I have been speaking for myself. Fred Esquillant was always in time, easy, quiet, letting nothing interfere with his duty. But for me I was not built so. I watched for adventure and followed it. The dog I had met yesterday looked not in vain for a pat. A girl waved a kerchief to the student passing with the books under his arm. She did not know me, nor I her. But in the general interests of my class I had to wave back--without prejudice, be it said, to the black lock behind the miniature in my pocket. We came back, as we had occasion, from our classes to the crowded stair of our "land"--with its greasy handrail, and the faint whiff of humanity clinging about the numbered doorways. Our key grated in the lock. Mrs. Craven opened the kitchen door with a cry that our dinners would be ready in a jiffey. We were done with the world for the day. Henceforth four walls contained us. Many books lay tumbled about, or had to be heaped on the floor whenever the half of the table was laid for a meal. I sat farthest from the fire, but facing it. Above and directly before my eyes was a full-rigged ship, sailing among furious painted billows directly against the lofty cliffs of a lea-shore, the captain on the bridge regarding this manoeuvre with the utmost complaisance. Beneath was a china shepherdess without the head--opposite a parrot with a bunch of waxen cherries in its beak. When we took the room, the backs of the chairs had been covered with newly-washed embroidery in raspy woollens and starched linen thread. There had also been a tablecloth, and upon it (neatly arranged by Mrs. Craven's daughter Amelia) a selection of the family "good books"--to wit, the Holy Bible containing entries of the Craven family, with the dates of birth altered or erased, Josephus with steel pictures, the _Saint's Rest_ and some others. These had at once been removed, according to agreement made before taking possession, and now, wrapped in the tablecloth, reposed in a cupboard. Only _The Cloud of Witnesses_ and Fox's _Martyrs_ were spared at my special request. As for Freddie, he needed no other literature than his text-books, and set himself to win medals like one who had been fitted by machinery for that purpose. Mrs. Craven was an Englishwoman who had brought herself to this by marrying a carter from Gilmerton. So she retained a pleasant habit of curtseying which her daughter, born in Edinburgh and given to snuffing up the east wind, did not in the least strive to imitate, so far at least as we were concerned.