men and of protestations as to the improvement
in social manners and customs since his day, when there could
have been no such meeting, he declared, without blackguardism and
drunkenness, at least among young officers; but then they had
less to think of than Oxford men, no proper education. And so the
Captain was evidently traveling back into the great trireme
question when they reached the gate. As they could go no farther
with him, however, he had to carry away his solution of the
three-banks-of-oars difficulty in his own bosom to the "Mitre".

"Don't let us go in," said Tom, as the gate closed on the
Captain, and they turned back into the quadrangle, "let us take a
turn or two;" so they walked up and down the inner quad in the
starlight.

Just at first they were a good deal embarrassed and confused; but
before long, though not without putting considerable force on
himself, Tom got back into something like his old familiar way of
unbosoming himself to his re-found friend, and Hardy showed more
than his old anxiety to meet him half-way. His ready and
undisguised sympathy soon dispersed the remaining clouds which
were still hanging between them; and Tom found it almost a
pleasure, instead of a dreary task, as he had anticipated, to
make a full confession, and state the case clearly and strongly
against himself to one who claimed neither by word nor look the
least superiority over him, and never seemed to remember that he
himself had been ill-treated in the matter.

"He had such a chance of lecturing me, and didn't do it," thought
Tom afterwards, when he was considering why he felt so very
grateful to Hardy. "It was so cunning of him, too. If he had
begun lecturing, I should have begun to defend myself, and never
have felt half such a scamp as I did when I was telling it all
out to him in my own way."

The result of Hardy's management was that Tom made a clean breast
of it, telling everything down to his night at the ragged school;
and what an effect his chance-opening of the "Apology" had had on
him. Here for the first time Hardy came in with his usual dry,
keen voice. "You needn't have gone so far back as Plato for that
lesson."

"I don't understand," said Tom.

"Well, there's something about an indwelling spirit which guideth
every man, in St. Paul, isn't there?"

"Yes, a great deal," Tom answered, after a pause; "but it isn't
the same thing."

"Why not the same thing?"

"Oh, surely you must feel it. It