down, and perhaps get in next year. Alfred
retired, and learned from the porter that the
college was not full. He sighed deeply, and the
sickening feeling grew on him; an ineradicable
stigma seemed upon him, and Mrs. Dodd was no
worse than the rest of the world then; every
mother in England would approve her resolution.
He wandered about the scenes of his intellectual
triumphs: he stood in the great square of the
schools, a place ugly to unprejudiced eyes, but
withal somewhat grand and inspiring, especially
to scholars who have fought their keen, though
bloodless, battles there. He looked at the
windows and gilt inscription of the Schola
Metaphysices, in which he had met the scholars of his
day and defeated them for the Ireland. He
wandered into the theatre, and eyed the rostrum,
whence he had not mumbled, but recited, his
Latin prize poem with more than one thunder of
academic applause: thunder compared with
which Drury Lane's is a mere cracker. These
places were unchanged; but he, sad scholar,
wandered among them as if he was a ghost, and
all these were stony phantoms of an intellectual
past, never, never, to return.

He telegraphed Sampson and Edward to
furnish him with certificates that he had never
been insane, but the victim of a foul conspiracy;
and, when he received them, he went with them
to St. Margaret's Hall; for he had bethought
him that the new principal was a first-rate man,
and had openly vowed he would raise that
"refuge for the ofttimes ploughed" to a place
of learning.

Hardie called, sent in his card, and was
admitted to the principal's study. He was about
to explain who he was, when the doctor
interrupted him, and told him politely he knew him
by reputation. "Tell me rather," said he,
shrewdly, "to what I owe this application
from an undergraduate so distinguished as Mr.
Hardie?"

Then Alfred began to quake, and, instead of
replying, put a hand suddenly before his face and
lost courage for one moment.

"Come, Mr. Hardie," said the principal,
"don't be disconcerted: a fault regretted is half
atoned; and I am not disposed to be hard on the
errors of youth; I mean where there is merit to
balance them."

"Sir," said Alfred sadly, "it is not a fault I
have to acknowledge, but a misfortune."

"Tell me all about it," said Dr. Alder,
guardedly.

He told it, omitting nothing essential that
could touch the heart or excite the ironical
humour of an academician.

"Well 'truth is more wonderful than fiction,'"
said the doctor. And I conclude the readers of
this tale are all of the doctor's opinion; so sweet
to the mind is cant.

Alfred offered his certificates.

Now Dr. Alder had been asking himself in
what phrases he should decline this young genius,
who was sane now, but of course had been mad,
only had forgotten the circumstance. But the
temptation to get an Ireland scholar into his Hall
suddenly overpowered him. The probability
that he might get a first-class in a lucid interval
was too enticing; nothing venture, nothing have.
He determined to venture.

"Mr. Hardie," said he, "this house shall
always be open to good morals and good scholarship
while I preside over it, and it shall be open
to them all the more when they come to me
dignified and made sacred by 'unmerited calamity.'"

Now this fine speech, like Minerva herself,
came from the head: Alfred was overcome by it
to tears. At that the doctor's heart was touched,
and even began to fancy it had originated that
noble speech.

It was no use doing things by halves; so Dr.
Alder gave Alfred a delightful set of rooms; and
made the Hall pleasant to him. He was
rewarded by a growing conviction that he had
made an excellent acquisition. This opinion,
however, was anything but universal: and Alfred,
finding the men of his own college suspected his
sanity, and passed jokes behind his back, cut them
all dead, and confined himself to his little Hall.
There they petted him, and crowed about him,
and betted on him for the schools as freely as if
he was a colt the Hall was going to enter for the
Derby.

He read hard, and judiciously, but without
his old confidence: he became anxious and
doubtful; he had seen so many first-rate men
just miss a first class. The brilliant creature
analysed all his Aristotelian treatises, and wrote
the synopses clear with marginal references on
great pasteboard cards three feet by two, and so
kept the whole subject before his eye, till he
obtained a singular mastery. Same system with
the historians: nor did he disdain the use of
coloured inks. Then the brilliant creature drew
lists of all the hard words he encountered in his
reading, especially in the common books, and
read these lists till mastered. The stake was
singularly heavy in his case, so he guarded every
crevice.

And at this period he was not so unhappy as
he expected. The laborious days went swiftly,
and twice a week at least came a letter from
Julia. Oh how his grave academic room with
oaken panels did brighten, when her letter lay
on the table. It was opened, and seemed written
with sunbeams. No quarrels on paper! Absence
made the heart grow fonder. And Edward came
to see him, and over their wine let out a feminine
trait in Julia. "When Hurd calls she walks out
of the room, just as my poor mother does when
you come. That is spite: since you are sent
away, nobody else is to profit by it. Where is
her Christianity, eh? and echo answers—Got a
cigar, old fellow?" And, after puffing in silence
a while, he said resignedly, "I am an unnatural
monster."

"Oh, are you?" said the other serenely, for
he was also under the benign influence.