Mrs. Dodd and Julia, sitting but a few paces behind him, interchanged, a look of intelligence. The young gentleman was a stranger; but they had recognised a faithful old acquaintance at the bottom of his pantomime. They discovered, too, that the afflicted one was a personage: for he had not sat there long when quite a little band of men came after him. Observing his semi-circularity and general condition, they hesitated a moment; and then one of them remonstrated eagerly.: “For Heaven's sake come back to the boat! There is a crowd of all the colleges come round us; and they all say Oxford is being sold. We had a chance for the four-oared race, and you are throwing it away.” “What do I care what they all say?” was the answer, delivered with a kind of plaintive snarl. “But we care.” “Care then! I pity you.” And he turned his back fiercely on them, and then groaned by way of half apology. Another tried him: “Come, give us a civil answer, please.” “People that intrude upon a man's privacy, racked with pain, have no right to demand civility,” replied the sufferer, more gently, but sullenly enough. “Do you call this privacy?” “It was, a minute ago. Do you think I left the boat, and came here among the natives, for company? and noise? With my head splitting?” Here Julia gave Mrs. Dodd a soft pinch, to which Mrs. Dodd replied by a smile. And so they settled who this petulant young invalid must be. “'There, it is no use,” observed one, _sotto voce,_ “the bloke really has awful headaches, like a girl, and then he always shuts up this way. You will only rile him, and get the rough side of his tongue.” Here, then, the conference drew towards a close. But a Wadham man, who was one of the ambassadors, interposed. “Stop a minute,” said he. “Mr. Hardie, I have not the honour to be acquainted with you, and I am not here to annoy you, nor to be affronted by you. But the university has a stake in this race, and the university expostulates through us--through me, if you like.” “Who have I the honour?” inquired Hardie, assuming politeness sudden and vast. “Badham, of Wadham.” “Badham o' Wadham? Hear that, ye tuneful nine! Well, Badham o' Wadham, you are no acquaintance of mine; so you may possibly not be a fool. Let us assume by way of hypothesis that you are a man of sense, a man of reason as well as of rhyme. Then follow my logic. Hardie of Exeter is a good man in a boat when he has not got a headache. “When he has got a headache, Hardie of Exeter is not worth a straw in a boat. “Hardie of Exeter has a headache now. “Ergo, the university would put the said Hardie into a race, headache and all, and reduce defeat to a certainty. “And, ergo, on the same premises, I, not being an egotist, nor an ass, have taken Hardie of Exeter and his headache out of the boat, as I should have done any other cripple. “Secondly, I have put the best man on the river into this cripple's place.