et in frost. Michael, however, found in Venner's office, just
as he had found in that old print of St. Mary's tower rather than in the
tower itself, the innermost shrine of Oxford, the profoundest revelation
of the shining truth round which the mysterious material of Oxford had
grown through the Middle Ages.

Michael with others of his year had during the summer term ventured
several times into Venner's, but the entrance of even a comparatively
obscure senior had always driven them out. They had not yet enjoyed the
atmosphere of security without which a club unlike an orchard never
tastes sweet. Now, with the presence of a new year's freshmen and with
the lordship of the college in their own hands, since to the
out-of-college men age with merciless finger seemed already to be
beckoning, Michael and his contemporaries in their pride of prime
marched into Venner's after hall and drank their coffee.

Venner's office was one of the small ground-floor rooms in Cloisters,
but it had long ago been converted to the present use. An inner
storeroom, to which Venner always retired to make a cup of squash or to
open a bottle of whisky, had once been the bedroom. The office itself
was not luxuriously furnished, and the accommodation was small. A
window-seat with a view of the college kitchens, a square table, and a
couple of Windsor chairs were considered enough for the men who
frequented Venner's every night after hall, and who on Sunday nights
after wine in J.C.R. clustered there like a swarm of bees. Venner's own
high chair stood far back in the corner behind his high sloping desk on
which, always spread open, lay the great ledger of J.C.R. accounts. On
the shelves above were the account books of bygone years in which were
indelibly recorded the extravagances of more than thirty years of St.
Mary's men. Over the fireplace was a gilt mirror of Victorian design
stuck round with the fixture cards of the university and the college,
with notices of grinds and musical clubs and debating societies; in
fact, with all the printed petty news of Oxford. A few photographs of
winning crews, a book-case with stores of college stationery, a
Chippendale sideboard with a glass case of priced cigars on top, and an
interesting drawerful of Venner's relics above the varnished wainscot
completed the furniture. The wall-paper was of that indefinite brownish
yellow which one finds in the rooms of old-fashioned solicitors, and of
that curious oily text