One morning this vacation quiet of the College was rather noisily broken by the arrival of a number of undergraduates, who had returned to prepare for an examination, bringing with them the noise and influences of the outside world. Now the American was no longer to be met with in the garden or quadrangle, whither he had been wont to come almost every day, as if fond of the place and not averse from Foley's company. Wondering that he did not see him any more, Foley one evening asked the undergraduates if they knew Sutton or had ever heard anything about him. By sight and reputation they knew him very well,--a solitary person, who led in Oxford a most melancholy life, without friends or apparent occupation; staying there, it was reported, because of something in his past which kept him from going back to America. Foley knew how distorted gossip of this kind would grow in coming through the minds of undergraduates; and yet there was enough in what they told, to make him uneasy about his friend. Sutton had given up studying theology, had tried history, making however a complete failure in the schools; he was said to have adopted strange religious ideas and had been heard, it was rumoured, groaning and scourging himself at night. There was a report too that some Americans had come to Oxford, and, after visiting him, had gone to the Warden and accused Sutton of keeping some money which was not his own. XII. As soon as he could, Foley went off to find his friend, getting the address from the College books. At last in a dark alley he discovered the house. Mr. Sutton had gone away from Oxford the day before, the landlady told him, and had not said when he would be back. Perhaps the gentleman would like to leave his card? The room was at the top; he must be mindful of the stairs. Climbing up with care, Foley opened the door and lighted a match in the darkness; the poverty and destitution of the little room growing vivid for a moment, and then fading again into blackness, affected him somewhat sadly. Just two chairs, a table, a bed, and a few signs of human habitation,--several books, a coat hanging on the wall, and three photographs over the fireplace, the familiar one of Dr. Turnpenny, the dreamy face of Philip Gerard, and a picture that Foley was touched to recognize as his own. All the pictures of Parnassus City, his class mates, the young lady, the street, and college, had disappeared, and a few old religious prints were in their place.