like some tangled Indian jungle, where tigers
lurk below, while little innocent birds sing
on the branches above, heedless of harm.
A murderer may be plotting over that green
shaded lamp you see on the ground floor of the
house opposite, while perhaps a little sempstress,
pure as a pearl and innocent as a new-sprung
flower, may be singing over her work in the
garret above, where that rushlight is burning
now with such a dull yellow glimmer.

Some such strange shuffle of the cards had
brought the student and Mr. Medlicot to lodge
together in that murky, impoverished, and rather
disreputable inn, now removed. Their names
stood in large black letters, one over the other,
on the door-post of No. Seven; but they knew
nothing of each other, except that Medlicot
was conscious of a "quiet sap" of a fellow,
whose very footfall was hardly audible overhead,
and Ellis knew to his cost that there
was a roysterer below, who spent a great deal
of money in noisy bachelor parties.

It was one of those parties that was in full
force on the November night in question. There
were chorus songs, pantomime dances, and
clashes of a bad piano; then glasses were flung
furiously against the wall, as if to honour some
toast, or in mere drunken wantonness. After
that came "Three Jolly Postboys drinking at
the Dragon," or "The Cure," not without
cornet-à-piston accompaniments, and rapping of
tumblers. Then "Old King Cole," with imitations
of various kinds of music. Next to this,
tremendous applause, loud as a cannonade,
preceded and followed the University song, " A
Thorough-bred Oxford Man"—which Mr. Medlicot
certainly was not.

All this Babel of noise arose above an
undercurrent of sounds, which were unmistakably
occasioned by the concussion of billiard-balls, the
shock and clatter of the red and white ivory
against the brass rims of the pockets; and the
loud applause of good strokes, produced by
thumping the butt-end of cues against the
ground. Medlicot, making quite a trade of
billiards, had lately bought a billiard-table
second-hand at a sale, and had had it fitted up
in a spare room of his set of chambers, and
illuminated by six large gas-lamps, that gave
forth a blaze and heat as exciting as it was baneful,
and which poisoned the atmosphere of the
whole house. On this table, and under this table,
report said, belated friends of Mr. Medlicot
were not unfrequently in the habit of sleeping,
till daybreak brought a quasi sobriety. This
apartment, filled by Mr. Medlicot's sporting
friends, was exactly under Mr. Ellis's
bedroom, so that the unhappy fourth floor was
able nightly to appreciate every move of the
game without seeing the players.

About half-past three, a chorus of " We're all
jolly dogs!" was followed by a light musketry
discharge of champagne corks. Then there was
a swish as of cards thrown across the floor, a
quarrel, a lull, a shout out of window, a shuffling
of feet. There were one or two heavy thumps
upon the stairs as of men falling, a screech of
laughter, a blast of a cornet-à-piston, and the
sporting men danced, and sang, and wrangled,
and chattered their way out into the street. There
were distant roars for cabs, a trundle of wheels,
and off they went. Ellis listened until the sound
of the last cab died almost imperceptibly away
down a perspective vista of sound. Medlicot
talked to himself, broke a glass, banged his outer
door with a jarring thunder, and all grew quiet
as death.

Not till then to the tired, jaded, and angry
student came the great anodyne of sleep; but
such sleep! Oh, no anodyne. It was not the
blessed sleep "beloved from pole to pole," that
comes and takes the sleeper gently by the hand,
and leads him into a region of warm darkness
that expands into bright prairies of rolling grass
and tall flowers, or to tepid seas wherein he sinks,
sinks, sinks, and feels that he is endowed with
miraculous powers, for now he is a fish in the
sea, but presently he rises and becomes a bird
in the air, or a wild horse in the golden desert.

It was to the Nightmare country that he
was then hurried, there where black cold hands
grappled for him, and incubi, like hungry and
gigantic toads, crushed him into fathoms of
choking mud; or he floated, pursued by huge
thorny fish, fanged and spiked and horned, to
where the whole water was one poisonous
ferment and seething mass of polypi feelers.
He fell from walls, he rode over cliffs, the rope
broke as he sought the sea-bird's nest, he was
blown to pieces from cannon.

Or, he would wrestle with the pain, then groaning,
turn, and start awake for an instant, with
aching head and throbbing temples, to feel the
sense of some vast misery and even palpable
horror recede from him into the darker shadows
of the wall; but only to return the moment he
again closed his eyes. In the morning (for we
are rolling several nights into one) he would
awake cold and unrefreshed, a sick weight on
his heart, his nerves trembling, and a sense of
some intolerable yet inevitable and surely
impending misfortune seeming to fill the very air.

The parties continued in the same way for
seven nights running. The billiards went on
noisily till nearly daybreak, almost without
cessation. Before this abominable billiard-table
came, Medlicot used to be often away at
theatres, casinos, but now he was always in.
Report said he lived by his green cloth, and that
his accomplices brought him young men to fleece.

"Oh the goings on is awful!" reported
the portly laundress, Mrs. Harvey, to Mr.
Ellis, who was a favourite of hers, because he
was chatty and easily pleased. "Champagne
like water; and cards, if you please, sir,
night and day; and what I'm to do about the
coals they uses I don't know, for he owes my
husband and me half a year's wages; and no
perquisites except oyster-shells and old sherry
wine-bottles—that is a drug in any market
—and as for old hats with the crown in,
they don't compare to kitchen fat in point of
walue, but you don't look the thing that is
right, Mr. Ellis, and never will you till you keep