unfrequented district, when, to our excessive
disappointment, we found it entirely
occupied. It was situated on a lofty hill,
and we had watched it for miles as a guiding
star, filling our thirsty souls with thoughts
upon what would be the best substitute for
beer, and soothing our craving stomachs with
images of all things made with eggs—and,
lo! an English milor and friends had taken
the whole of it for that night, both dining-
room and sleeping chambers. Segment, who
has a British weakness in the matter of
persons with handles to their names, refused
to disturb their magnificences, and to intrude
so large a party as five strangers upon their
salle-à-manger. Bullswipe, however, with
the eating and drinking instincts of the
savage strong upon him, and his artificial
restraints never perhaps being very enthralling,
loudly demanded the name of this bloated
aristocrat who wanted a public dining-room
all to himself.

"Le Comte Bheel, with suite," was, it
seemed, the offending party; "an English
milor of great wealth and exclusive manners."

The impetuous young man was about to
express an unfavourable opinion of this
nobleman, when Segment interrupted.

"I think, my good host, there is some
mistake in the name, since Bheel is scarcely an
English title; we will, however, by no means
trespass upon his lordship's privacy. Have
you any cleanly-littered stable" (Bullswipe
vanished) "which tired travellers may repose
in for a few hours? A few eggs and a little
cold meat" (Segment could never be got to
understand that there never is any cold
meat at a French inn), "the simplest repast
is all which, with the addition of that humble
accommodation, we shall require."

The landlord was in the act of trying to
shrug his shoulders over his head, when,
re-enter Bullswipe, in fits of laughter, followed
by a little round Englishman.

"It ain't Bheel!" cried the youth, half
suffocated with mirth, "it's Byles the pastry-
cook, and the very man we want!"

Our young friend had forced his way into
the dining-room in order to present a piece
of his mind to the selfish nobleman. In that
distinguished personage he discovered the
most popular maker of pies in the university.
Never before was debtor so well pleased to
meet with creditor. To Segment, as to me who
had a great deal of college patronage, Byles
was more than civil—he was kindly in the
extreme. Not only was the salle-à-manger
given up to us for a common sleeping chamber;
but, before retiring to rest, le Comte
Bheel was so good as to amend the somewhat
imperfect culinary arrangements of the
inn by cooking us, with his own noble hands,
some exquisite cutlets.

Adventures of this sort, however they may
lose in the telling, form very pleasant subjects
of after-talk to those who have experienced
them in company. Segment and I had a
hundred similar reminiscences of which,
when alone together, we never grew weary,
and besides that, our souls were far from
being unsympathetic. It was true that he
had eliminated from me much of that poetical
faculty which I had at first possessed; but,
on the other hand, like one who sucks the
poison from the arrow wound of his friend,
he had taken something of it into his own
system. If, indeed, it had not been for me—
that is, for my indirect influence—I do not
believe that Segment would ever have fallen
in love: he might have laid himself down
with deliberation and let the stream flow
gradually over him, but he would never have
taken a header (as he did) into the deepest
part of that smiling river. One only sort of
respect which he seemed to pay to his former
self in the matter was this, that he chose for
the object of his affection no brilliant young
bird of paradise, all feathers and squeak, but
a modest retiring dove: he fell in love, in
short, with a little Quakeress.

"When the heyday of youth and passion
are over," Segment (who was fifty if he was
a day) was wont to observe, "there will still
be a charm about Ruth, quite independent of
them."

"Ah," I replied, "or poetry apart" (our
coach's favourite expression) "she is what a
sensible man would call 'a good durable
brown.'"

I had my good tutor there, I think; but,
indeed, we had him everywhere while he was
in this unfortunate condition; nor of all his
store of wisdom had he a single pennyworth
to apply to his own necessity. The best of it
was, he had never spoken to the young
woman, nor she to him. She had come to
the little village in Wales where we were
then stopping, like ourselves, not indeed with
a reading party, but in search of the
picturesque; and she lodged in a little cottage
about half a mile off, with a papa who wore
a coat cut like a robin's, and with a drab
coloured mamma.

The Welsh village—for us that were not
in love that is—was slow, and when he heard
that an Oxford party were coming to the
same spot we rejoiced exceedingly;
nevertheless we did not think it worth while to
inform Segment, who cared not one fourpenny
bit who came and who went, so long as
Aberdovelly Cottage—the casket of his jewel
—remained in the same spot by the lake's
side.

Opposite that pleasant habitation I found
my guide and friend (but philosopher no
longer) watching a certain first-floor window
of it upon a certain night, with an air, I
must say, upon discovery, very much like
that of a detected burglar. He attempted to
whistle a popular melody suggestive of the
delight he took on a shiny night in that
season of the year, in wandering about at
eleven, P.M.; but the hypocrisy was hideously
transparent.