“I say, for goodness’ sake, let’s catch him,” begged Michael, who had visions of being sent to explain to a weeping mother in a mean street that her son had died in defending her enlargement. Out into the moon-washed park the pursuers tumbled, and through its verdurous deeps of giant elms they hurried in search of the outlaw. “It’s like a scene in The Merry Wives of Windsor,” Michael said to Avery, and as he spoke he caught a glimpse of the white-robed Smithers, running like a young druid across a glade where the moonlight was undimmed by boughs. He called to Smithers to go back to his rooms, but whether he went at once or huddled in some hollow tree half the night Michael never knew, for by this time the unwonted stampeding of the deer and the sound of voices in the Fellows’ sacred pleasure-ground had roused the Dean, who supported by the nocturnal force of the college servants was advancing against the six disturbers of the summer night. The next hour was an entrancing time of hot pursuit and swift evasion, of crackling dead branches and sudden falls in lush grass, of stealthy procedure round tree-trunks, and finally of scaling a high wall, dropping heavily down into the rose-beds of the Warden’s garden and by one supreme effort of endurance going to ground in St. Cuthbert’s quad. “By Jove, that was a topping rag,” puffed Lonsdale, as he filled six glasses with welcome drink. “I think old Shadbolt recognized me. He said: ‘It’s no use you putting your coat over your ’ead, sir, because I knows you by your gait.’” “I wonder what happened to Smithers,” said Michael. “Damned good thing if he fell into the Cher,” Avery asserted. “I don’t know why on earth they want to have a bounder like that at St. Mary’s.” “A bounder like what?” asked Castleton, who had sloped into the room during Avery’s expression of opinion. Castleton was greeted with much fervor, and a disjointed account of the evening’s rag was provided for his entertainment. “But why don’t you let that poor devil alone?” demanded the listener. At this time of night nobody was able to adduce any very conclusive reason against letting Smithers alone, although Maurice Avery insisted that men like him were very bad for the college. Dawn was breaking when Michael strolled round Cloisters with Castleton, determined to probe through the medium of Castleton’s common sense and Wykehamist notions the ethical and æsthetic rights of people like Smithers to obtain the education Oxford was held to bestow impartially. “After all, Oxford wasn’t founded to provide an expensive three years of idleness for the purpose of giving a social cachet to people like Cuffe,” Castleton pointed out.