d the procession of heads of houses and new doctors
emerged, their red and black gowned forms passing across the field of
Jude's vision like inaccessible planets across an object glass.

As they went their names were called by knowing informants, and when
they reached the old round theatre of Wren a cheer rose high.

"Let's go that way!" cried Jude, and though it now rained steadily
he seemed not to know it, and took them round to the theatre. Here
they stood upon the straw that was laid to drown the discordant noise
of wheels, where the quaint and frost-eaten stone busts encircling
the building looked with pallid grimness on the proceedings, and in
particular at the bedraggled Jude, Sue, and their children, as at
ludicrous persons who had no business there.

"I wish I could get in!" he said to her fervidly. "Listen--I may
catch a few words of the Latin speech by staying here; the windows
are open."

However, beyond the peals of the organ, and the shouts and hurrahs
between each piece of oratory, Jude's standing in the wet did not
bring much Latin to his intelligence more than, now and then, a
sonorous word in _um_ or _ibus_.

"Well--I'm an outsider to the end of my days!" he sighed after a
while. "Now I'll go, my patient Sue. How good of you to wait in the
rain all this time--to gratify my infatuation! I'll never care any
more about the infernal cursed place, upon my soul I won't! But what
made you tremble so when we were at the barrier? And how pale you
are, Sue!"

"I saw Richard amongst the people on the other side."

"Ah--did you!"

"He is evidently come up to Jerusalem to see the festival like the
rest of us: and on that account is probably living not so very far
away. He had the same hankering for the university that you had, in
a milder form. I don't think he saw me, though he must have heard
you speaking to the crowd. But he seemed not to notice."

"Well--suppose he did. Your mind is free from worries about him now,
my Sue?"

"Yes, I suppose so. But I am weak. Although I know it is all right
with our plans, I felt a curious dread of him; an awe, or terror, of
conventions I don't believe in. It comes over me at times like a
sort of creeping paralysis, and makes me so sad!"

"You are getting tired, Sue. Oh--I forgot, darling! Yes, we'll go
on at once."

They started in quest of the lodging, and at last found something
that seemed to promise well, in Mildew Lane--a spot which to Jude