The Cornishman began to turn over the volume very slowly, looking at the pages cautiously, almost as if he expected to see some venomous creature crawl out from between the leaves. The first twenty pages of the book were filled with the records of a college life, in which brief memoranda of study were interspersed with boating slang and turf calculations. The name of a certain Rosa, of the King’s Head, appeared very often in these earlier pages; and there were little epigrams about Rosa, bespeaking the easy-going morality of a Rochester or a Sedley, rather than the pure sentiments of a Tennyson or a Longfellow. Altogether there was a reckless, swaggering manner about the book, which very well corresponded with Mrs. Burfield’s description of the prancing stranger. But the volume had no interest for Francis Tredethlyn until he came to the twentieth page, where the name of Coltonslough figured for the first time. “_November 8._--The abomination of desolation, and just the place for a fellow that wants to read hard and be delivered from the society of his fellow-creatures! Arrived yesterday afternoon; found civil landlady, stereotyped sea-side accommodation; decrepit easy-chair, slippery horsehair cushions; no window-curtains to speak of, and a great deal of unnecessary drapery festooned about a rickety tent-bedstead; wash-hand-stand one size too large for a doll, and fifty sizes too small for any civilized being; shells and shepherdesses on the mantelpieces, and any amount of blown-glass decanters on the sideboard. Dined on chops, which were fried, soddened in their own grease. Must speak to the landlady to-morrow, and insist on gridiron. The woman who would fry chops would think nothing of human sacrifices. A girl waited upon me, a good deal younger than Rosa, and I think prettier--but we have changed all that, so I didn’t take particular notice of her. Read hard till after one, and write this before retiring to my couch,--flock, and lumpy, for I dug my knuckles into the counterpane while examining the apartment.