pretty much the same way. Well, the old captain married a Spanish girl.
I have seen her portrait, and she was a beauty, a `high-bred Spanish
lady,' sure enough. Lived somewhere in the islands. Came home with the
Captain, and died in Halifax, leaving her seven year old boy in charge
of an aunt. Father died soon afterwards. Grief, I believe, and drink.
Even then his people called the 'the little Don.' He had a little money
left him to start with, but that has long since vanished. At any rate,
for the last five or six years he has had to fend for himself."

"Quite a romance," said Lloyd.

"Isn't it?" exclaimed Betty. "And he never told a word."

"Well, The Don's not a publisher."

"But then he told you."

"Yes, he told me and Shock one night. He likes us, you see."

"'De gustibus non disputandum,'" murmured Lloyd, and in answer to
Betty's inquiring look added, "as the old woman said when she kissed
her cow."

"Now then, what about Shock's name?" continued Betty.

"Hair," said Brown laconically. "You have seen him come out of a
scrimmage like a crab?"

"Yes. Isn't he just lovely then?" exclaimed Betty.

"Lovely? Oh, woman, woman! A ghastly, bloody, fearsome spectacle.
Lovely! But it was ever thus. 'Butchered to make a Roman holiday,'"
replied Lloyd.

"Well, he is rather bloody. Bleeds easily, you; know, but it doesn't
hurt at all," said Brown. "He never really enjoys himself till the
blood flows."

"Disgusting old Berserker!" exclaimed Lloyd.

"But I think he is just a dear," went on Betty enthusiastically. "The
way he puts his head right down into a crowd of men, and lets them jump
on him and maul him!"

"Yes," replied her sister, who had taken little part in the
conversation, "and comes out smiling. That is what I like."

"And bloody," added Lloyd. "That's what Miss Betty likes."

"I want to know about him," cried Betty impatiently. "Why don't we get
to know him? Tell me about him," she insisted. "Where does he live? Who
are his people?"

Brown hesitated.

"Well, you see, Shock's shy. Does not go in for the sort of thing that
Lloyd, for instance, revels and glitters in--teas, functions, social
routs, and all that, you know. He has only his mother, a dear old
Highland lady, poor, proud, and independent. She lives in a quaint
little house out on the Commons away behind the college, and lives for,
in, with, by, and around Shock, and he vice versa. He shares everything
with her, his work down in the m