reverential were his feelings towards one who held such high office in the University that he could not refrain from taking off his hat to him, a salute which the Proctor gravely returned, much to Mr. Binney's gratification. He would perhaps have been less gratified if he had known that the great man, who was not accustomed to receiving respectful greetings from middle-aged gentlemen, took him for a subservient tradesman whose face he happened to have forgotten.

When Mr. Binney turned into the open space in front of Trinity College and passed through the noble gateway into the Great Court, his heart swelled with pride as he stood and looked round him. The twilight had deepened into night, and the court lay quiet and spacious under the stars. Opposite to him stood the hall, its painted windows shining brightly through the dusk. To its right lay the Master's lodge, which Mr. Binney had been told was also a royal palace, and in front of it plashed the fountain underneath its graceful canopy of stone. To his right was the dark mass of the closed chapel, and all round the court stretched the long low buildings with their lighted windows and busy staircases, their modest regularity broken up by the three gate towers, the hall, the lodge, and the chapel. A little group of chatty dons came towards him from the combination room, across the sacred grass, one of them in all the bravery of a scarlet gown, and passed out through the gate. A porter touched his hat to them and Mr. Binney felt that he could have done the same with pleasure. Towards the undergraduates who went to and fro in the court, along the flagged pathways, his feelings were less reverential, but more curious, for he hoped some day to be one of them. What a proud thing it would be to walk on these very stones in a square cap and a blue gown and feel that one had a share in all the ancient surrounding glories. He walked slowly across the court, and up the steps of the hall. He stopped to read the college notices in the glass-covered cases which hang in the passage between the kitchen and buttery hatches on the one side, and the carved screen which gives access to the hall itself, through heavy swing doors, on the other. A crowd of waiters in their shirt-sleeves were busy between the two clearing away the remains of the feast. Mr. Binney looked into the hall which was now nearly ready to be shut up for the night. The massive boards and benches of polished oak ran up to the daïs in which were the two long tables where the dons sit at their dinner long after the undergraduates have finished and left them to their grandeur. The pictures of bygone worthies whom their college delights to honour looked down on him solemnly from the walls. Behind him was the beautiful screen with the gallery above, from which the panels are removed on state occasions, when a bright array of fair visitors looks down on the "animals feeding." The lights were going out now, and the high-pitched roof with its many rafters was fading into dimness. Mr. Binney turned with a sigh and went out, while a servant locked the door and left the great hall to its solitude, with the moonlight streaming in through the blazoned windows and the wakeful eyes of the departed worthies watching through the night.

The next morning Mr. Binney called on Mr. Rimington. He had to sit for a quarter of an hour in the Tutor's ante-room, where half-a-dozen undergraduates were awaiting their turn for admittance, looking over the bound volumes of Punch which were laid on the table for their amusement. Two of them were talking, and Mr. Binney listened with open ears to their conversation which was "shoppy" in the extreme, and all the more interesting to him on that account. His appearance caused no surprise, for fathers do sometimes visit their son's Tutors, but Mr. Binney thought that every one present would know what he had come for, and felt a little shy.

He was shown presently into the inner room, a handsome one with a beautiful ceiling, and was received very kindly by Mr. Rimington, who, however, seemed a little nervous.

"I don't know, Mr. Binney," he said, with some hesitation, "whether I quite understood your letter." (Here he took Mr. Binney's application from an orderly little pile on his desk.) "It seemed to mean that you wished to enter yourself as an undergraduate of the college."

Mr. Binney sat on a chair before the Tutor fumbling his hat between his knees. "Certainly, sir," he said, "that is what I meant."

"There is an undergraduate of your name already entered, I believe, on Mr. Segrave's side?"

"Yes, my boy Lucius. He passed the certificate examination last month."

"Quite so. We are very glad to have him here. We hope he may row in the boat and help us to beat Oxford."

Mr. Binney was surprised to find a don taking an interest in such a frivolous affair as a boat-race, but it put him a little more at his ease.

"There is nothing to prevent a man of my age entering at the University, I suppose?" he inquired.

"No," said Mr. Rimington with some hesitation, "not from our point of view. But have you thought what it means, Mr. Binney? It is a little—er—unusual for father and son to be undergraduate members of the same college at the same time. Our rules are not at all irksome for a young man—in fact, some people think we allow too much freedom, although we find that we get on better by not drawing the rein so tight as they do at some other colleges—but such as they are we could not relax them, and in your case they might very well prove to be irksome."

"Not at all," said Mr. Binney, "not at all. I am prepared to take the rough with the smooth, and I can keep rules, if they are sensible rules, as well as the young fellows."

Mr. Rimington laughed nervously. "May I ask your reason for wanting to come up to Cambridge so—so late in life?" he asked.

"I have a passion for education, sir," said Mr. Binney. "I left school at the age of fourteen, and have worked hard at my business ever since. But money-making isn't the sole interest in life—besides I have got as much money as I want. I wish to regain some of the lost opportunities of youth."

"Have you kept up your classical studies at all since you left school?" asked the Tutor.

"I never learnt any classics, sir," answered Mr. Binney airily; "that has all to come. They didn't consider that Latin and Greek prepared us for the business of life when I was a boy."

"Oh! then I am afraid it is not of the slightest use your attempting to enter for our examination," said the Tutor, with a visible shade of relief overspreading his face, "it would take you years to come up to the standard we require."

"That is my affair, sir," said Mr. Binney. "I shall not only attempt it, I shall succeed. I have ability and determination."

Mr. Rimington looked annoyed. "I think you will find you are mistaken," he said. "However, as you say, that is your affair and not mine. But, apart from that, I am not sure, Mr. Binney—I speak quite openly—that it is the kindest course you could take, as far as your son is concerned, to enter at the same college. He comes to us with a very good character, and we hope he will do us credit. But it is likely to go against him—I mean it will hardly be giving him a fair chance with the other men of the college to be constantly under your supervision. A University education, you know, Mr. Binney, is a valuable training for a young man, because he begins to learn to stand alone, while he is not left entirely alone. Your son would lose that advantage, whatever else he might gain, if you were to be constantly with him."

Mr. Binney straightened himself up. Mr. Rimington's opposition roused his fighting business instincts, which prompted him to take every opportunity of gaining an advantage. "That again is a matter for me to decide, sir," he said. "Lucius and I are very good friends and understand one another thoroughly. I have given him advantages of education that I never had, but when I put my foot down he has to obey. He