"What age may you be, Mr. Ludlow?" he sternly asked, when a question or two had passed. And I told him my age. "Oh! And don't you think it a very disreputable thing, a great _discredit_, sir, for a young fellow of your years to be found abroad by your proctor at midnight?" "But I could not help being late, sir, last night; and I was not abroad for any purpose of pleasure. I had been staying with a poor fellow who is sick; dying, in fact: and--and it was not my fault, sir." "Take care, young man," said he, glaring through his spectacles. "There's one thing I can never forgive if deliberately told me, and that's a lie." "I should be sorry to tell a lie, sir," I answered: and by the annoyance so visible in his looks and tones, it was impossible to help fancying he had found out, or thought he had found out, Gaiton in one. "What I have said is truth." "Go over again what you did say," cried he, very shortly, after looking at his paper again and then hard at me. And I went over it. "_What_ do you say the man's name is?" "Charles Tasson, sir. He was our scout until he fell ill." "Pray do you make a point, Mr. Ludlow, of visiting all the scouts and their friends who may happen to fall sick?" "No, sir," I said, uneasily, for there was ridicule in his tone, and I knew he did not believe a word. "I don't suppose I should ever have thought of visiting Tasson, but for seeing him look so ill one afternoon up at Godstowe." "He must be very ill to be at Godstowe!" cried Dr. Applerigg. "Very!" "He was so ill, sir, that I thought he was dying then. Some flyman he knew had driven him to Godstowe for the sake of the air." "But what's your _motive_, may I ask, for going to sit with him?" He had a way of laying emphasis on certain of his words. "There's no motive, sir: except that he is lonely and dying." The doctor looked at me for what seemed ten minutes. "What is this sick man's address, pray?" I told him the address in Stagg's Entry; and he wrote it down, telling me to present myself again before him the following morning. That day, I met Sophie Chalk; her husband was with her. She nodded and seemed gay as air: he looked dark and sullen as he took off his hat. I carried the news into college. "Sophie Chalk has her husband down, Tod." "Queen Anne's dead," retorted he. "Oh, you knew it!" And I might have guessed that he did by his not having spent the past evening in High Street, but in a fellow's rooms at Oriel. And he was as cross as two sticks. "What a _fool_ she must have been to go and throw herself away upon that low fellow Everty!" he exclaimed, putting his shoulders against the mantelpiece and stamping on the carpet with one heel.