stir us. Leave us alone.' I am certain Shakespeare prefigured the whole lot of us in the object of Titania's affection. I should not, however, suffer Legion to hear me say this, of course, and far less Birt."

"Then you don't value your present position so very highly?" asked the surgeon, with the greatest interest in the answer.

"Oh, but I do though," returned the other, "and nobody more so; I am not the man to look so showy-looking a gift-horse in the mouth, believe me. If I was not the Hon. Henry Adolphus Plantagenet Brooks Hollis, what on earth would become of me?" (Mr. Field's heart sunk within him.) "I am fit for nothing-absolutely nothing-except to be an hereditary legislator of Great Britain; it is my spécialité. I am surprised that you have not discovered this!"

"Ah!" replied Mr. Field, trying to laugh, "you were born with the mole under your left foot, which is the sign of power, I dare say."

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Well," answered Hollis, "singularly enough, although I never heard that saying before, now you mention it, I remember that I certainly have such a mole. Oberon never blessed my father's bed in that respect. Here it is, if you have a curiosity to look at it,—such a very little one!' as Captain Marryat puts it into the mouth of the

maid-servant to say, in apology for having had a baby,-but still a mole."

The young fellow-commoner, who was somewhat excited by the events of the evening, bared his left foot as he spoke, with a merry laugh, and, surely enough, upon it was the damning spot which the surgeon had so dreaded to see.

CHAPTER XXI.

ON the next morning, while the two were breakfasting tête-à-tête, Robert Birt called upon Mr. Field. The young man's greeting to the good doctor was so very warm as much to surprise the host, who was unconscious of their mutual relation.

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Perhaps," said he, rather bitterly, "you'll take a little food in your new friend's company, Birt, without choking yourself with the sense of obligation to a Spangle."

"Certainly I will," said Robert, cheerfully; "I will have one of those broiled turkey's legs. What do you give for a turkey at the St. Boniface kitchens, Mr. Fellow-commoner? A pensioner gives, in January, twelve shillings and sixpence, Legion tells me. I suppose you give a pound?"

"Twelve and sixpence seems a little dearish," observed Mr. Field.

"So Legion thought, who had ordered a boiled one and oyster sauce for supper," returned Robert Birt; "the bird was sent from the kitchen, but

without the sauce, which the pensioner's order of twelve and sixpence did not cover.

So the next

day Legion had an interview with his tutor, Ruff Diamant, upon the subject, in hopes of some redress, but all that he got out of that plainspoken gentleman was this:-'Well, sir, we have a good cook at St. Boniface, and we must pay for the luxury.""

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"Bravo! very much bravo!" cried Hollis; “I like his honesty; that must have shut Legion up." Why, no," replied Robert, "he set his tutor's back up in return by replying that his idea was that it was they (Mr. Ruff Diamant and the Fellows, namely) who had the good cook, and himself and his brother undergraduates who had to pay for the luxury."

After the laugh excited by Legion's insolence had subsided," I should not have thought our friend would have had that pluck," observed Robert.

"Stop! silence!" cried Hollis, laughing; "I won't have my king of the butterflies broken upon your merciless wheel. This gentleman here is a democrat of the first mud, Mr. Field. Anybody who does not happen to be able to strike with the sledge-hammer ought to be removed, according to him, out of the great human workshop, and left to starve. As I am going to entrust him with

your entertainment this afternoon, I think it right to give you that warning. I have an engagement of long standing, which must usurp my time for a few hours."

When Mr. Field had presently taken the arm of Robert Birt, and was in the street, the latter turned round to his companion to his companion and said, smiling, "Can you guess what Hollis's engagement was?"

"Billiards, I should imagine," returned the doctor, "a ride on the road, or a pull on the river." "No; on the contrary, Hollis is now 'sported. in his own rooms, and will there read mathematics hard for many hours to come. He is, with all his light ways, an ambitious man, and will make a very respectable figure in the class list."

"But have you no previous engagement of the same kind?" inquired Mr. Field; "you, to whom success is of so much more importance. Is it not selfish of him, and indeed of me, to

?"

"No, no," interrupted Robert Birt, blushing; "he is forgetful, that is all; and as for you, I would not miss a walk in your company,-the first I have ever had in all my life,-for worlds. I set apart this day-the whitest in my calendar, be sure to this very purpose, as soon as I heard, through Legion, that you were arrived. How much have I to hear, and you to see! Shall we