ek, and as their regular contract pace was twenty-five
miles an hour, it was just an easy day's journey.

"What said the post-card?"

"There's plenty of time for Mount Earnshawe yet. They all say the
autumn is the best. The snow is now disappearing in great
quantities."

But an old bird is not to be caught with chaff. Jack was determined
not to go to the Eastern Alps this year; and indeed, as I found, not
to go till this question of the Fixed Period should be settled. I
told him that he was a fool. Although he would have been wrong to
assist in depositing his father-in-law for the sake of getting the
herd and flocks himself, as Grundle would have done, nevertheless he
was hardly bound by any feelings of honour or conscience to keep old
Crasweller at Little Christchurch in direct opposition to the laws of
the land. But all this I could not explain to him, and was obliged
simply to take it as a fact that he would not join an Alpine party
for Mount Earnshawe this year. As I thought of all this, I almost
feared Jack's presence in Gladstonopolis more than that of the young
Englishmen.

It was clear, however, that nothing could be done till the Englishmen
were gone, and as I had a day at my disposal I determined to walk up
to the college and meditate there on the conduct which it would be my
duty to follow during the next two months. The college was about five
miles from the town, at the side opposite to you as you enter the
town from Little Christchurch, and I had some time since made up my
mind how, in the bright genial days of our pleasant winter, I would
myself accompany Mr Crasweller through the city in an open barouche
as I took him to be deposited, through admiring crowds of his
fellow-citizens. I had not then thought that he would be a recreant,
or that he would be deterred by the fear of departure from enjoying
the honours which would be paid to him. But how different now was
his frame of mind from that glorious condition to which I had looked
forward in my sanguine hopes! Had it been I, I myself, how proud
should I have been of my country and its wisdom, had I been led along
as a first hero, to anticipate the euthanasia prepared for me! As
it was, I hired an inside cab, and hiding myself in the corner, was
carried away to the college unseen by any.

The place was called Necropolis. The name had always been distasteful
to me, as I had never wished to join with it the feeling of death.
Various names had been pr