e groves nothing is more eloquent of that
scrupulous historic economy whereby his own particular past is utilised
as the general present and future. "All's as it was, all's as it will
be," says Great Tom; and that is what he stubbornly said on the evening
I here record.

Stroke by measured and leisured stroke, the old euphonious clangour
pervaded Oxford, spreading out over the meadows, along the river,
audible in Iffley. But to the dim groups gathering and dispersing on
either bank, and to the silent workers in the boats, the bell's message
came softened, equivocal; came as a requiem for these dead.

Over the closed gates of Iffley lock, the water gushed down, eager for
the sacrament of the sea. Among the supine in the field hard by, there
was one whose breast bore a faint-gleaming star. And bending over him,
looking down at him with much love and pity in her eyes, was the shade
of Nellie O'Mora, that "fairest witch," to whose memory he had to-day
atoned.

And yonder, "sitting upon the river-bank o'ergrown," with questioning
eyes, was another shade, more habituated to these haunts--the shade
known so well to bathers "in the abandoned lasher," and to dancers
"around the Fyfield elm in May." At the bell's final stroke, the Scholar
Gipsy rose, letting fall on the water his gathered wild-flowers, and
passed towards Cumnor.

And now, duly, throughout Oxford, the gates of the Colleges were closed,
and closed were the doors of the lodging-houses. Every night, for many
years, at this hour precisely, Mrs. Batch had come out from her kitchen,
to turn the key in the front-door. The function had long ago become
automatic. To-night, however, it was the cue for further tears. These
did not cease at her return to the kitchen, where she had gathered
about her some sympathetic neighbours--women of her own age and
kind, capacious of tragedy; women who might be relied on; founts of
ejaculation, wells of surmise, downpours of remembered premonitions.

With his elbows on the kitchen table, and his knuckles to his brow, sat
Clarence, intent on belated "prep." Even an eye-witness of disaster may
pall if he repeat his story too often. Clarence had noted in the last
recital that he was losing his hold on his audience. So now he sat
committing to memory the names of the cantons of Switzerland, and waving
aside with a harsh gesture such questions as were still put to him by
the women.

Katie had sought refuge in the need for "putting the g