the dead, let alone the Bursar of Oriel. But Maitland was a
non-resident Fellow, known only to the undergraduates, where he was
known at all, as a "Radical," with any number of decorative epithets,
according to the taste and fancy of the speaker. He did not think he
could identify any of the rioters, and he was not certain that they
would not carry him to his room, and there screw him up, according to
precedent. Maitland had too much sense of personal dignity to face
the idea of owing his escape from his chambers to the resources of
civilization at the command of the college blacksmith. He, therefore,
after a moment of irresolution, stole off under a low-browed old
door-way communicating with a queer black many-sided little quadrangle;
for it is by no means necessary that a quadrangle should, in this least
mathematical of universities, be quadrangular. Groping and stumbling his
familiar way up the darkest of spiral staircases, Maitland missed his
footing, and fell, with the whole weight of his body, against the door
at which he had meant to knock.

"Come in," said a gruff voice, as if the knocking had been done in the
most conventional manner.

Maitland had come in by this time, and found the distinguished Mr.
Bielby, Fellow of St. Gatien's, sitting by his fireside, attired in a
gray shooting-coat, and busy with a book and a pipe. This gentleman had,
on taking his degree, gone to town, and practised with singular success
at the Chancery Bar. But on some sudden disgust or disappointment, he
threw up his practice, returned to College, and there lived a retired
life among his "brown Greek manuscripts." He was a man of the world,
turned hermit, and the first of the kind whom Maitland had ever known.
He had "coached" Maitland, though he usually took no pupils, and
remained his friend and counsellor.

"How are you, Maitland?" said the student, without rising. "I thought,
from the way in which you knocked, that you were some of the young men,
coming to 'draw me,' as I think they call it."

Mr. Bielby smiled as he spoke. He knew that the undergraduates were as
likely to "draw" him as boys who hunt a hare are likely to draw a fierce
old bear that "dwells among bones and blood."

Mr. Bielby's own environment, to be sure, was not of the grisly and
mortuary character thus energetically described by the poet His pipe was
in his hand. His broad, bald, red face, ending in an auburn spade-shaped
beard, wore the air of content. Aro