oak were both gone a-
hunting with the mayor. However, we could not both have ridden the one,
or worn the other, and we might perchance run less risk without them
than with them. As for the college cap and gown, my comrade nailed them
with our keeper's two daggers on the outside of the door when we left,
in token that here he bade farewell for ever to the life of a scholar.

It was scarcely three o'clock in the afternoon when we made good our
escape. Before sundown, thanks to my comrade's knowledge of the country
(which was all the more wonderful that he had been only two months at
Oxford), we had fetched a wide circuit round the north of the city, and
were safe on the Berkshire side of the river beyond Wightham, on the
road to Abingdon.

For four hours my comrade had paced at my side without a word, and I,
finding nothing to say, had been silent too. When, however, all danger
from our pursuers was past, and night invited us to halt at the first
convenient shelter, he stopped in the road and broke silence.

"Friend," said he, "what is your name?"

"Humphrey Dexter, at your service," said I. "May I ask yours?"

"You may call me Sir Ludar," said he, gravely. "And since we two have
been comrades in peril, give me your hand, and let heaven witness that
we are friends from this day."

I gripped his hand in silence, for I knew not what to say. My heart
went out to this wild, odd comrade of mine, of whom I knew nothing; and
had he bidden me follow him to the world's end, I should yet have
thought twice before I refused him.

That night, as we lay in a wayside barn (for my purse was run too low to
afford us an inn), Sir Ludar told me something of his history: and what
he omitted to tell, I was able to guess. He was the youngest son, he
said, of an Irish rebel chieftain, Sorley Boy McDonnell by name; who,
desiring at one time to cement a truce with the English, had given his
child in charge of a Sir William Carleton, an English soldier to whom he
owed a service, to be brought up by him in his household, and educated
as an English scholar and gentleman. The boy had never seen his father
since; for though his guardian began by treating him well, yet when
McDonnell turned against the English, as he had done, Sir William's
manner changed. He kept hold of the boy, not so much as a ward but as a
hostage, and ruled him with an iron rod. The lad had been handed over
from governor to governor, from school to school, but