ties he managed to
rub on from year to year somehow, getting about five hundred per annum in
solid value out of an income of seven, and adding a little annually to
the rolling mass of debt which he had begun to accumulate while he was at
Balliol.

"Why, Jack," cried Gilbert, starting up from his reverie at the entrance
of his friend, and greeting him with a hearty handshaking, "this is an
agreeable surprise! I was asking for you at the Pnyx last night, and Joe
Hawdon told me you were away--up the Danube he thought, on a canoe
expedition."

"It is only under some utterly impossible dispensation that Joseph Hawdon
will ever be right about anything. I have been on a walking expedition in
Brittany, dear boy, alone, and have found myself very bad company. I
started soon after you went to your sister's, and only came back last
night. That scoundrel Levison promised me seventy-five this afternoon;
but whether I shall get it out of him is a fact only known to himself and
the powers with which he holds communion. And was the rustic business
pleasant, Gil? Did you take kindly to the syllabubs and new milk, the
summer sunrise over dewy fields, the pretty dairy-maids, and prize pigs,
and daily inspections of the home-farm? or did you find life rather dull
down at Lidford? I know the place well enough, and all the country round
about there. I have stayed at Heatherly with Sir David Forster more than
once for the shooting season. A pleasant fellow Forster, in a dissipated
good-for-nothing kind of way, always up to his eyes in debt. Did you
happen to meet him while you were down there?"

"No, I don't think the Listers know him."

"So much the better for them! It is a vice to know him. And you were not
dull at Lidford?"

"Very far from it, Jack. I was happier there than I have ever been in my
life before."

"Eh, Gil!" cried John Saltram; "that means something more than a quiet
fortnight with a married sister. Come, old fellow, I have a vested right
to a share in all your secrets."

"There is no secret, Jack. Yes, I have fallen in love, if that's what you
mean, and am engaged."

"So soon! That's rather quick work, isn't it, dear boy?"

"I don't think so. What is that the poet says?--'If not an Adam at his
birth, he is no love at all.' My passion sprang into life full-grown
after an hour's contemplation of a beautiful face in Lidford church."

"Who is the lady?"

"O, her position is not worth speaking of. She is the adopted