Page:Stories Revived (3 volumes, London, Macmillan, 1885), Volume 2.djvu/190

Rh quiet cloister, and studied the small sculptured monsters on the entablature of the arcade. I was pleased to see that Searle became extremely interested; but I very soon began to fear that he would take Oxford too hard, as he took everything. I may say that from this time forward, with my unhappy friend, I found it difficult to distinguish between the play of fancy and the labour of thought, and to fix the balance between what he saw and what he imagined. He had already taken a fancy to mingle his identity with that of the earlier Clement Searle; he now began to talk altogether in the character of his old-time kinsman.

"This was my college, you know," he said; "the noblest in the whole place. How often I have walked up and down this cloister with the under-graduates of the last century! My friends are all dead, but many a young fellow as we meet him, dark or fair, tall or short, reminds me of early attachments. Even Oxford, they say, feels about its massive base the murmurs of the tide of time; some of the foundation-stones are loosened, some of the breaches will have to be repaired. Mine was the old unregenerate University, the home of rank abuses, of invidious distinctions and privileges. What cared I, who was a perfect gentleman, with my pockets full of money? I had an allowance of two thousand a year."

It became evident to me, on the following day, that he had lost the little that remained of his strength, and that he was unequal to the effort of regular sight-seeing. He read my apprehension in my eyes, and took pains to assure me that