chap,
eh, Jack?"

"Wathah," replied Jack, laughing.

Meanwhile Tom, glad enough to get out into the pure air, though in not
so desperate a case as the night before, shouldered his way among the
loitering company towards the door. He was just emerging into the
street, when the sound of voices arrested him.

"That's one of our men, isn't it?" said one.

"Why, so it is; I fancied he was anything but a festive blade. Yes; and
upon my word he's half seas over!"

Tom had no difficulty in discovering that these hurried words had
reference to him, and turning instinctively towards the voices, he found
himself face to face with two, reputedly, of the wildest of his fellow-
students.

Gladly would he have avoided them; gladly would he have shrunk back and
lost himself in the crowd, but it was too late now; he stood discovered.

"How are you?" cried one of the two, as he passed; "isn't your name
Drift?"

Tom stared as if he would have denied his name; but the next moment he
put on his lately acquired swagger, and said, "Yes."

"Ah! I thought so; one of the Saint Elizabeth men. Hullo! he's in a
hurry, though," added he, as Tom made a dive forward and strode rapidly
down the street.

It was but a step deeper. Well he knew that by to-morrow every one of
his fellow-students would know of him as a frequenter of that wretched
place. Well he knew that, as far as they were concerned, the mask of
shyness and reticence under which he had sheltered in their midst was
for ever pulled away. "One of us," indeed! So truly the very worst of
them might now speak and think of him. Oh, if he had but considered in
time; if he had but stemmed this flood at its source! But it was too
late now.

And he strode home reckless and hardened.

The next day, as he expected, every one seemed to know of his visits to
the music-hall. The two who had seen him accosted him with every show
of friendship and intelligence. He was appealed to in the presence of
nearly a dozen of his fellow-students as to the name of one of the low
songs there given; he was asked if he was going to be there to-night,
and he was invited to join this party and that in similar expeditions to
similar places. And to all these questions and greetings he was
constrained to reply in keeping with his assumed character of a gay
spark. How sick, how vile he felt; yet in that one day how hardened and
desperate he became!

It was not in Tom Drift to cry "I have sinned