d it, and finding that
the people all round him were listening with interest, went on to
describe the carving of the frieze (which he had studied years
before), and to criticize some details of masonry in other college
fronts about the city.

The idle crowd, including the two policemen at the doors, stared like
the Lycaonians at Paul, for Jude was apt to get too enthusiastic over
any subject in hand, and they seemed to wonder how the stranger
should know more about the buildings of their town than they
themselves did; till one of them said: "Why, I know that man; he used
to work here years ago--Jude Fawley, that's his name! Don't you mind
he used to be nicknamed Tutor of St. Slums, d'ye mind?--because he
aimed at that line o' business? He's married, I suppose, then, and
that's his child he's carrying. Taylor would know him, as he knows
everybody."

The speaker was a man named Jack Stagg, with whom Jude had formerly
worked in repairing the college masonries; Tinker Taylor was seen to
be standing near. Having his attention called the latter cried
across the barriers to Jude: "You've honoured us by coming back
again, my friend!"

Jude nodded.

"An' you don't seem to have done any great things for yourself by
going away?"

Jude assented to this also.

"Except found more mouths to fill!" This came in a new voice, and
Jude recognized its owner to be Uncle Joe, another mason whom he had
known.

Jude replied good-humouredly that he could not dispute it; and from
remark to remark something like a general conversation arose between
him and the crowd of idlers, during which Tinker Taylor asked Jude if
he remembered the Apostles' Creed in Latin still, and the night of
the challenge in the public house.

"But Fortune didn't lie that way?" threw in Joe. "Yer powers wasn't
enough to carry 'ee through?"

"Don't answer them any more!" entreated Sue.

"I don't think I like Christminster!" murmured little Time
mournfully, as he stood submerged and invisible in the crowd.

But finding himself the centre of curiosity, quizzing, and comment,
Jude was not inclined to shrink from open declarations of what he
had no great reason to be ashamed of; and in a little while was
stimulated to say in a loud voice to the listening throng generally:

"It is a difficult question, my friends, for any young man--that
question I had to grapple with, and which thousands are weighing
at the present moment in these uprising times--whethe