set in from the first for both of them. Gaiton might afford this, but Tod could not.

Tod had his moments of reflection. He’d sit sometimes for an hour together, his head bent down, whistling softly to himself some slow dolorous strain, and pulling at his dark whiskers; no doubt pondering the question of what was to be the upshot of it all. For my part, I devoutly wished Sophie Chalk had been caught up into the moon before an ill-wind had wafted her to Oxford. It was an awful shame of her husband to let her stay on there, turning the under-graduates’ brains. Perhaps he could not help it.

We sat down to table: Sophie at its head in a fresh-looking pink gown and bracelets and nicknacks. Lord Gaiton and Tod sat on either side of her; Richardson was at the foot, and Fred Temple and I faced each other. What fit of politeness had taken Sophie to invite me, I could not imagine. Possibly she thought I should be sure to refuse; but I did not.

“So kind of you all to honour my poor little table!” said Sophie, as we sat down. “Being in lodgings, I cannot treat you as I should wish. It is all cold: chickens, meat-patties, lobster-salad, and bread-and-cheese. Lord Gaiton, this is sherry by you, I think. Mr. Richardson, you like porter, I know: there is some on the chiffonier.”

We plunged into the dishes without ceremony, each one according to his taste, and the lunch progressed. I may as well mention one thing—that there was nothing in Mrs. Everty’s manners at any time to take exception to: never a word was heard from her, never a look seen, that could offend even an old dowager. She made the most of her charms and her general fascinations, and flirted quietly; but all in a lady-like way.

“Thank you, yes; I think I will take a little more salad, Mr. Richardson,” she said to him with a beaming smile. “It is my dinner, you know. I have not a hall to dine in to-night, as you gentlemen have. I am sorry to trouble you, Mr. Johnny.”

I was holding her plate for Richardson. There happened at that moment to be a lull in the talking, and we heard a carriage of some kind stop at the door, and a loud peal at the house-bell.

“It’s that brother of mine,” said Fred Temple. “He bothered me to drive out to some confounded place with him, but I told him I wouldn’t. What’s he bumping up the stairs in that fashion for?”

The room-door was flung open, and Fred Temple put on a savage face, for his brother looked after him more than he liked; when, instead of Temple major, there appeared a shining big brown satin bonnet, and an old lady’s face under it, who stood there with a walking-stick.

“Yes, you see I was right, grandmamma; I said she was not gone,” piped a shrill voice behind; and Mabel Smith, in an old-fashioned black silk frock and tippet, came into view. They had driven up to look after Sophie.

Sophie was equal to the occasion. She rose gracefully and held out both her hands, as though they had been welcome as is the sun in harvest. The old lady leaned on her stick, and stared around: the many faces seemed to confuse her.

“Dear me! I did not know you had a luncheon-party, ma’am.”

“Just two or three friends who have dropped in, Mrs. Golding,” said Sophie, airily. “Let me take your stick.”

The old lady, who looked like a very amiable old lady, sat down in the nearest chair, but kept the stick in her hand. Mabel Smith was regarding everything with her shrewd eyes and compressing her thin lips.

“This is Johnny Ludlow, grandmamma; you have heard me speak of him: I don’t know the others.”

“How do you do, sir,” said the old lady, politely nodding her brown bonnet at me. “I hope you are in good health, sir?”

“Yes, ma’am, thank you.” For she put it as a question, and seemed to await an answer. Tod and the rest, who had risen, began to sit down again.

“I’m sure I am sorry to disturb you at luncheon, ma’am,” said the old lady to Mrs. Everty. “We came in to see whether you had gone home or not. I said you of course had gone; that you wouldn’t stay away from your husband so long as this; and also because we had not heard of you for a month past. But Mabel thought you were here still.”

“I am intending to return shortly,” said Sophie.

“That’s well: for I want to send up Mabel. And I brought in a letter that came to my house this morning, addressed to you,” continued the old lady, lugging out of her pocket a small collection of articles before she found the letter. “Mabel says it is your husband’s handwriting, ma’am; if so, he must be thinking you are staying with me.”

“Thanks,” said Sophie, slipping the letter away unopened.

“Had you not better see what it says?” suggested Mrs. Golding to her.

“Not at all: it can wait. May I offer you some luncheon?”

“Much obleeged, ma’am, but I and Mabel took an early dinner before setting out. And on which day, Mrs. Everty, do you purpose going?”

“I’ll let you know,” said Sophie.

“What can have kept you so long here?” continued the old lady, wonderingly. “Mabel said you did not know any of the inhabitants.”

“I have found it of service to my health,” replied Sophie with charming simplicity. “Will you take a glass of sherry, Mrs. Golding?”

“I don’t mind if I do. Just half a glass. Thank you, sir; not much more than half”—to me, as I went forward with the glass and decanter. “I’m sure, sir, it is good of you to be attentive to an old lady like me. If you had a mind for a brisk walk at any time, of three miles, or so, and would come over to my house, I’d make you welcome. Mabel, write down the address.”

“And I wish you had come while I was there, Johnny Ludlow,” said the girl, giving me the paper. “I like you. You don’t say smiling words to people with your lips and mock at them in your heart, as some do.”

I remembered that she had not been asked to take any wine, and I offered it.

“No, thank you,” she said with emphasis. “None for me.” And it struck me that she refused because the wine belonged to Sophie.

The old lady, after nodding a farewell around and shaking hands with Mrs. Everty, stood leaning on her stick between the doorway and the stairs. “My servant’s not here,” she said, looking back, “and these stairs are steep: would any one be good enough to help me down?”

Tod went forward to give her his arm; and we heard the fly drive away with her and Mabel. Somehow the interlude had damped the free go of the banquet, and we soon prepared to depart also. Sophie made no attempt to hinder it, but said she should expect us in to take some tea with her in the evening: and the lot of us filed out together, some going one way, some another. I and Fred Temple kept together.

There was a good-natured fellow at Oxford that term, who had come up from Wales to take his degree, and had brought his wife with him, a nice kind of young girl who put me in mind of Anna Whitney. They had become acquainted with Sophie Chalk, and liked her; she fascinated both. She meant to do it too: for the companionship of staid irreproachable people like Mr. and Mrs. Ap-Jenkyns, reflected credit on herself in the eyes of Oxford.

“I thought we should have met the Ap-Jenkynses, at lunch,” remarked Temple. “What a droll old party that was with the stick! She puts me in mind of—I say, here’s another old party!” he broke off. “Seems to be a friend of yours.”

It was Mrs. Cann. She had stopped, evidently wanting to speak to me.

“I have just been to put little Nanny Tasson in the train for London, sir,” she said; “I thought you might like to know it. Her eldest brother, the one that’s settled there, has taken to her. His wife wrote a nice letter and sent the fare.”

“All right, Mrs. Cann. I hope they’ll take good care of her. Good-afternoon.”

“Who the wonder is Nanny Tasson?” cried Temple as we went on.

“Only a little friendless child. Her brother was our scout when we first came, and he died.”

“Oh, by Jove, Ludlow! Look there!”

I turned at Temple’s words. A gig was dashing by as large as life; Tod in it, driving Sophie Chalk. Behind it dashed another gig, containing Mr. and Mrs. Ap-Jenkyns. Fred Temple laughed.

“Mrs. Everty’s unmistakably charming,” said he, “and we don’t know any real harm of her, but if I were Ap-Jenkyns I should not let my wife be quite her bosom companion. As to Todhetley, I think he’s a gone calf.”

Whitney came to our room as I got in. He had been invited to the luncheon by Mrs. Everty, but excused himself, and she asked Fred Temple in his place.

“Well, Johnny, how did it go off?”

“Oh, pretty well. Lobster-salad and other good things. Why did not you go?”

“Where’s Tod?” he rejoined, not answering the question.

“Out on a driving-party. Sophie Chalk and the Ap-Jenkynses.”

Whitney whistled through the verse of an old song: “Froggy would a-wooing go.” “I say, Johnny,” he said presently, “you had better give Tod a hint to take care of himself. That thing will go too far if he does not look out.”

“As if Tod would mind me! Give him the hint yourself, Bill.”

“I said half a word to him this morning after chapel: he turned on me and accused me of being jealous.”

We both laughed.

“I had a letter from home yesterday,” Bill went on, “ordering me to keep clear of Madam Sophie.”

“No! Who from?”

“The mother. And Miss Deveen, who is staying with them, put in a postscript.”

“How did they know Sophie Chalk was here?”

“Through me. One wet afternoon I wrote a long epistle to Harry, telling him, amidst other items, that Sophie Chalk was here, turning some of our heads, especially Todhetley’s. Harry, like a flat, let Helen get hold of the letter, and she read it aloud, pro bono publico. There was nothing in it that I might not have written to Helen herself; but Mr. Harry won’t get another from me in a hurry. Sophie seems to have fallen to a discount with the mother and Miss Deveen.”

Bill Whitney did not know what I knew—the true story of the emeralds.

“And that’s why I did not go to the lunch to-day, Johnny. Who’s this?”

It was the scout. He came in to bring in a small parcel, daintily done up in white paper.

“Something for you, sir,” he said to me. “A boy has just left it.”

“It can’t be for me—that I know of. It looks like wedding-cake.”

“Open it,” said Bill. “Perhaps one of the grads has gone and got married.”

We opened it together, laughing. A tiny paste-board box loomed out with a jeweller’s name on it; inside it was a chased gold cross, attached to a slight gold chain.

“It’s a mistake, Bill. I’ll do it up again.”

Tod came back in time for dinner. Seeing the little parcel on the mantelshelf, he asked what it was. So I told him—something that the jeweller’s shop must have sent to our room by mistake. Upon that, he tore the paper open; called the shop people hard names for sending it into college, and put the box in his pocket. Which showed that it was for him.

I went to Sophie’s in the evening, having promised her, but not as soon as Tod, for I stayed to finish some Greek. Whitney went with me, in spite of his orders from home. The luncheon-party had all assembled there with the addition of Mr. and Mrs. Ap-Jenkyns. Sophie sat behind the tea-tray, dispensing tea; Gaiton handed the plum-cake. She wore a silken robe of opal tints; white lace fell over her wrists and bracelets; in her hair, brushed off her face, fluttered a butterfly with silver wings; and on her neck was the chased gold cross that had come to our rooms a few hours before.

“Tod’s just a fool, Johnny,” said Whitney in my ear. “Upon my word, I think he is. And she’s a syren!—and it was at our house he met her first!”

After Mr. and Mrs. Ap-Jenkyns left, for she was tired, they began cards. Sophie was engrossing Gaiton, and Tod sat down to ÉcartÉ. He refused at first, but Richardson drew him on.

“I’ll show Tod the letter I had from home,” said Whitney to me as we went out. “What can possess him to go and buy gold crosses for her? She’s married.”

“Gaiton and Richardson buy her things also, Bill.”

“They don’t know how to spend their money fast enough. I wouldn’t: I know that.”

Tod and Gaiton came in together soon after I got in. Gaiton just looked in to say good-night, and proposed that we should breakfast with him on the morrow, saying he’d ask Whitney also: and then he went up to his own rooms.

Tod fell into one of his thinking fits. He had work to do, but he sat staring at the fire, his legs stretched out. With all his carelessness he had a conscience and some forethought. I told him Bill Whitney had had a lecture from home, touching Sophie Chalk, and I conclude he heard. But he made no sign.

“I wish to goodness you wouldn’t keep up that tinkling, Johnny,” he said by-and-by, in a tone of irritation.

The “tinkling” was a bit of quiet harmony. However, I shut down the piano, and went and sat by the fire, opposite to him. His brow looked troubled; he was running his hands through his hair.

“I wonder whether I could raise some money, Johnny,” he began, after a bit.

“How much money?”

“A hundred, or so.”

“You’d have to pay a hundred and fifty for doing it.”

“Confound it, yes! And besides——”

“Besides what?”

“Nothing.”

“Look here, Tod: we should have gone on as straightly and steadily as need be but for her. As it is, you are wasting your time and getting out of the way of work. What’s going to be the end of it?”

“Don’t know myself, Johnny.”

“Do you ever ask yourself?”

“Where’s the use of asking?” he returned, after a pause. “If I ask it of myself at night, I forget it by the morning.”

“Pull up at once, Tod. You’d be in time.”

“Yes, now: don’t know that I shall be much longer,” said Tod candidly. He was in a soft mood that night; an unusual thing with him. “Some awful complication may come of it: a few writs or something.”

“Sophie Chalk can’t do you any good, Tod.”

“She has not done me any harm.”

“Yes she has. She has unsettled you from the work that you came to Oxford to do; and the play in her rooms has caused you to run into debt that you don’t know how to get out of: it’s nearly as much harm as she can do you.”

“Is it?”

“As much as she can do any honest fellow. Tod, if you were to lapse into crooked paths, you’d break the good old pater’s heart. There’s nobody in the world he cares for as he cares for you.”

Tod sat twitching his whiskers. I could not understand his mood: all the carelessness and the fierceness had quite gone out of him.

“It’s the thought of the father that pulls me up, lad. What a cross-grained world it is! Why should a bit of pleasure be hedged in with thorns?”

“If we don’t go to bed we shall not be up for chapel.”

“You can go to bed.”

“Why do you drive her out, Tod?”

“Why does the sun shine?” was the lucid answer.

“I saw you with her in that gig to-day.”

“We only went four miles. Four out and four in.”

“You may be driving her rather too far some day—fourteen, or so.”

“I don’t think she’d be driven. With all her simplicity, she knows how to take care of herself.”

Simplicity! I looked at him; and saw he spoke the word in good faith. He was simple.

“She has a husband, Tod.”

“Well?”

“Do you suppose he would like to see you driving her abroad?—and all you fellows in her rooms to the last minute any of you dare stop out?”

“That’s not my affair. It’s his.”

“Any way, Everty might come down upon the lot of you some of these fine days, and say things you’d not like. She’s to blame. Why, you heard what that old lady in the brown bonnet said—that her husband must think Sophie was staying with her.”

“The fire’s low, and I’m cold,” said Tod. “Good-night, Johnny.”

He went into his room, and I to mine.

A few years ago, there appeared a short poem called “Amor Mundi.”[1] While reading it, I involuntarily recalled this past experience at Oxford, for it described a young fellow’s setting-out on the downward path, as Tod did. Two of life’s wayfarers start on their long life journey: the woman first; the man sees and joins her; then speaks to her.

And so they go forth, these two, on their journey, revelling in the summer sunshine and giving no heed to their sliding progress; until he sees something in the path that startles him. But the syren accounts for it in some plausible way; it lulls his fear, and onward they go again. In time he sees something worse, halts, and asks her again:

The answer effectually arouses him, and he pulls up in terror, asking her to turn. She answers again, and he knows his fate.

Shakespeare tells us that there is a tide in the affairs of man, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune: omitted, all the voyage of the after life is spent in shoals and miseries. That will apply to other things besides fortune. I fully believe that after a young fellow has set out on the downward path, in almost all cases there’s a chance given him of pulling up again, if he only is sufficiently wise and firm to seize upon it. The opportunity was to come for Tod. He had started; there was no doubt of that; but he had not got down very far yet and could go backward almost as easily as forward. Left alone, he would probably make a sliding run of it, and descend into the shoals. But the chance for him was at hand.

Our commons and Whitney’s went up to Gaiton’s room in the morning, and we breakfasted there. Lecture that day was at eleven, but I had work to do beforehand. So had Tod, for the matter of that; plenty of it. I went down to mine, but Tod stayed up with the two others.

Bursting into our room, as a fellow does when he is late for anything, I saw at the open window somebody that I thought must be Mr. Brandon’s ghost. It took me aback, and for a moment I stood staring.

“Have you no greeting for me, Johnny Ludlow?”

“I was lost in surprise, sir. I am very glad to see you.”

“I dare say you are!” he returned, as if he doubted my word. “It’s a good half-hour that I have waited here. You’ve been at a breakfast-party!”

He must have got that from the scout. “Not at a party, sir. Gaiton asked us to take our commons up, and breakfast with him in his room.”

“Who is Gaiton?”

“He is Lord Gaiton. One of the students at Christchurch.”

“Never mind his being a lord. Is he any good?”

I could not say Gaiton was particularly good, so passed the question over, and asked Mr. Brandon when he came to Oxford.

“I got here at mid-day yesterday. How are you getting on?”

“Oh, very well, sir.”

“Been in any rows?”

“No, sir.”

“And Todhetley? How is he getting on?”

I should have said very well to this; it would never have done to say very ill, but Tod and Bill Whitney interrupted the answer. They looked just as much surprised as I had been. After talking a bit, Mr. Brandon left, saying he should expect us all three at the Mitre in the evening when dinner in Hall was over.

“What the deuce brings him at Oxford?” cried Tod.

Whitney laughed. “I’ll lay a crown he has come to look after Johnny and his morals.”

“After the lot of us,” added Tod, pushing his books about. “Look here, you two. I’m not obliged to go bothering to that Mitre in the evening, and I shan’t. You’ll be enough without me.”

“It won’t do, Tod,” I said. “He expects you.”

“What if he does? I have an engagement elsewhere.”

“Break it.”

“I shall not do anything of the kind. There! Hold your tongue, Johnny, and push the ink this way.”

Tod held to that. So when I and Whitney reached the Mitre after dinner, we said he was unable to get off a previous engagement, putting the excuse as politely as we could.

“Oh,” said old Brandon, twitching his yellow silk handkerchief off his head, for he had been asleep before the fire. “Engaged elsewhere, is he! With the lady I saw him driving out yesterday, I suppose: a person with blue feathers on her head.”

This struck us dumb. Bill said nothing, neither did I.

“It was Miss Sophie Chalk, I presume,” went on old Brandon, ringing the bell. “Sit down, boys; we’ll have tea up.”

The tea and coffee must have been ordered beforehand, for they came in at once. Mr. Brandon drank four cups of tea, and ate a plate of bread-and-butter and some watercress.

“Tea is my best meal in the day,” he said. “You young fellows all like coffee best. Don’t spare it. What’s that by you, William Whitney?—anchovy toast? Cut that pound-cake, Johnny.”

Nobody could say, with all his strict notions, that Mr. Brandon was not hospitable. He’d have ordered up the Mitre’s whole larder had he thought we could eat it. And never another word did he say about Tod until the things had gone away.

Then he began, quietly at first: he sitting on one side the fire, I and Bill on the other. Touching gently on this, alluding to that, our eyes opened in more senses than one; for we found that he knew all about Sophie Chalk’s sojourn in the town, the attention she received from the undergraduates, and Tod’s infatuation.

“What’s Todhetley’s object in going there?” he asked.

“Amusement, I think, sir,” hazarded Bill.

“Does he gamble there for amusement too?”

Where on earth had old Brandon got hold of all this?

“How much has Todhetley lost already?” he continued. “He is in debt, I know. Not for the first time from the same cause.”

Bill stared. He knew nothing of that old episode in London with the Clement-Pells. I felt my face flush.

“Tod does not care for playing really, sir. But the cards are there, and he sees others play and gets drawn in to join.”

“Well, what amount has he lost this time, Johnny?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“But you know that he is in debt?”

“I—yes, sir. Perhaps he is a little.”

“Look here, boys,” said old Brandon. “Believing that matters were not running in a satisfactory groove with some of you, I came down to Oxford yesterday to look about me a bit—for I don’t intend that Johnny Ludlow shall lapse into bad ways, if I can keep him out of them. Todhetley may have made up his mind to go to the deuce, but he shall not take Johnny with him. I hear no good report of Todhetley; he neglects his studies for the sake of a witch, and is in debt over his head and shoulders.”

“Who could have told you that, sir?”

“Never you mind, Johnny Ludlow; I dare say you know it’s pretty true. Now look here—as I said just now. I mean to see what I can do towards saving Todhetley, for the sake of my good old friend, the Squire, and for his dead mother’s sake; and I appeal to you both to aid me. You can answer my questions if you will; and you are not children, that you should make an evasive pretence of ignorance. If I find matters are too hard for me to cope with, I shall send for the Squire and Sir John Whitney; their influence may effect what mine cannot. If I can deal with the affair successfully, and save Todhetley from himself, I’ll do so, and say nothing about it anywhere. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. To begin with, what amount of debt has Todhetley got into?”

It seemed to be a choice of evils: but the least of them was to speak. Bill honestly said he would tell in a minute if he knew. I knew little more than he; only that Tod had been saying the night before he wished he could raise a hundred pounds.

“A hundred pounds!” repeated old Brandon, nodding his head like a Chinese mandarin. “Pretty well, that, for a first term at Oxford. Well, we’ll leave that for the present, and go to other questions. What snare and delusion is drawing him on to make visits to this person, this Sophie Chalk? What does he purpose? Is it marriage?”

Marriage! Bill and I both looked up at him.

“She is married already, sir. Did you not know it?”

“Married already! Who says so?”

So I told him all about it—as much as I knew—and that her husband, Mr. Everty, had been to Oxford once or twice to see her.

“Well, that’s a relief,” cried Mr. Brandon, drawing a deep breath, as though a fear of some kind had been lifted from his mind. And then he fell into a reverie, his head nodding incessantly, and his yellow handkerchief in his hand keeping time to it.

“If it’s better in one sense, it’s worse in another,” he squeaked. “Todhetley’s in love with her, I suppose!”

“Something like it, sir,” said Bill.

“What brainless fools some of you young men can be!”

But it was then on the stroke of nine, when Old Tom would peal out. Mr. Brandon hurried us away: he seemed to understand the notions of University life as well as we did: ordering us to say nothing to Tod, as he intended to speak to him on the morrow.

And we concluded that he did. Tod came stalking in during the afternoon in a white rage with somebody, and I thought it might be with old Brandon.

The time passed. Mr Brandon stayed on at the Mitre as though he meant to make it his home for good, and was evidently watching. Tod seemed to be conscious of it, and to exist in a chronic state of irritation. Sophie Chalk stayed on also, and Tod was there more than ever. The affair had got wind somehow—I mean Tod’s infatuation for her—and was talked of in the colleges. Richardson fell ill about that time: at least, he met with an accident which confined him to his bed: and the play at Mrs. Everty’s was not much to speak of: I did not go, Mr. Brandon had interdicted it. Thus the time went on, and Passion Week was coming in.

“Are you running for a wager, Johnny Ludlow?”

I was running down to the river and had nearly run over Mr. Brandon, who was strolling along with his hands under his coat-tails. It was Saturday afternoon, and some of us were going out rowing. Mr. Brandon came down to see us embark.

As we all stood there, who should loom into sight but Sophie Chalk. She was leading a little mouse-coloured dog by a piece of red tape, one that Fred Temple had given her; and her shining hair was a sight to be seen in the sunlight; Tod walked by her with his arms folded. They halted to talk with some of us for a minute, and then went on, Madam Sophie giving old Brandon a saucy stare from her wide-open blue eyes. He had stood as still as a post, giving never a word to either of them.

That same night, when Tod and I were in our room alone, Mr. Brandon walked in. It was pretty late, but Tod was about to depart on his visit to High Street. As if the entrance of Mr. Brandon had been the signal for him to bolt, he put on his trencher and turned to the door. Quick as thought, Mr. Brandon interposed himself.

“If you go out of this room, Joseph Todhetley, it shall be over my body,” cried he, a whole hatful of authority in his squeaky voice. “I have come in to hold a final conversation with you; and I mean to do it.”

I thought an explosion was inevitable, with Tod’s temper. He controlled it, however; and after a moment’s hesitation put off his cap. Mr. Brandon sat down in the old big chair by the fire; Tod stood on the other side, his arm on the mantelpiece.

In a minute or two, they were going at it kindly. Old Brandon put Tod’s doings before him in the plainest language he could command; Tod retorted insolently in his passion.

“I have warned you enough against your ways and against that woman,” said Mr. Brandon. “I am here to do it once again, and to bid you for the last time give up her acquaintanceship. Yes, sir, bid you: I stand in the light of your unconscious father.”

“I wouldn’t do it for my father,” cried Tod, in his fury.

“She is leading you into a gulf of—of brimstone,” fired old Brandon. “Day by day you creep down a step lower into it, sir, like a calf that is being wiled to the shambles. Once fairly in, you’ll be smothered: the whole world won’t be able to pull you out again.”

Tod answered with a torrent of words. The chief burden of them was—that if he chose to walk into the brimstone, it was not Mr. Brandon who should keep him out of it.

“Is it not?” retorted Mr. Brandon—and though he was very firm and hard, he gave no sign of losing his temper. “We’ll see that. I am in this town to strive to save you, Joseph Todhetley; and if I can’t do it by easy means, I’ll do it by hard ones. I got you out of one scrape, thanks to Johnny here, and now I’m going to get you out of another.”

Tod held his peace. That past obligation was often on his conscience.

“You ought to take shame to yourself, sir,” continued old Brandon. “You were placed at Oxford to study, to learn to be a man and a gentleman, to prepare yourself to fight well the battle of life, not to waste the talents God has given you, and fritter away your best days in sin.”

“In sin?” retorted Tod, jerking his head fiercely.

“Yes, sir, in sin. What else do you call it—this idleness that you are indulging in? The short space of time that young men spend at the University must be used, not abused. Once it has passed, it can never again be laid hold of. What sort of example are you setting my ward here, who is as your younger brother? Stay where you are, Johnny Ludlow. I choose that you shall be present at this.”

“Johnny need not fret himself that he’ll catch much harm from my iniquities,” said Tod with a sneer.

“Now listen to me, young man,” spoke Mr. Brandon. “If you persist in this insane conduct and refuse to hear reason, I’ll keep you out of danger by putting you in prison.”

Tod stared.

“You owe me a hundred pounds.”

“I am quite conscious of that, sir: and of my inability hitherto to repay it.”

“For that debt I will shut you up in prison. Headstrong young idiots like you must be saved from themselves.”

Tod laughed slightly in his insolence. A defiant, mocking laugh.

“I should like to see you try to shut me up in prison! You have no power to do it, Mr. Brandon: you have never proved the debt.”

Mr. Brandon rose, and took a step towards him. “You dare to tell me I cannot do a thing that I say I will do, Joseph Todhetley! I shall make an affidavit before a judge in chambers that you are about to leave the country, and obtain the warrant that will lock you up. And I say to you that I believe you are going to leave it, sooner or later; and that Chalk woman with you!”

“What an awful lie,” cried Tod, his face all ablaze.

“Lie or no lie, I believe it. I believe it is what she will bring you to, unless you are speedily separated from her. And if there be no other way of saving you, why, I’ll save you by force.”

Tod ran his hands through his damp hair: what with wrath and emotion he was in a fine heat. Knowing nothing of the law himself, he supposed old Brandon could do as he said, and it sobered him.

“I am your father’s friend, Joseph Todhetley, and I’ll take care of you for his sake if I can. I have stayed on here, putting myself, as it were, into his place to save him pain. As his substitute, I have a right to be heard; ay, and to act. Do you know that your dead mother was very dear to me? I will tell you what perhaps I never should have told you but for this crisis in your life, that her sister was to me the dearest friend a man can have in this life; she would have been my wife but that death claimed her. Your mother was nearly equally dear, and loved me to the last. She took my hand in dying, and spoke of you; of you, her only child. ‘Should it ever be in your power to shield him from harm or evil, do so, John,’ she said, ‘do it for my sake.’ And with Heaven’s help, I will do it now.”

Tod was moved. The mention of his mother softened him at all times. Mr. Brandon sat down again.

“Don’t let us play at this pitched battle, Joe. Hear a bit of truth from me, of common sense: can’t you see that I have your interest at heart? There are two roads that lie before a young man on his setting out in life, either of which he can take: you can take either, even yet. The one leads to honour, to prosperity, to a clear conscience, to a useful career, to a hale and happy old age—and, let us hope, to heaven. The other leads to vice, to discomfort, to miserable self-torment, to a waste of talent and energies; in short, to altogether a lost life. Lost, at any rate, for this world: and—we’ll not speculate upon what it may be in the other. Are you attending?”

Tod just lifted his eyes in answer. I sat at the table by my books, silently turning some of their leaves, ready to drop through the floor with annoyance. Mr. Brandon resumed.

“You have come to the Oxford University to perfect your education; to acquire self-reliance, experience, and a tone of good manners; to keep upright ways, to eschew bad company, and to train yourself to be a Christian gentleman. Do this, and you will go home with satisfaction and a sound conscience. In time you will marry, and rear your children to good, and be respected of all men. This is the career expected of you; this is the road you ought to take.”

He paused slightly, and then went on.

“I will put the other road before you; the one you seem so eager to rush upon. Ah, boy! how many a one, with as hopeful a future before him as you have, has gone sliding, sliding down unconsciously, never meaning, poor fellow, to slide too far, and been lost in the vortex of sin and shame! You are starting on well for it. Wine, and cards, and betting, and debt; and a singing mermaid to lure you on! That woman, with the hard light eyes, and the seductive airs, has cast her spell upon you. You think her an angel, no doubt; I say she’s more of an angel’s opposite——”

“Mr. Brandon!”

“There are women in the world who will conjure a man’s coat off his back, and his pockets after it,” persisted Mr. Brandon, drowning the interruption. “She is one of them. They are bad to the core. They are; and they draw a man into all kinds of irretrievable entanglements. She will draw you: and the end may be that you’d find her saddled on you for good. Who will care to take your hand in friendship then? Will you dare to clasp that of honest people, or hold up your face in the light of day? No: not for very shame. That’s what gambling and evil courses will bring a man to: and, his self-respect once gone, it’s gone for ever. You will feel that you have raised a barrier between you and your kind: remembrance will be a sting, and your days will be spent in one long cry of too late repentance, ‘Oh, that I had been wise in time!’”

“You are altogether mistaken in her,” burst out Tod. “There’s no harm in her. She is as particular as—as any lady need be.”

“No harm in her!” retorted Mr. Brandon. “Is there any good in her? Put it at its best: she induces you to waste your time and your substance. How much money has the card-playing and the present-giving taken out of you, pray? What amount of debt has it involved you in? More than you know how to pay.”

Tod winced.

“Be wise in time, lad, now, without further delay, and break off this dangerous connection. I know that in your better moments you must see how fatal it may become. It is a crisis in your life; it may be its turning-point; and, as you choose the evil or the good, so may you be lost or saved in this world and in eternity.”

Tod muttered something about his not deserving to be judged so harshly.

“I judge you not harshly yet: I say that evil will come unless you flee from it,” said Mr. Brandon. “Don’t you care for yourself?—for your good name? Is it nothing to you whether you turn out a scamp or a gentleman?”

To look at Tod just then, it was a great deal.

“Have you any reverence for your father?—for the memory of your mother? Then you will do a little violence to your own inclinations, even though it be hard and difficult—more difficult than to get a double first; harder than having the best tooth in your head drawn—and take your leave of that lady for ever. For your own sake, Joe; for your own sake!”

Tod was pulling gently at his whiskers.

“Send all folly to the wind, Joseph Todhetley! Say to yourself, for God and myself will I strive henceforth! It only needs a little steady resolution; and you can call it up if you choose. You shall always find a friend in me. Write down on a bit of paper the sums you owe, and I’ll give you a cheque to cover them. Come, shake hands upon it.”

“You are very kind, sir,” gasped Tod, letting his hand meet old Brandon’s.

“I hope you will let me be kind. Why, lad, you should have had more spirit than to renew an acquaintanceship with a false girl; an adventurer, who has gone about the country stealing jewels.”

“Stealing jewels!” echoed Tod.

“Stealing jewels, lad. Did you never know it? She took Miss Deveen’s emeralds at Whitney Hall.”

“Oh, that was a mistake,” said Tod, cheerfully. “She explained it to me.”

“A mistake, was it! Explained it to you, did she! When?”

“At Oxford: before she had been here above a day or two. She introduced the subject herself, sir, saying she supposed I had heard something about it, and what an absurd piece of business the suspecting her was; altogether a mistake.”

“Ah, she’s a wily one, Joe,” said Mr. Brandon. “Johnny Ludlow could have told you whether it was a mistake or not. Why, boy, she stole the stones out of Miss Deveen’s own dressing-room, and went up to London the next day, or the next but one, and pledged them the same night at a pawnbroker’s, in a false name, and gave a false account of herself. Moreover, when it was brought home to her, she confessed all upon her knees to Miss Deveen, and sued for mercy.”

Tod looked from Mr. Brandon to me. At the time of the discovery, he had had a hint given him of the fact, with a view of more effectually weaning him from Sophie Chalk, but not the particulars.

“It’s true, Todhetley,” said Mr. Brandon, nodding his head. “You may judge, therefore, whether she is a nice kind of person for you to be seen beauing about Oxford streets in the face and eyes of the dons.” And Tod winced again, and bit his lips.

Mr. Brandon rose, taking both Tod’s hands in his, and said a few solemn words in the kindest tone I had ever heard him speak; wrung his hands, nodded good-night to me, and was gone. Tod walked about the room a bit, whistling softly to make a show of indifference, and looking miserably cut up.

“Is what he said true?” he asked me presently, stopping by the mantelpiece again: “about the emeralds?”

“Every word of it.”

“Then why on earth could you not open your mouth and tell me, Johnny Ludlow?”

“I thought you knew it. I’m sure you were told of it at the time. Had I brought up the matter again later, you’d have been fit to punch me into next week, Tod.”

“Let’s hear the details—shortly.”

I went over them all; shortly, as he said; but omitting none. Tod stood in silence, never once interrupting.

“Did the Whitneys know of this?”

“Anna did.”

“Anna!”

“Yes. Anna had suspected Sophie from the first. She saw her steal out of Miss Deveen’s room, and saw her sewing something into her stays at bed-time. But Anna kept it to herself until discovery had come.”

Tod could frown pretty well on ordinary occasions, but I never saw a frown like the one on his brow as he listened. And I thought—I thought—it was meant for Sophie Chalk.

“Lady Whitney, I expect, knows it all now, Tod. Perhaps Helen also. Old Brandon went over to the Hall to spend the day, and it was in consequence of what he heard from Lady Whitney and Miss Deveen that he came down here to look us up.”

“Meaning me,” said Tod. “Not us. Use right words, Johnny.”

“They did not know, you see, that Sophie Chalk was married. And they must have noticed that you cared for her.”

Tod made no comment. He just leaned against the shelf in silence. I was stacking my books.

“Good-night, Johnny,” he quietly said, without any appearance of resentment; and went into his room.

The next day was Palm Sunday. Tod lay in bed with a splitting headache, could not lift his head from the pillow, and his skin was as sallow as an old gander’s. “Glad to hear it,” said Mr. Brandon, when I told him; “it will give him a quiet day for reflection.”

A surprise awaited me that morning, and Mr. Brandon also. Miss Deveen was at Oxford, with Helen and Anna Whitney. They had arrived the evening before, and meant to stay and go up with Bill and with us. I did not tell Tod: in fact, he seemed too ill to be spoken to, his head covered with the bedclothes.

You can’t see many a finer sight than the Broad Walk presents on the evening of Palm Sunday. Every one promenades there, from the dean downwards. Our party went together: Miss Deveen, Helen, and Anna; Bill, I, and Mr. Brandon.

We were in the middle of the walk; and it was at its fullest, when Tod came up. He was better, but looked worn and ill. A flush of surprise came into his face when he saw who we had with us, and he shook hands with the ladies nearly in silence.

“Oxford has not mended your looks, Mr. Todhetley,” said Miss Deveen.

“I have one of my bad headaches to-day,” he answered. “I get them now and then.”

The group of us were turning to walk on, when in that moment there approached Sophie Chalk. Sophie in a glistening blue silk, and flowers, and jingling ornaments, and kid gloves. She was coming up to us as bold as brass with her fascinating smile, when she saw Miss Deveen, and stopped short. Miss Deveen passed on without notice of any kind; Helen really did not see her; Anna, always gentle and kind, slightly bowed. Even then Madam Sophie’s native impudence came to her aid. She saw they meant to shun her, and she nodded and smiled at Tod, and made as though she would stop him for a chat. He took off his cap to her, and went on. Anna’s delicate face had flushed, and his own was white enough for its coffin.

Miss Deveen held Tod’s hand in parting. “I am so glad to have met you again,” she cordially said; “we are all glad. We shall see you often, I hope, until we go up together. And all you young people are coming to me for a few days in the Easter holidays. Friends cannot afford too long absences from one another in this short life. Good-bye; and mind you get rid of your headache for to-morrow. There; shake hands with Helen and Anna.”

He did as he was bid. Helen was gay as usual; Anna rather shy. Her pretty blue eyes glanced up at Tod’s, and he smiled for the first time that day. Sophie Chalk might have fascinated three parts of his heart away, but there was a corner in it remaining for Anna Whitney.

I did not do it intentionally. Going into our room the next day, a sheet of paper with some writing on it lay on the table, the ink still wet. Supposing it was some message just left for me by Tod, I went up to read it, and caught the full sense of the lines.

“Dear Mrs. Everty,

“I have just received your note. I am sorry that I cannot drive you out to-day—and fear that I shall not be able to do so at all. Our friends, who are staying here, have to receive the best part of my leisure time.

“Faithfully yours,
“J. Todhetley.”