keeping up a good understanding with the man he was talking to.

Not another word was spoken till they reached the College gates, where Dick not only assisted his companion to descend from his high perch, but carried his politeness so far as to offer him an arm across the quadrangle-an attention which the other would have gladly dispensed with had he not discovered that his ankle had grown so abominably stiff that walking alone was a practical impossibility. And in the course of this progress they might have run full tilt against the Bursar on his way to the hall, if that gentleman, after convincing himself by the aid of his spectacles that the unexpected vision which seemed to greet his eyes was really and truly no optical delusion, had not decided that one good Samaritan at a time was quite sufficient, and so wisely elected to pass by on the other side.

"Bursar, wasn't it?" inquired Lewis suspiciously, as Dick assisted him into his room; and receiving an answer in the affirmative, he simply ejaculated, "Odd man, very-blind too, that's a comfort."

"Shall I call your scout for you, sir?" inquired Dick, having helped the crippled man into an arm-chair.

"No,-yes, I mean. Thank you. Good night."

"Well, you are a rum old beggar," thought Dick, as he made his way to his own rooms; "I don't believe you are the least bit grateful." And he continued to entertain this opinion until such a time when, on the last Wednesday of the term, he met the Bursar at dinner in King Edward Street. The Bursar himself had in the interim applied to M'Gregor for an explanation of the strange incident he had witnessed, and had been rather astonished to discover that Tom was even more in the dark than himself, having never heard one single word from Dick Loder on the matter.

"But why didn't you ask Lewis?" inquired Tom.

"You don't know him quite so well as I do, young man, or you wouldn't ask that question. But Lewis is all right,"

and he winked mysteriously; "he does not say much, but he thinks, and when he does speak he sometimes speaks to some purpose. You weren't in Common-room last night?"

"No, I was dining in Corpus."

"Well, I am going to dine with you to-night to meet that boy."

"Yes; we'll have it all out of him, too."

"We will do nothing of the kind. You leave him to me this once, Master Tom. Shy pair of fellows in their different

ways both of them."

The dinner in King Edward Street went off with great éclat, but no allusion of any kind was made to Dick's late adventures. But that young gentleman, though at first rather awed into silence by the Bursar's presence, presently awaking to the fact that the latter was doing his very best to show that he took a friendly interest in him and to entice him to join in the conversation, gradually thawed and enjoyed his evening vastly.

"They tell me that you are a great cricketer, Loder. I hope we are to see you playing in the University team," the Bursar presently observed.

"I doubt if I am quite good enough for that, sir," said Dick, blushing, "but I hope they will give me a try in the Parks. Do you often go to watch the matches?"

"Not once in a blue moon," confessed the Bursar; “but if you do get your colours, I will undertake to go to Lord's and see you play there. It will be quite a new departure for St Hilary's to have a man in the eleven again."

And when the party broke up the Bursar walked back to College with the young undergraduate, and, rather to the latter's surprise, asked for an arm upstairs.

"Not the first time you have helped a lame duck upstairs, eh, Mr Loder?"

The question came so suddenly just as they reached the Bursar's room that Dick positively started.

"No, not quite," he stammered.

"Come inside for a moment," said the Bursar, as he opened the door of his room; "even here walls may have ears. And now, Mr Loder," he went on very gravely, "please imagine yourself for a minute in the palace of truth, and tell me why you never mentioned what happened between yourself and Mr Lewis the other day to M'Gregor."

"Well, sir," confesssd Dick, looking rather confused, "there wasn't much to tell, after all; and besides, I didn't think that Mr Lewis seemed very-very

"Gracious' or 'grateful,' which, or both?" and the Bursar felt distinctly well pleased as he supplied the missing wordspleased that he had correctly divined the reason of Dick's silence. And then he went on to deliver a short lecture.

"Don't think, then, it is a bad habit. Quite right not to tell Tom M'Gregor, as you did think that. But you were wrong in your judgments, young man. Mr Lewis is rather like another person I know, who does not say quite everything straight out. But now as you have told me one thing, I will tell you another, which is not to go any further, mind; Mr Lewis has got a tongue in his head after all, and he did speak up for you very strongly a day or two ago—so now, good night."

Nothwithstanding that he had enjoined silence on Dick Loder himself, the Bursar gave himself the pleasure of recounting to Tom M'Gregor a few hours later the manner in which Lewis, having hobbled to the Common - room after dinner, and being appealed to by Carr to indorse the latter's statement that "young Loder was an insolent young ruffian," had then and there in the Bursar's presence, metaphorically speaking, fallen upon Carr tooth and nail and rent him asunder. The Bursar even quoted with much gusto Lewis's peroration.

"Get a first-class in manners, sir, without your assistance. Formed his idea of your classics, sir, from your manners, sir, I fancy; left your lectures, and quite right too. Look at home, sir, look at home when you talk of manners."

"I won't deny," said the Bursar in conclusion, "that our

worthy Lewis is a bit of a Goth himself; but his heart is in the right place, if his manners are not. And it is because his manners are Gothic, my good Tom, that our young friend chose to hold his tongue. Nice lad that, Tom, and sensible for all he is young. I like him, and so does Lewis."

Thus it came to pass that at the end of that term the young scholar of St Hilary's, as he shook the dust of Oxford from his feet, left behind him in more quarters than one a distinctly favourable impression.

182

CHAPTER XIII.

MAY TERM.

THE first Wednesday of the May term was a typical May day -typical, that is, of what a May day generally is at Oxford, as well as elsewhere, bright sun, cutting wind, clouds of dust, and generally uncomfortable. In the afternoon Dick Loder, in preparation for the Seniors' match, had been dutifully practising at a net, and, rather to his amusement, M'Gregor had accompanied him, and had not only engaged a professional on his own account, but, equally to the surprise. of Dick Loder and the professional himself, had after the first few minutes hit nearly every ball sent down to him with a fairly straight bat and unmistakable vigour.

"Why, I had no idea you could bat like that," exclaimed Dick, who, having taken off his own pads, was standing behind M'Gregor's net, and had just seen the professional throw himself flat on his face as the simplest way of escaping destruction from a terribly hot return.

"Because you were an unbelieving young Jew," retorted Tom. "There, that's enough, thank you," to the professional, who had picked himself up and was wiping his knees. "Why didn't you catch it?"

"Only too glad as she didn't catch me, sir," answered the man, grinning. "You do hit 'em hard and no mistake. My! how she 'ummed!"