he seemed to be doing so well when I was in."

"You were not there at the time. I thought at first they would
have sent him out of the schools at once."

"In his divinity, wasn't it?"

"Yes; he was asked to repeat one of the Articles, and didn't know
three words of it. From that moment I saw it was all over. The
examiner and he both lost their tempers, and it went from bad to
worse, till the examiner remarked that he could have answered one
of the questions he was asking when he was ten years old, and
Blake replied, so could he. They gave him a paper in divinity
afterwards, but you could see there was no chance for him."

"Poor fellow! what will he do, do you think? How will he take
it?"

"I can' tell. But I'm afraid it will be a very serious matter for
him. He was the ablest man in our year too. What a pity."

They got into St. Ambrose just as the bell for afternoon chapel
was going down, and went in. Blake was there, and one look showed
him what had happened. In fact he had expected nothing else all
day since his breakdown in the Articles. Tom couldn't help
watching him during chapel; and afterwards, on that evening,
acknowledged to a friend that whatever else you might think of
Blake, there was no doubt about his gameness.

After chapel he loitered outside the door in the quadrangle,
talking just as usual, and before hall he loitered on the steps
in well-feigned carelessness. Everybody else was thinking of his
breakdown; some with real sorrow and sympathy; others as of any
other nine days' wonder--pretty much as if the favourite for the
Derby had broken down; others with ill-concealed triumph, for
Blake had many enemies amongst the men. He himself was conscious
enough of what they were thinking, but maintained his easy, gay
manner through it all, though the effort it cost him was
tremendous. The only allusion he made to what had happened which
Tom heard was when he asked him to wine.

"Are you engaged to-night, Brown?" he said. Tom answered in the
negative. "Come to me, then" he went on. "You won't get another
chance in St. Ambrose. I have a few bottles of old wine left; we
may as well floor them; they won't bear moving to a hall with
their master."

And then he turned to some other men and asked them, everyone in
fact who he came across, especially the dominant fast set with
whom he had chiefly lived. These young gentlemen (of whom we had
a glimpse at the outset, but whose company we have carefully
av