world to Stokes. Come then, out with it: what can I do for Stokes?"

It seemed from what Dick had to say that Stokes had taken so kindly to the work which Fox had given him, and had found so much favour in the old keeper's eyes, that only a little encouragement was wanting to induce the latter to offer Dick's protégé a regular place on the staff. And Stokes, taking Dick into his confidence, had informed him that a permanent billet on the Mote estate with a nice little cottage up in the woods would suit him much better than his present more highly paid but more precarious employment.

"You see, Master Dick," the man had said in his own uncultured way, "for all the life is rough at our job, wages is wages when they comes along regular. But you give a chap a month's frost or a fall of snow so as them plaguy works stops a-working, and you don't have no buzzer nor no nothing not for weeks together, and then Harry Stokes and them as Harry Stokes did ought to find for-well, their bellies has to go empty. If it hadn't been along of you, Master Dick, and that other gentleman as calls himself a lawyer-not as there ain't more gentleman than lawyer about him-I don't know how I'd have made a shift to get along at all."

The substance of all this Dick now put so plainly before Ferrier that the latter, after laughingly assuring him that his own fortune was assured if he only made up his mind to go to the Bar, undertook to speak a word in season to Fox, or if occasion arose to Lord Leuchars himself.

Two days later Dick received a pencilled note from Ferrier which the latter had despatched by a special messenger from Westhampton Station:

"By means of a little judicious flattery coupled with slight justifiable bribery the man you wrote of has received his commission, and will, I trust, do credit to your patronage. But why not speak for yourself, John, and give your willing horse a more pleasurable opportunity ?-L. F."

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CHAPTER VIII.

IN COLLEGE.

RATHER more than a year later, on a February night some three weeks after the commencement of the Easter term, four men were standing round the fireplace of a ground-floor room in the back quad of St Hilary's. That the party was proposing to break up might be augured from the fact that they had just risen from the chairs, and that the hands of the clock were pointing to midnight, while a table strewed with a jumble of cards, which a fifth man, the host for the evening, was leisurely sorting, showed the nature of their late occupation.

"Just like you, Chettie," exclaimed the card-sorter, "to go and throw the packs into a heap. It would serve you right to make you sort them yourself, you old nuisance, you."

"You would have done the same, old boy, if you had been looed the one fiver of the evening, and then played for your own loo with ace queen, and only taken back a bally sovereign."

The speaker was a blue-eyed and curly-headed youth with a distinctly good face, a face generally beaming with smiles, but now for the moment wearing a look of slight irritation,— not by any means the face of a typical or successful gambler, for the simple reason that it was over-full of expression, and that it was easy for any one who studied it to gather a fairly accurate idea of the class of hand which the owner of the face was holding.

Perhaps I should, and perhaps I shouldn't; but bother you all the same, Chettie," and Dick Loder glanced at the clock as he put away the cards which he had finished sorting in a drawer.

"And bother you too, Dick," exclaimed another member of the party, a tall, dark-haired, and beetle-browed man, who looked a year or two older than the rest of the company. "What the dickens do you want to interrupt our game for, just as it was getting interesting too, with your confounded conscientious scruples?"

"Hold hard, Sadler, old fellow," struck in a fourth man who had not yet spoken; a man's house is his castle, and I suppose his rooms are his castle too, and the conscience clause is sound enough as far as it goes. If Dick Loder has got his scruples, let him have them and keep them for all I care. I used to draw the line myself at playing cards on a Sunday myself once, and—well, anyhow, let a fellow do what he likes in his own rooms, I say."

"Oh, that is what you think, is it, Wood? Well, I am sure that every one is much obliged to you for giving us the benefit of such a learned and such an original opinion," began Sadler in a sneering voice; but seeing that he was in a minority, he suddenly changed his tone, and with a bad grace partially conceded the point in question. "Well, after all, scruples are all right, I suppose. If a man has scruples he is welcome to them for all I care, as long as he does not expect me to have them too. But it is the time I am thinking of; I don't consider that Sunday morning begins till-well, till I get up."

At this somewhat tame conclusion Chetwynde burst out laughing.

"Oh, then, you would make Sunday a sort of movable feast or fast, to commence at whatever hour of the day the great John Sadler chooses to get out of bed? And pray may I ask at what hour the day would end?-at such time, I suppose, as your potency might elect to seek the downy again."

66

Hall-time, of course, and then we could make a night of

it," answered Sadler. "Well, as it is decreed that there is to be no more loo, I may as well be jogging. Coming my way, Wood Coming, Emden?"

"Well, yes, it's about time to turn in," said the person last addressed. "Who is the winner to-night, by the way?"

"Loder, of course, toujours Loder; that is why the beggar was so keen to stop."

"Think so, Sadler, do you?" and Dick looked up sharply from a book which he had just taken in his hand. "Well, you are quite welcome to think so if you like. But am I a winner? I didn't know it if I am. Yes, by Jove!" turning out the contents of his pocket and putting the money on the table. "I have won-let me see what-the very large sum of fiveno, four shillings. I had four sovereigns and a fiver and a shilling, and now I have got the four sovereigns and five shillings and—well, not the fiver exactly, but an IOU of Chettie's, pretty much the same thing."

For the instant Chetwynde looked rather disconsolate, then he laughed and said

“Well, I'm glad that you are satisfied, Dick. But I have not got your fiver anyhow, old chap. I have got that one blessed sovereign, and two or three odd shillings, and I've lost three thick 'uns of ready and that five pounds to you." "Ah, well, a stray fiver then has gone into somebody's pocket at all events," observed Dick. "I wonder if it has gone into yours by any chance, Sadler? I take it that you are the real winner after all."

"Perhaps I am, but I really hardly know: I don't pretend to keep a very exact account."

"Possibly that is the reason why your statements as to other people's winnings and losings are not very exact either," murmured Chetwynde. "One way or another I seem to have lost as near forty pounds as thirty in three weeks, and I suppose that some one has won it, but I doubt whether it is Dick Loder."

"I can soon tell you," said Dick, who had been totting up

a few figures in a small pocket-book; "my accounts standpro, twenty-seven pounds and half-a-crown; con, twenty-four, fifteen. So I don't come out a loser on the term at all events, though I have not got quite so much ready as I started with."

"Talking of ready," put in Sadler, "I see that I have got fifteen ten of your paper, Master Chetwynde. I suppose that cannot quite be called ready, can it? I think I had better put it up to auction and realise."

Chetwynde coloured and was about to make an angry reply, when Dick Loder interposed

"I should not bother to do that, if I were you, Sadler. I am quite ready to take it off your hands; so pass it over and I will give you a cheque, which you can convert into ready on Monday."

This direct acceptance of his challenge rather took Sadler aback. He had known all along as well as every other man in the room that, barring accidents, Chetwynde's paper was safe enough. Now and again that young gentleman might temporarily outrun the constable, but it was notorious that he always paid up in the long-run; and if an open winter had for the time being crippled his resources by costing him more than usual in the way of horse-flesh during the vacation, the 25th of March was looming in the distance, when every penny that he owed would be paid without a regret and without a

murmur.

Having then fired off an unpleasant speech by way of punishing Chetwynde for his unnecessary remarks on the matter of inaccuracy of accounts, Sadler felt that he had only succeeded in putting himself, instead of the original offender, into an awkward position, and a self-created awkward position. is of all the most unsatisfactory and the most difficult to abandon.

"Oh, I was only rotting," he said with some confusion; "you need not jump down a fellow's throat like that, Loder." "But I have written the cheque," replied Dick, without taking any notice of the last remark. "There," as he blotted