had lied to him, and lied so clumsily that it looked as
if he had desperate reasons for concealing the truth. Smith knew that
his neighbour had no dog. He knew, also, that the step which he had
heard upon the stairs was not the step of an animal. But if it were not,
then what could it be? There was old Styles's statement about the
something which used to pace the room at times when the owner was
absent. Could it be a woman? Smith rather inclined to the view. If so,
it would mean disgrace and expulsion to Bellingham if it were discovered
by the authorities, so that his anxiety and falsehoods might be
accounted for. And yet it was inconceivable that an undergraduate could
keep a woman in his rooms without being instantly detected. Be the
explanation what it might, there was something ugly about it, and Smith
determined, as he turned to his books, to discourage all further
attempts at intimacy on the part of his soft-spoken and ill-favoured
neighbour.

But his work was destined to interruption that night. He had hardly
caught up the broken threads when a firm, heavy footfall came three
steps at a time from below, and Hastie, in blazer and flannels, burst
into the room.

"Still at it!" said he, plumping down into his wonted arm-chair. "What a
chap you are to stew! I believe an earthquake might come and knock
Oxford into a cocked hat, and you would sit perfectly placid with your
books among the ruins. However, I won't bore you long. Three whiffs of
baccy, and I am off."

"What's the news, then?" asked Smith, cramming a plug of bird's-eye into
his briar with his forefinger.

"Nothing very much. Wilson made 70 for the freshmen against the eleven.
They say that they will play him instead of Buddicomb, for Buddicomb is
clean off colour. He used to be able to bowl a little, but it's nothing
but half-volleys and long hops now."

"Medium right," suggested Smith, with the intense gravity which comes
upon a 'varsity man when he speaks of athletics.

"Inclining to fast, with a work from leg. Comes with the arm about three
inches or so. He used to be nasty on a wet wicket. Oh, by-the-way, have
you heard about Long Norton?"

"What's that?"

"He's been attacked."

"Attacked?"

"Yes, just as he was turning out of the High Street, and within a
hundred yards of the gate of Old's."

"But who----"

"Ah, that's the rub! If you said 'what,' you would be more grammatical.
Norton swears that it was not human, and, indeed, from t