rief, was obviously, at heart,
relieved to be rid of his nephew so easily. Poor Carfax! For so rubicund
and noisy a person he left strangely little mark upon the world. Within
a fortnight the college had nearly lost account of his existence. He
lent to Sannet Wood a sinister air that caused numberless undergraduates
to cycle out in that direction. Now and again, when conversation
flagged, some one revived the subject. But it was a horse that needed
much whipping to make it go. It had kicked with its violent hoof upon
the soft walls of Cambridge life. For a moment it had seemed that it
would force its way, but the impression had been of the slightest.

Even within the gates and courts of Saul's itself the impression that
Carfax had left faded with surprising swiftness into a melodramatic
memory. But nothing could have been more remarkable than the resolute
determination of these young men to push grim facts away. They were
not made--one could hear it so eloquently explained--for that kind of
tragedy. The autumn air, the furious exercise, the hissing kettles, the
decent and amiable discussions on Life reduced to the importance of a
Greek Accent--these things rejected violently the absurdity of Tragic
Crudity.

They were quite right, these young men. They paid their shining pounds
for the capture--conscious or not as it might be--of an atmosphere, a
delicate and gentle setting to the crudity of their later life. Carfax,
when alive, had blundered into coarse disaster but had blundered in back
streets. Now the manner of his death painted him in shrieking colours.
The harmony was disturbed, therefore he must go.

Of more importance to this world of Saul's was the strange revival--as
though from the dead--of Olva Dune. They had been prepared, many of
them, for some odd development, but this perfectly normal, healthy
interest in the affairs of the College was the last thing that his
grave, romantic air could ever have led any one to expect. His football
in the first place opened wide avenues of speculation. First there had
been the College game, then there had been the University match against
the Harlequins, and it was, admittedly, a very long time since any
one had seen anything like it. He had seemed, in that game against the
Harlequins, to possess every virtue that should belong to the ideal
three-quarter--pace, swerve, tackle, and through them all the steady
working of the brain. Nevertheless those earlier games were yet