had been a rowdy
undergraduate of Brasenose College, Oxford; in his third year of
residence, with more than a fair prospect of being ploughed--or, in the
language of that generation, "plucked"--at the end of it; a member of
the Phoenix Wine Club, owner of a brute which he not only called a
"hunter" but made to do duty for one at least twice a week; and debtor
among various Oxford tradesmen to the tune of something like 500 pounds.
At this point his father--a Berkshire rector--died suddenly of a
paralytic stroke, leaving Jack and his elder brother Lionel (then abroad
in the new Indian Civil Service) to realise and divide an estate of 1200
pounds.

Six hundred pounds is a fair equipment for starting a young man in life;
but not when he already owes five hundred, and has few brains, no
decided bent, and only a little of the most useless learning.
Jack surrendered two-thirds of his patrimony to his pressing creditors,
sold his hunter, read hard for a term, scrambled into his degree, and
was received, a month or two later, into Holy Orders. His father had
sent him to Brasenose College as a step to this, and Jack had looked
forward to being a parson some day--a sporting parson, be it understood.

For the moment, however, he was almost penniless; and he had answered in
vain some dozen advertisements of curacies, when a college friend came
to the rescue and prevailed on a distant kinsman to offer him the living
of Langona, with a net annual stipend of 51 pounds eighteen shillings
and sixpence. There are such "livings."

It was offered, of course, and accepted, merely as a stopgap.
But twenty-five years had passed, and at Langona Parson Flood remained.
It had cost him twenty of these to wipe off his Oxford debts, with
interest; but he had managed to retain the small remnant of his capital,
and this with his benefice yielded an income better than a day
labourer's. That he was still a bachelor goes without saying.
In the summer he fished; in the winter he followed, afoot, a pack of
harriers kept by his patron, Sir Harry Vyell of Carwithiel. These were
his recreations. He could not afford to travel, and cared little for
reading. His library consisted of his Bible, two or three small
Divinity Handbooks, a _Pickwick, Stonehenge on the Dog_, and a couple of
"Handley Cross" novels, with coloured illustrations by John Leech.
Twice a year or thereabouts a letter reached him from his brother in
Calcutta, who was apparently prosp