The bright pale February sunlight lay on the little court of
Beaufort College, Cambridge, on the old dull-red smoke-stained
brick, the stone mullions and mouldings, the Hall oriel, the ivied
buttresses and battlements, the turrets, the tiled roofs, the
quaint chimneys, and the lead-topped cupola over all. Half the
court was in shadow. It was incredibly picturesque, but it had
somehow the look of a fortress rather than of a house. It did not
exist only to be beautiful, but had a well-worn beauty of age and
use. There was no domestic adornment of flower-bed or garden-
border, merely four squares of grass, looking like faded carpets
laid on the rather uncompromising pebbles which floored the
pathways. The golden hands of the clock pointed to a quarter to
ten, and the chimes uttered their sharp, peremptory voices. Two or
three young men stood talking at the vaulted gateway, and one or
two figures in dilapidated gowns and caps, holding books, fled out
of the court.

A firm footstep came down one of the stairways; a man of about
forty passed out into the court--Howard Kennedy, Fellow and
Classical Lecturer of the College. His thick curly brown hair
showed a trace of grey, his short pointed beard was grizzled, his
complexion sanguine, his eyebrows thick. There were little vague
lines on his forehead, and his eyes were large and clear; an
interesting, expressive face, not technically handsome, but both
clever and good-natured. He was carelessly dressed in rather old
but well-cut clothes, and had an air of business-like decisiveness