So, even on his first night in Hall, he had finished the four solid but wholesome courses of the College dinner (“commons” weren’t they called?) long before any at the freshmen’s table. For him no need to look about with curiosity or awe, or to gaze with furtive respect at the High Table, with the berserk figure of the President muttering its truncated grace, and still less to attempt acquaintance with the _gauche_ nonentities whom, or “which” as he said to himself with a quiet smile, chance had set upon his either hand. Unduly reserved? No: Gaveston overflowed with the ffoulis charm, that fastidious and subtle essence which this Hall had savoured so often during the past four centuries. Even the stocky spectacled youth next but one on his right could not but sense that. “Wonder who that chap is?” Gaveston heard him whisper to his _vis-à-vis_. “I think his name is Foulis,” came the low respectful answer. “ffoulis,” corrected Gav silkily, with the gentlest of smiles. And the incident closed. But it was enough to show his quality. And the _mot_ was bruited around the whole of Wallace that night before Old Tom had boomed and boomed his hundred strokes and one over the starlit spires and Athenian groves of the dream-bound colleges.[3] [3] i.e., by 9.15 p.m. (LIT. EXEC.) Gaveston rose, distressed, but not surprised, at the scout’s omission to bring red pepper for his savoury. His neighbours, still toying with the sweet, watched with ill-concealed surprise and some envy the ease with which he drew up his figure from the awkward constriction of the long oaken bench, and the slender but masculine grace of his carriage as he paced alone towards the door. Alone he descended the Hall steps into the cool evening air. Through the fast-gathering dusk the beetling walls flamed distantly with the fiery Virginia creeper lambent upon their crumbling stone. Underfoot, the first-fallen leaves of October lisped and whispered in a soft-stirring night-wind, and overhead a few late rooks were fluttering darkly from branch to branch. Thus had they fluttered, he reflected, just so long as the golden light had gushed forth from the high windows of Wallace Hall, and so would they flutter, ageless and perennial, over the heads of generations still unweaned and yet unborn. The Wallace rooks … nothing could affright them, nothing surprise them.… They, too, had found the secret. * * * * * Dinner was over, but the night held further possibilities. There was still the Dean. But no one, of course, called him the Dean.