The athlete glories in his strength, the boisterous health of a well-knit frame requires an outlet; hence the periodical rowdyism which attacks students everywhere, especially those in training for callings that will repress their ardents spirits all too soon. With Tom Lennard and little Murphy, Elsworth was now almost nightly engaged in some wild frolic or other. A curious mixture was in him—half hero, half imp; at times he was given to periods of deep meditation on the highest matters that can interest mankind, to speculation on questions which have agitated the minds of philosophers, with a deep under-current of poetry running through his soul. Yet with all this there was a surface hot-headed foolishness which he neglected to restrain, leading him, at the suggestion of the moment, into outrageous acts of purposeless folly, if fun could be extracted from it. He wanted one thing— “Discrimination—nicer power man needs To rule him than is bred of bone and thew.” Ever some new madness was attempted, some scandal enacted. The favourite amusement just then was disturbing music-halls and theatres, bar-rooms, and supper places in the West. The public seemed rather to like the students’ riots, and the proprietors condoned for money compensation what the police were only too anxious to punish. One proprietor of a large and popular place of amusement did not see these disturbances in just this amiable light, and had recently caught and punished several young medicos who had made themselves obnoxious to him. It was determined very secretly to combine the fighting men of several hospitals into one grand attack on this man’s property. CHAPTER XVII. THE LOST LEADER. Well, he is gone, and with him go these thoughts.—_Shakespeare._ Meantime, how much I loved him, I find out now I’ve lost him.—_Browning._