king apparatus of
surprising shrillness to warn us of the flight of the half-hours.
"Ting!" another gone! Then, as the hour drew near, this academic clock
cleared its decks for real action--almost it might be said that it
cleared its throat, such a roopy gasping crow did it emit. This was
technically called "the warning."

And three times a day at the sound of it we rose, gathered our books and
fled fleetfoot for the college. The clock at Mistress Craven's was set
ten minutes fast, so as to leave us time to flee down the Pleasance,
dodge through a side alley, cut Simon's Square diagonally, debouch upon
Drummond Street (shunning Rutherford's change-house, with its "kittle"
step down into the cellar), and lo! there, big, barren, grey, grave,
cauldrife as a Scots winter, was the College of King James--with the
bell, unheard in the side-streets, fairly "gollying" at us--an appalling
volume of sound--yet one which, on the whole, we minded less than the
skirl and rasp of Mistress Craven's family clock.

I have been speaking for myself. Fred Esquillant was always in time,
easy, quiet, letting nothing interfere with his duty. But for me I was
not built so. I watched for adventure and followed it. The dog I had met
yesterday looked not in vain for a pat. A girl waved a kerchief to the
student passing with the books under his arm. She did not know me, nor I
her. But in the general interests of my class I had to wave
back--without prejudice, be it said, to the black lock behind the
miniature in my pocket.

We came back, as we had occasion, from our classes to the crowded stair
of our "land"--with its greasy handrail, and the faint whiff of humanity
clinging about the numbered doorways. Our key grated in the lock. Mrs.
Craven opened the kitchen door with a cry that our dinners would be
ready in a jiffey. We were done with the world for the day. Henceforth
four walls contained us. Many books lay tumbled about, or had to be
heaped on the floor whenever the half of the table was laid for a meal.

I sat farthest from the fire, but facing it. Above and directly before
my eyes was a full-rigged ship, sailing among furious painted billows
directly against the lofty cliffs of a lea-shore, the captain on the
bridge regarding this manoeuvre with the utmost complaisance. Beneath
was a china shepherdess without the head--opposite a parrot with a bunch
of waxen cherries in its beak.

When we took the room, the backs of the chairs had been