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tinctly, in her ear, and he was sure that she had understood.

The boy sent the message by a running coolie. The Padre gave the order, and saw the coolie go. He also saw the ayah hurry out and speak to him as he was leaving, no doubt to bid him lose no time. Cavendish was not far away, and he ought to arrive before the midnight hour.

The night wore on. It began to rain. The damp blew in. The lamps burned low. A sickening smell of turpentine and Russian oil and disinfectants filled the air. The coolies still rubbed on. Her eyes were open and fixed upon the door. Would she go safely through the passing hour? She did, her eyes still fixed upon the door. Ten, eleven, twelve o'clock struck. She was still alive, still looking toward the door. But Cavendish did not come. It had not occurred to Captain Towers or the Padre to doubt that he would come.

One o'clock-one-thirty

a rage swept over Captain Towers because he did not come. It was all she needed, some one to rouse her, some one to call her back.

sounded on the bridge, at the turn of the drive, under the porte-cochère. In a moment Cavendish would be there. They heard him fling himself out-spring up the steps-dash toward her partly open door. The ayah, darting forward, threw it wide. open to a figure that flung itself down beside the bed, calling the girl upon it by her

name.

It was Hawkins of the Police.

The shadow reluctantly went out, and, presently, the others followed, one by one. It was three o'clock in the morning when the Padre, at length, turned in. His boy was waiting for him to help him off with his clothes. The boy moved lightly round, putting the things away. The Padre sat heavily on a chair, staring into space. At last he spoke.

"Boy," he said, "did you know, did any one suspect, that Hawkins Sahib and Miss Harding liked each other?"

"Yes, sir," replied the boy. "I knew, sir. All the bazaar knew it, sir. Therefore the coolie called Hawkins Sahib, sir."

Another question struggled to the Pa

The Padre crept softly in and knelt be- dre's lips. side the bed.

It was a little clock upon the dresser that had struck the hours. As it struck two, there sounded at the far-off entrance to the compound hedge, the rattle of jutka wheels inside the gate. As the girl upon the bed, the first to hear it, tried to leap up to meet it, there broke from the cemetery hills once more that peal of laughter-it rose, it swelled, it burst-it died and rose again-it shouted, howled, and shrieked -in peals upon peals of wild, demoniac. laughter that made the blood run cold. "Hyena brutes!" muttered Captain Towers, but he did not slacken work. He was fighting against time. The jutka wheels.

"Boy," he said, "do you know why Hawkins Sahib did not tell us this before?"

"All the bazaar was telling-he feared for his promotion, sir."

The boy removed the Padre's cassock and hung it on a chair. He draped the cord and tassel on a screen. The cross he laid aside, in doing which, he was careful not to touch it with his hands. He came, at last, and stood before the Padre, as if to ask what further service was required.

"That will do. Good night, boy," said the Padre.

"Good night, sir," said the boy.

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"And now I take leave of Oxford without even an attempt to describe it.'

AN

HAWTHORNE ("Our Old Home").

IN American student who works for two or three years at Oxford may mark the progress of his education by his passage beyond the point where a description of the old university seemed easy, to a point where it seems almost impossible. The flavor of life at Oxford is what the American remembers most intimately when his degree is taken and the gate of his gray old English college closes behind him. And that is what I should like to suggest in this sketch.

When you first come as a student to Oxford, you are entirely at the mercy of your esthetic sensibilities. You wonder if you can ever stop gazing. As you stroll through the college gardens and walks or up the long, graceful curve of the High and lift your eyes to that airy creation of stone, the steeple of St. Mary, you will indeed be a man of hardened sensibilities if your whole mind is not occupied in deciding whether you will become an architect, a landscape-gardener, or a painter. But finally you turn your attention to learning something about that college in which you are enrolled. You receive various instructions, go through the ceremony of matriculation, and receive the large volume entitled "Statua et Decreta Univer

sitatis Oxoniensis," full of difficult Latin phrases and with every rule amended. You are informed how many times your college expects you to attend chapel, and how many times you must dine in the college Hall. You are instructed not to walk in the streets after dark without the cap and gown that designates you an undergraduate, and you are strictly ordered to be inside your lodgings or inside your college gates by midnight. Various other rules are heaped upon you till you wonder vaguely whether you ought to ask the gate-porter's permission to go out to buy a note-book. For breaches of all these rules there are penalties ranging all the way from small fines to being "sent down," or expelled from college.

Thus life looks serious enough from the official point of view, but you will soon discover that the undergraduate has a point of view of his own. The proctors and their assistants, appropriately known as "bulldogs," roam the streets at night on the lookout for the wily undergraduate. But the wily undergraduate, deeming it rather a point of honor not to wear the required cap and gown, is also on the lookout for the proctors. It is a solemn affair to be "progged." Perhaps you come suddenly around a corner face to face with a bulldog. "The proctor would like to speak to you," he remarks, and you step up to a tall figure arrayed in a black robe and mortar-board and standing in the shadow. Solemnly he takes off his hat and says, "Good evening"; to which you reply as best you may. "Are you a member of this university?" he inquires. You acquiesce, and he demands your name and

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undergraduate will probably be disappointing. You will consider him taciturn, even moody. He seems to regard you with a somewhat critical eye. He has heard so much about American versatility that he is inclined to distrust you, like the man in the fable who could blow hot and cold with the same breath. As one don expressed it to me, "We English and you Americans are such close relations that we are sure to disagree over small things." The English undergraduate marvels impassionately at your strange vagaries of speech. He is willing to believe almost anything about the strange continent across the seas. As a rule you will find him well-read in some one subject at least. He is used to taking examinations. Perhaps at the age of twelve he wins a scholarship at Eton, and later enters an Oxford college as a scholar, and finally enters the Civil Service-all by means of competitive examinations.

The bond of fellowship existing among men who enter and depart from an American university together is lacking in Oxford. Perhaps you will know more men who are "going up for schools" at the same time as yourself, but that is due to the common interests of your work. The class spirit so dear to the heart of the American college man has given place under the system of Oxford to the spirit of the colleges. Each college, with its slightly different customs and habits, has a character of its own. Often a certain type of undergraduate predominates in a certain. college, but usually there are many kinds together. Sometimes there are factions and internecine war which come to the outrageous and ignominious ending of some one spluttering in the water on a dark night.

Within Oxford itself there exists every type of undergraduate: the rowing man, the riding man, the foot-ball devotee, the politician, the book-worm, the scholar, the loafer, and every shade between. The average undergraduate gives himself strongly to some form of athletics. Rowing is the chief interest, for the season begins with the opening of the colleges and closes with Eights' Week in May, and even after that many college crews continue practising for the Henley Regatta. In midwinter come the races of the college "Torpids," more familiarly known as "Toggers." These

Toggers consist of a coxswain and a crew of eight men, rowing in a boat with fixed seats. Sometimes in January or February the practice of these oarsmen is stopped by the freezing of the river. But the Oxford athlete is not inclined to heed the weather. You will find him swinging cheerily away at his oar in pouring, freezing rain, or chasing the slippery foot-ball through several inches of mud. If you learn nothing else at Oxford, you learn that unfavorable weather conditions are not real preventatives.

Moored to the bank of the Thames along the bottom of Christ Church meadows lie the college barges, the headquarters for the oarsmen. Along the opposite bank runs the tow-path, a scene of indescribable excitement on rowing days when frenzied undergraduates dash madly along it beside their college boats. And when the race is over, how the whole towpath gasps for breath. The runners are almost as tired as the rowers, who hang heaving over their oars under the shadow of Folly Bridge. Then the college ferries with their long punt poles cross to the tow-path to carry the runners back, and the oarsmen, having regained their breath, paddle their shells slowly to the barges.

of Folly Bridge.

Some sunny afternoon in winter perhaps you will stroll down the tow-path toward Iffley, to watch the crews practise. There you will see the coaches running or riding a bicycle along the bank and shouting orders in no uncertain words or tones. Suddenly you will hear a long drawn shout: "Look ahead, sir, 'Varsity." This is a moment of supreme trepidation for the coxswain of a Togger. A few hasty orders and he has his boat resting as close to the bank as possible, while the 'Varsity boat, running easily between strokes, sweeps by and the coaches mounted on horses clatter along the tow-path. All eyes in the Togger are glued on the passing boat, and many a heart beats quicker with the hope that some day it may be a part of that rhythmical, magical unity of bodies and oars and boat. But the waiting coxswain breathes a sigh of relief, for it is a finable offense to hold up the 'Varsity boat, not to mention the blow to one's budding reputation.

Every afternoon the streets of Oxford swarm with bareheaded undergraduates in

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