e made him a trifle
remarkable.

After staring there dully for pretty nearly an hour, it began to dawn
upon me that I had seen this man before somewhere, though under what
circumstances I could not for the life of me remember. That his outward
person was that of the ordinary deck-hand ashore went for nothing.
Besides, he had spoken overnight of "my boat." That evidently meant
yacht, and might stand for anything from an eight-hundred ton steamer
downwards.

The more I puzzled over his identity the less hope I seemed to have of
guessing it.

At last he woke, yawned, stretched, and sat up. Then he looked at me
and whistled. Then, "Slidey Methuen, by all that's odd! Fancy stumbling
across you here!"

Still I couldn't put a name to the man, and after a bit of hesitation
told him so bluntly.

He laughed, and said he didn't wonder at it. It was only eight years
since last we had met, but in that time he had been about the world a
good deal, and, as he himself expressed it, "got most of the old
landmarks ground off his face, and new ones rubbed in." He was Michael
Cospatric.

I had to take his word for it. There didn't seem to be a trace left of
the man I had known at Cambridge, either of manner or outward form.
However, Cospatric of C---- he was, fast enough; and after the manner
of 'Varsity men, we started on to "shop" there and then, and had the
old days over again in review.

We had both been of the same year, and although in a small college that
argues some knowledge of one another, we were by no means in the same
set. In fact, up there Cospatric had been rather an anomaly: a man in
no clique, a man without a nickname, a man distinguished only by the
halo of his exit. He came up, one of a bunch of fifty-two
undergraduates, joined all the clubs, was tubbed, rowed four at the end
of his first October term in a losing junior trial eight, and was
promptly shelved. He was never in evidence anywhere, but was reported
to be a subscriber of Rolandi's, and to spend his time reading novels
in foreign tongues. As he seldom kept either lectures or chapels, a
chronic gating fostered this occupation. His second October he again
navigated the Cam in a junior trial. He lugged with the arms incurably
and swung like a corkscrew, but we had five trials on that term, and
men were wanted to fill them. So he rowed and raced, and again helped
his crew to lose, and then was shelved as hopeless. He was a man of no
account. Not three men