discourse; and ever the old gentleman treated him as a brother.

"My dear man, of course ye can come again. Did I not say exceptions
prove the rule? The lower combe? Man, dear, anywhere ye please, so
long as you do not disturb my pheasants. The two are not
incompatible. Don't attempt to deny it. They're not! I'll never allow
another gun, though. Come and go as ye please. I'll not see you, and
ye needn't see me. Ye've been well brought up. Another glass of beer,
now? I tell you a fisherman he was and a fisherman he shall be
to-night again. He shall! Wish I could drown him. I'll convoy you to
the Lodge. My people are not precisely--ah--broke to boy, but they'll
know you again."

He dismissed them with many compliments by the high Lodge-gate in the
split-oak park palings and they stood still; even Stalky, who had
played second, not to say a dumb, fiddle, regarding McTurk as one
from another world. The two glasses of strong home-brewed had brought
a melancholy upon the boy, for, slowly strolling with his hands in
his pockets, he crooned:--" Oh, Paddy dear, and did ye hear the news
that's goin' round?"

Under other circumstances Stalky and Beetle would have fallen upon
him, for that song was barred utterly--anathema--the sin of
witchcraft. But seeing what he had wrought, they danced round him in
silence, waiting till it pleased him to touch earth.

The tea-bell rang when they were still half a mile from College.
McTurk shivered and came out of dreams. The glory of his holiday
estate had left him. He was a Colleger of the College, speaking
English once more.