is a hard thing when they have to be achieved by a champion who is not
adventurous at all. If he had not given up his own judgment to Bielby's,
Maitland told himself he never would have plunged into philanthropic
enterprise, he never would have taken the _Hit or Miss_ he never would
have been entangled in the fortunes of Margaret Shields, and he would
not now be concerned with the death, in the snow, of a dissipated old
wanderer, nor obliged to hunt down a runaway or kidnapped school-girl.
Nor would he be suffering the keen and wearing anxiety of speculating on
what had befallen Margaret.

His fancy suggested the most gloomy yet plausible solutions of the
mystery of her disappearance. In spite of these reflections, Maitland's
confidence in the sagacity of his old tutor was unshaken. Bielby had not
been responsible for the details of the methods by which his pupil was
trying to expand his character. Lastly, he reflected that if he had not
taken Bielby's advice, and left Oxford, he never would have known Mrs.
St. John Deloraine, the lady of his diffident desires.

So the time passed, the minutes flitting by, like the telegraph posts,
in the dark, and Maitland reached the familiar Oxford Station. He jumped
into a hansom, and said, "Gatien's." Past Worcester, up Carfax, down the
High Street, they struggled through the snow; and at last Maitland got
out and kicked at the College gate. The porter (it was nearly midnight)
opened it with rather a scared face:

"Horful row on in quad, sir," he said. "The young gentlemen 'as a
bonfire on, and they're a larking with the snow. Orful A they're a
making, sir."

The agricultural operation thus indicated by the porter was being
forwarded with great vigor. A number of young men, in every variety of
garb (from ulsters to boating-coats), were energetically piling up a
huge Alp of snow against the door of the Master's lodge. Meanwhile,
another band had carried into the quad all the light tables and
cane chairs from a lecture-room. Having arranged these in a graceful
pyramidal form, they introduced some of the fire-lighters, called
"devils" by the College servants, and set a match to the whole.

Maitland stood for a moment in doubt, looking, in the lurid glare, very
like a magician who has raised an army of fiends, and cannot find work
for them. He felt no disposition to interfere, though the venerable mass
of St Ga-tien's seemed in momentary peril, and the noise was enough
to waken