cherry-wood
pipe, and I don't like to see her taking risks. And it is a risk. He
looks beastly. And he has a beastly temper, a venomous temper. You
remember his row with Long Norton?"

"No; you always forget that I am a freshman."

"Ah, it was last winter. Of course. Well, you know the towpath along by
the river. There were several fellows going along it, Bellingham in
front, when they came on an old market-woman coming the other way. It
had been raining--you know what those fields are like when it has
rained--and the path ran between the river and a great puddle that was
nearly as broad. Well, what does this swine do but keep the path, and
push the old girl into the mud, where she and her marketings came to
terrible grief. It was a blackguard thing to do, and Long Norton, who is
as gentle a fellow as ever stepped, told him what he thought of it. One
word led to another, and it ended in Norton laying his stick across the
fellow's shoulders. There was the deuce of a fuss about it, and it's a
treat to see the way in which Bellingham looks at Norton when they meet
now. By Jove, Smith, it's nearly eleven o'clock!"

"No hurry. Light your pipe again."

"Not I. I'm supposed to be in training. Here I've been sitting gossiping
when I ought to have been safely tucked up. I'll borrow your skull, if
you can share it. Williams has had mine for a month. I'll take the
little bones of your ear, too, if you are sure you won't need them.
Thanks very much. Never mind a bag, I can carry them very well under my
arm. Good-night, my son, and take my tip as to your neighbour."

When Hastie, bearing his anatomical plunder, had clattered off down the
winding stair, Abercrombie Smith hurled his pipe into the wastepaper
basket, and drawing his chair nearer to the lamp, plunged into a
formidable green-covered volume, adorned with great coloured maps of
that strange internal kingdom of which we are the hapless and helpless
monarchs. Though a freshman at Oxford, the student was not so in
medicine, for he had worked for four years at Glasgow and at Berlin, and
this coming examination would place him finally as a member of his
profession. With his firm mouth, broad forehead, and clear-cut, somewhat
hard-featured face, he was a man who, if he had no brilliant talent, was
yet so dogged, so patient, and so strong that he might in the end
overtop a more showy genius. A man who can hold his own among Scotchmen
and North Germans is not a man to be easi