Once, by chance, the same master had arranged to take his class on a boating excursion up the Forth, and the question of tide arose. Karl volunteered the information that the tide would be high about three o’clock. Examined as to his accuracy (he was a careless young dog in matters of spelling or arithmetic) he admitted that he had no actual knowledge save the “feeling.” Fortunately, Mr. David Malcolm, the master, was a man prone to take stock of the young idea, so he wrote to Mrs. Grier, and received a positive shock when that sensible and level-headed woman gave him the assurance of evidence that her son was not romancing. Indeed, it may be assumed without fear of contradiction that to Mr. Malcolm’s growing appreciation of the boy’s powers was due, in great measure, their retention. Even under his kindly sway Karl was rapidly assimilating to the mold of the school. Games, lessons, discipline, the smaller issues of daily intercourse with other boys, were coating the inner perceptiveness with a dense membrane. Again, at this period Karl almost lost his universal language key. Declensions and conjugations choked intuitive knowledge, and, to all seeming, when his father brought him to Oxford at the age of eighteen, young Grier was only a lively, intelligent, and muscular undergrad--exceptionally bright, perhaps, but in no wise the “phee-nomenon” Sir William Macpherson had dubbed him. But Dame Nature, not to be balked in the development of her prodigy, arranged matters with that happy knack of hers whereby she cloaks design under the guise of accident. Grier had been at Oxford two years when a menagerie visited the classical city on the Isis. Although wild beast shows are not regarded by the authorities as essential aids to Oxonian success, Karl and others visited the evil-smelling place. Now, a man will remember through his nose and finger-tips when other more highly trained senses fail. The first sniff of the closely packed laager of caravans brought to Grier’s mind a series of vivid pictures of early days in the Himalayan foot-hills. He lost himself a little, but his dreams were interrupted by a scene which yielded an exciting paragraph for next morning’s newspapers. A defective iron screen enabled a gorilla to get at a black panther. The two beasts had a peculiar antipathy to each other, and the showman placed them close together for effect. Like many another dramatist he obtained a “curtain” he had not bargained for. Once the way was clear, by reason of the giving way of the corroded lattice, the animals met in Homeric combat. It was a fine fight, but it did not last long, for the gorilla tore the panther’s head off.