ly set back. Smith had left a
name at Glasgow and at Berlin, and he was bent now upon doing as much at
Oxford, if hard work and devotion could accomplish it.

He had sat reading for about an hour, and the hands of the noisy
carriage clock upon the side table were rapidly closing together upon
the twelve, when a sudden sound fell upon the student's ear--a sharp,
rather shrill sound, like the hissing intake of a man's breath who gasps
under some strong emotion. Smith laid down his book and slanted his ear
to listen. There was no one on either side or above him, so that the
interruption came certainly from the neighbour beneath--the same
neighbour of whom Hastie had given so unsavory an account. Smith knew
him only as a flabby, pale-faced man of silent and studious habits, a
man whose lamp threw a golden bar from the old turret even after he had
extinguished his own. This community in lateness had formed a certain
silent bond between them. It was soothing to Smith when the hours stole
on towards dawning to feel that there was another so close who set as
small a value upon his sleep as he did. Even now, as his thoughts turned
towards him, Smith's feelings were kindly. Hastie was a good fellow, but
he was rough, strong-fibred, with no imagination or sympathy. He could
not tolerate departures from what he looked upon as the model type of
manliness. If a man could not be measured by a public-school standard,
then he was beyond the pale with Hastie. Like so many who are themselves
robust, he was apt to confuse the constitution with the character, to
ascribe to want of principle what was really a want of circulation.
Smith, with his stronger mind, knew his friend's habit, and made
allowance for it now as his thoughts turned towards the man beneath him.

There was no return of the singular sound, and Smith was about to turn
to his work once more, when suddenly there broke out in the silence of
the night a hoarse cry, a positive scream--the call of a man who is
moved and shaken beyond all control. Smith sprang out of his chair and
dropped his book. He was a man of fairly firm fibre, but there was
something in this sudden, uncontrollable shriek of horror which chilled
his blood and pringled in his skin. Coming in such a place and at such
an hour, it brought a thousand fantastic possibilities into his head.
Should he rush down, or was it better to wait? He had all the national
hatred of making a scene, and he knew so little of his n