r if I can't leave school after this term."

"And then what would you do?"

"Oh, I don't know. I could settle when I'd left."

"What about Oxford?"

"Well, I could go to Oxford later on."

"I don't think you could quite so easily as you think. Anyway, you'd
much better go to Oxford straight from school."

"Eight more terms before I leave. Phew!" Michael groaned. "It's such a
terrible waste of time, and I know Oxford's ripping."

"Perhaps something will come along to interest you. And always, dear
boy, don't forget you have your religion."

"Yes, I know," said Michael. "But at the Abbey I met some people who
were supposed to be religious, and they were pretty good rotters."

The priest looked at him and seemed inclined to let Michael elaborate
this topic, but almost immediately he dismissed it with a commonplace.

"Oh, well," Michael sighed, "I suppose something will happen soon to
buck me up. I hope so. Perhaps the Kensitites will start making rows in
churches again," he went on hopefully. "Will you lend me the Apocryphal
Gospels? We're going to have a discussion about them at the De Rebus
Ecclesiasticis."

"Oh, the society hasn't broken up?" enquired Mr. Viner.

"Rather not. Only everybody's changed rather. Chator's become
frightfully Roman. He was Sarum last term, and he thinks I'm frightfully
heretical, only of course I say a lot I don't mean just to rag him. I
say, by the way, who wrote 'In a Garden'?"

"It sounds a very general title," commented Mr. Viner, with a smile.

"Well, it's some poem or other."

"Swinburne wrote a poem in the Second Series of Poems and Ballads called
'A Forsaken Garden.' Is that what you mean?"

"Perhaps. Is it a famous poem?"

"Yes, I should say it was distinctly."

"Well, that must be it. Cray tried to be funny about it to-day in form,
and said to me, 'Good heavens, haven't you read "In a Garden"?' And I
said I'd never heard of it. And then he said in his funny way to the
class, 'I suppose you've all read it.' And none of them had, which made
him look rather an ass. So he said we'd better read it by next week."

"I can lend you my Swinburne. Only take care of it," said Mr. Viner.
"It's a wonderful poem."

_In a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,_
_At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,_
_Walled round with rocks as an inland island,_
_The ghost of a garden fronts the sea._

"I say," exclaimed Michael eagerly, "I never k