"And constitute yourself his guardian-angel-in-ordinary? Didn't you go down on your knees to him with tears and sobs, and beseech him not to go to the bad?" went on Bill. "There's not a word of truth in it, sir. One evening when Mr. Carstairs was lying on his sofa, tired and ill--for he was beginning to lead a life that had no rest in it, hardly, day or night, a folded slip of paper was brought in from Mr. Richardson, and Mr. Carstairs bade me read it to him. It was to remind him of some appointment for the night. Mr. Carstairs was silent for a minute, and then burst out with a kind of sharp cry, painful to hear. 'By Heaven, if this goes on, they'll ruin me, body and soul! I've a great mind not to go.' I did speak then, sir; I told him he was ill, and had better stay at home; and I said that it was easy enough for him to pull up then, but that when one got too far on the down-hill path it was more difficult." "Was that all?" cried Whitney. "Every word, sir. I should not have spoken at all but that I had known Mr. Carstairs before we came here. Mr. Richardson made a great deal of it, and gave it quite a different colouring." "Did Mr. Carstairs turn you away for that?" I asked of Charley; when he came back for the things, and the other two had gone out. "Three or four days after it happened, sir, Mr. Carstairs stopped my waiting on him again. I think it was through Mr. Richardson. Mr. Carstairs had refused to go out with him the evening it occurred." "You knew Mr. Carstairs before he came to Oxford. Where was it?" "It was----" he hesitated, and then went on. "It was at the school he was at in London, sir. I was a junior master there." Letting a plate fall--for I was helping to pack them, wanting the table--I stared at the fellow. "A master there and----" and a servant here, I all but said, but I stopped the words. "Only one of the outer masters, attending daily," he went on quietly. "I taught writing and arithmetic, and English to the juniors." "But how comes it that you are here in this post, Charley?" "I had reasons for wishing to come to live at Oxford, sir." "But why not have sought out something better than this?" "I did seek, sir. But nothing of the kind was to be had, and this place offered. There's many a one, sir, falls into the wrong post in life, and can never afterwards get into the right one." "But--do you--like this?" "_Like_ it, sir; no! But I make a living at it. One thing I shall be always grateful to Mr. Carstairs for: that he did not mention where he had known me. I should not like it to be talked of in the college, especially by Mr. Richardson." He disappeared with his tray as he spoke. It sounded quite mysterious. But I took the hint, and said nothing.