whom I shrink from
naming here, lest it should seem that I do so lightly--a face that I saw
six hours before its features became set forever.

CHAPTER IV.

_"De tot' anaschomeno, ho men elase dexion omon
Iros, ho d' auchen' elassen hup' ouatos, ostea d' eiso
Ethlasen; autika d' elthen ana stoma phoinion haima."_

Toward the end of my second year an event came off in which we were all
much interested--a steeplechase in which both Universities were to take
part. The stakes were worth winning--twenty sovs. entrance, h.f., and a
hundred sovs. added; besides, the _esprit de corps_ was strong, and men
backed their opinions pretty freely. The venue was fixed at B----; the
time, the beginning of the Easter vacation.

The old town was crowded like Vanity Fair. There was a railway in
progress near, and the navvies and other "roughs" came flocking in by
hundreds, so that the municipal authorities, justly apprehensive of a
row, concentrated the cohorts of their police, and swore in no end of
specials as a reserve.

The great event came off duly, a fair instance of the "glorious
uncertainty" which backers of horses execrate and ring-men adore. All
the favorites were out of the race early. Our best man, Barlowe, the
centre of many hopes, and carrying a heavy investment of Oxford money,
was floored at the second double post-and-rail. The Cambridge cracks,
too, by divers casualties, were soon disposed of. At the last fence, an
Oxford man was leading by sixty yards; but it was his maiden race, and
he lost his head when he found himself looking like a winner so near
home. Instead of taking the stake-and-bound at the weakest place, he
rode at the strongest; his horse swerved to the gap, took the fence
sideways, and came down heavily into the ditch of the winning field. The
representative of Cambridge, who came next, riding a good steady hunter,
not fast, but safe at his fences, cantered in by himself. I remember he
was so bewildered by his unexpected victory that one of his backers had
to hold him fast in the saddle, or he would have dismounted before
riding to scale, and so lost the stakes.

Well, the race was over and the laurels lost, so we had nothing to do
but pay and look pleasant, and then adjourn to the inevitable banquet at
"The George." There was little to distinguish the proceedings from the
routine of such festivals. The winners stood Champagne, and the losers
drank it--to any amount. The accident