I had never a passion for knowing that when circles or triangles attempt impossibilities it is absurd; and _x_ was an unknown quantity I was ever content to walk round about. To admit to Chrystal that we understood _x_ was only a way he had of leading you on to _y_ and _z_. I gave him his chance, however, by contributing a paper of answers to his first weekly set of exercises. When the hour for returning the slips came round, I was there to accept fame--if so it was to be--with modesty; and if it was to be humiliation, still to smile. The professor said there was one paper, with an owner's name on it, which he could not read, and it was handed along the class to be deciphered. My presentiment that it was mine became a certainty when it reached my hand; but I passed it on pleasantly, and it returned to Chrystal, a Japhet that never found its father. Feeling that the powers were against me, I then retired from the conflict, sanguine that the teaching of my mathematical schoolmaster, the best that could be, would pull me through. The Disowned may be going the round of the class-room still. The men who did not know when they were beaten returned to their seats, and doggedly took notes, their faces lengthening daily. Their note-books reproduced exactly the hieroglyphics of the blackboard, and, examined at night, were as suggestive as the photographs of persons one has never seen. To overtake Chrystal after giving him a start was the presumption that is an offshoot from despair. There was once an elderly gentleman who for years read the _Times_ every day from the first page to the last. For a fortnight he was ill of a fever; but, on recovering, he began at the copy of the _Times_ where he had left off. He struggled magnificently to make up on the _Times_, but it was in vain. This is an allegory for the way these students panted after Chrystal. Some succumbed and joined the majority--literally; for to mathematics they were dead. I never hear of the old university now, nor pass under the shadow of the walls one loves when he is done with them, without seeing myself as I was the day I matriculated, an awestruck boy, passing and repassing the gates, frightened to venture inside, breathing heavily at sight of janitors, Scott and Carlyle in the air. After that I see nothing fuller of color than the meetings that were held outside Chrystal's door. Adjoining it is a class-room so little sought for that legend tells of its door once showing the notice, "There will be no class to-day, as the student is unwell." The crowd round Chrystal's could have filled that room. It was composed of students hearkening at the door to see whether he was to call their part of the roll to-day. If he did, they slunk in; if not, the crowd melted into the streets, this refrain in their ears: