'Perhaps she'll break mine,' said Edgell dryly; and then he sat down and ate his lunch which the bed-maker had already spread out on the table. It was a very nice college lunch. It was not tinned beef, or brawn, or tongue, or any questionable dainty that had been soldered up a year or two in a metal case. It was a lovely head and shoulders of salmon, and it had been judiciously pickled, and there was cucumber cut up in a dish--little delicate flakes of cucumber which Edgell ate with the healthy returning appetite of a man who had long been denied this delicacy. The salmon was followed by a chicken and a ham, to which he also applied himself with the same zest. The edge was quite taken off his appetite, when Eric pushed these things aside and set a jelly just freshly turned out of a mould before him. 'I don't want any of that stuff,' he said, and he pushed over his glass in the direction of the claret. 'I don't think I'd take any more, old man,' said Eric; 'you've already had four glasses. I wouldn't have any more. Have a soda?' 'I'll be hanged if I do!' said the other doggedly, 'unless you put some brandy in it. I must have a nip of brandy, Wattles. I'm sure that cucumber has disagreed with me. I haven't had any cucumber for an age, and it never did agree with me.' Eric got up and unlocked a cupboard, and took out a liqueur-bottle more than half full of brandy, and poured a small--a very small--quantity into a glass, and filled it up with seltzer-water. He had put the bottle back into the cupboard and the key into his pocket, and was putting on his gown to go out. He always took a service somewhere in the country, or did some open-air preaching on Sunday afternoons, and he was in a hurry to get away. 'I wish you'd leave that key behind you, Wattles,' Edgell called out when he got to the door. 'That confounded cucumber or the pickled salmon has disagreed with me. I may want the key before you come back.' Eric took the key out of his pocket reluctantly and laid it on the mantelpiece. 'You'll be careful, old man,' he said; 'you'll be sure to be careful. Remember----' 'Shut up!' said the other angrily. 'Do you think I'm such a fool?' Eric went out and shut the door. When he came back two hours later the liqueur-bottle was on the table empty, and Edgell was breathing heavily on the floor. It was all that confounded pickled salmon and cucumber! CHAPTER XI. IN THE FELLOWS' GARDEN. That mendacious little Lucy, in spite of all her assurances to the Master's wife, was a little anxious about the Master. He had not taken his dinner with his usual appetite; he had scarcely eaten a morsel, and he had not had his usual nap after.