worked like a dog to give us a chance in life and his generosity makes me personally sometimes feel almost indecent. I mean that I feel that I have taken advantage of him,—but—but, somehow or other,—oh, I don't know,—we don't seem to know each other—that's all. He hasn't the knack of winning our confidence—or something. So it comes to this: when we want anything we ask mother and she gets it for us. That's all there's to it. And look here, Nick, I want you to be frightfully nice to the Governor. Get out of your ice-box and warm up to the old man. I can't, you see; but as he has come all this way to look me up I want somebody to show some appreciation."

With his eyes to the small relief which the visit of Dr. Hunter Guthrie, of New York City, might bring him, Nicholas Kenyon nodded. "Rely on me," he said. "Butter shan't melt in my mouth; and before your father leaves Oxford I'll make him feel that he's been created a Baronet and appointed Physician in Ordinary to His Majesty the King. Well, so long, Peter! I'm lunching with Lascelles at the House this morning. I'll drop in to tea and hand cakes round to your beloved family."

"Right-o," said Peter. "That'll be great!" And when the door closed and he found himself alone he arranged a certain number of silver cups which he had won in athletics all along his mantel-piece, for his father to see, gazed at them for a moment with a half-smile of rather self-conscious pride, finished tidying his room, gazed affectionately for a few moments at the familiar sight of Pusey House through the leaf-crowded trees that lined the sunny street, and then sat down to his piano and played a rag-time with all that perfect excellence and sense of rhythm which had opened the most insular doors to him during his first days as a fresher.

II

This fine big fellow, Peter Murray Guthrie, who had done immensely well at Harvard in athletics and was by no means a fool intellectually, could afford to be amused at the fact that he had been scoffingly referred to as "only a Rhodes scholar." He had been born under a lucky star and he had that wonderful gymnastic faculty of always falling on his feet. If with all his suspicions aroused he had gone up to Oxford in the same rather timid, self-conscious, on-the-defensive manner of the average Rhodes scholar who expected to be treated as a creature quite different from the English undergraduate, he would have found his way to the American Club and stayed there more or less permanently, taking very little part in the glorious multitudinous life of the freshmen of his college, and remained a sort of pariah of his own making. Freshmen themselves, the Lord knows, are forlorn enough. Everything is strange to them, too,—society, rules, customs, unwritten laws and faces. They are solitary creatures in the midst of a bustling crowd. If they do not come from one of the great public schools and meet again the men they knew there their chance of making friends is small and for many dull disappointing weeks they must mope and look-on and envy and find their feet alone, suffering, poor devils, from a hideous sheepishness and wondering, with a sort of morbid self-consciousness, what others are thinking of them. But Peter was unafraid. He stalked into Oxford prepared to find it the finest place on earth—with his imagination stirred at the sight of those old colleges whose quadrangles echoed with the feet of the great dead and rang with those of the younger generation to whom life was a great adventure and who might spring from those old stones into everlasting fame. He strode through the gate of St. John's with his chin high, prepared to serve her with all his strength and all the best of his youth and leave her finally unsullied by his name. He didn't give a single whoop for all this talk about the snobbishness and insularity of English undergraduates. He didn't believe that he would find a college divided and sub-divided into sets; and if the statement proved to be true—well, he intended to break all the barriers down.

Therefore, with such a spirit added to his fine frank, manly personality, irresistible laugh, great big friendly hand and the rumours that came with him of his bull-like rushes on the football field, he became at once a marked man. Second-year and even third-year men nudged each other when he passed. "By Jove!" they said. "That's a useful looking cove! We must get him down to the river." Or, "I wonder if that American can be taught to play cricket?" As for the freshers—all as frightened as a lot of rabbits far away from their warren—they gazed with shy admiration and respect at Peter, who, expecting no rebuffs, received none.

Finding that he could not live in college until he was a second-year man, Peter had looked about him among the freshers for a likely person with whom to share rooms. He had come up in the train with Nicholas Kenyon, whose shell he had insisted upon opening. He, too, was entered at St. John's and was very ready—being impecunious—to share lodgings with the American whose allowance he might share and whose personality was distinctly unusual. These two then gravitated to Beaumont Street, captured a large sitting-room and two bed-rooms on the ground floor, and from the first evening of their arrival were perfectly at home. Peter at once hired a piano from a music shop in the High which he quickly discovered, bought several bottles of whiskey and a thousand cigarettes, besides several pounds of pipe tobacco, threw open his window, and as soon as dinner was over started playing rag-times.

Kenyon had been interested and amused. He had not expected to find himself "herding," as he put it, with a damned Rhodes scholar. He took it for granted that these "foreigners" would live apart from the ordinary undergraduate, as uncouth people should. He had been quick to notice, however,—psychology being his principal stock in trade,—that Peter had made an instant impression; and as he sat on the window-sill listening with what he had to confess to himself was keen pleasure to Peter's masterly manipulation of the piano and saw all the windows within near range of their house open and heads poke out to listen, he was able—without any propheticism—to say that Peter would quickly be the centre of a set. He would certainly not be sulking in the American Club.

Very quickly P. M. Guthrie, of St. John's, became "Peter" to the whole college—and stroke in the freshers' boat. The other Rhodes scholars owed everything that was good to him. He stood by them loyally, made his rooms their headquarters, and all who wanted to know him were obliged to know them. He introduced swipes at the first freshers' concert in the Hall, with enormous success, selecting Forbes Nicholl, of Brasenose; Watson Frick, of Wadham; Baldwin Colgate, of Worcester; and Madison Smith, of Merton, all good Americans, for the purpose. Even Dons stayed to listen on that epoch-making occasion and the fame of their curious and delightful method of singing spread all over the university. It was easy. There was nothing else like it.

Quite unconsciously Peter was for a little while the whole topic of conversation at Dons' dinners. These hide-bound professors were really quite surprised at the remarkable way in which, at one fell swoop, this man Peter Guthrie had managed to weld together the English and American undergraduates for the first time in their knowledge. Some of them put it all down to his piano playing—and were very nearly right. Others conceived his great laugh to be mainly responsible—and were not far short of the mark. But it was Nicholas Kenyon, the psychologist, who put his finger on the whole truth of this swift and unbelievable success. He said that it