the sound of cab-wheels rattling over the distant streets.
The undergraduates were coming up for a fresh term. He had heard the
sound a hundred times, almost; and it did not concern him. He had no
lectures to prepare.

Another hour passed, and another. The noise of the cabs had died out,
and over him was creeping a sick fear, a certainty, that he could not
write a word. The subject was too immense. He had given his life to
Athenaeus, and now Athenaeus was a monster that one man's life and
knowledge would not suffice for. Having withheld his pen till he might
write adequately, he awoke to find that writing was impossible.
A horror took him as he pushed back his chair among the litter of
note-books, and, stepping to the window, threw the sash open.

Many stars were shining; and between them and the sleeping garden echoed
the clamour of a distant supper-party. He heard no words, only the
noise; but it filled his brain with a sense of the many thousand
supper-parties that the garden had listened to, of the generations that
had come and gone since his own first term, of the boys who had grown
into men while he was working at Athenaeus--always Athenaeus.
His forehead was burning, and as he pushed his hand across it, he seemed
to read in the darkness under the laburnum-tree, "_Jesus have mercy on
Miles Tonken, Fellow. Anno 1545," and found a new meaning--an irony--in
the words.

Then, because more and more the task of his life became a hopeless
weight, he gave a look at his notebooks and escaped out of the room,
downstairs into the fresh air of the quad, and across it towards the
porter's lodge. He found the porter napping, and, having a private key,
he let himself through the big gate and out into the street. No soul
was abroad: only the gas-lamps threw queer shadows of him on the
pavement, and the night-breeze struck coldly into him as he hurried
along, hating whatever he saw.

Soon, under a window in St. Giles's, he pulled up. There was a party of
young men inside--perhaps the same supper-party whose voices he had
heard just now. The light from the room flared across the street; but
by keeping close under the sill he stood in darkness, and he paused,
listening eagerly. Above, they were singing a chorus, noted in those
days--

It was pale dawn, and the sun was touching St. Mary's spire into flame
when the heavy-eyed porter heard a key turn in the wicket. It was the
Senior Fellow, and in about half an ho