k you
had better think no more about the young lady, and say nothing whatever
about the matter to anyone. Good-night!".

So speaking, the hermit lighted his pipe, which, in the astonishment
caused by Maitland's avowals, he had allowed to go out, and he applied
himself to a large old silver tankard. He was a scholar of the Cambridge
school, and drank beer. Maitland knew his friend and mentor too well to
try to prolong the conversation, and withdrew to his bleak college room,
where a timid fire was smoking and crackling among the wet faggots,
with a feeling that he must steer his own course in this affair. It was
clearly quite out of the path of Bielby's experience.

"And yet," thought Maitland, "if I had not taken his advice about trying
to become more human, and taken that infernal public-house too, I never
would have been in this hole."

All day Maitland had scarcely tasted anything that might reasonably be
called food. "He had eaten; he had not dined," to adopt the distinction
of Brillat-Savarin. He had been dependent on the gritty and flaccid
hospitalities of refreshment-rooms, on the sandwich and the bun. Now
he felt faint as well as weary; but, rummaging amidst his cupboards,
he could find no provisions more tempting and nutritious than a box of
potted shrimps, from the college stores, and a bottle of some Hungarian
vintage sent by an advertising firm to the involuntary bailees of St.
Gatien's. Maitland did not feel equal to tackling these delicacies.

He did not forget that he had neglected to answer a note, on
philanthropic business, from Mrs. St. John Deloraine.

Weary as he was, he took pleasure in replying at length, and left
the letter out for his scout to post. Then, with a heavy headache,
he tumbled into bed, where, for that matter, he went on tumbling and
tossing during the greater part of the night. About five o'clock he
fell into a sleep full of dreams, only to be awakened, at six, by the
steam-whooper, or "devil," a sweet boon with which his philanthropy
had helped to endow the reluctant and even recalcitrant University of
Oxford.

"Instead of becoming human, I have only become humanitarian," Maitland
seemed to hear his own thoughts whispering to himself in a night-mare.
Through the slowly broadening winter dawn, in snatches of sleep that
lasted, or seemed to last, five minutes at a time, Maitland felt the
thought repeating itself, like some haunting refrain, with a feverish
iteration.

C